From awiszus@solar.ee.stcloud.msus.edu Mon May 9 10:29:14 1994 Date: Mon, 9 May 94 11:19:58 CDT From: awiszus@solar.ee.stcloud.msus.edu To: analogue@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: RE: MKS-7 Qs, and some nice synths 'm' at map@cs.washington.edu recently asked a few questions about the Roland MKS-7 Super Quartet regarding number of voices per section, etc. Here is the run down: The MKS-7 Super Quartet is closely related to the Juno 106 as it has nearly the same architecture and it IS programmable from a 106! I do not know of any straight- forward computer patch editors for this machine, however one would probably not be too difficult to create even with BASIC as long as you can access your computers MIDI out. The MKS-7 has a 4-part multitimbral design: drums, bass, melody, & chord. There are 11 PCM drum samples sorta like a TR-707. The Bass section is monophonic, the Melody section is 2 voice polyphonic, and the Chord section is 4 voice polyphonic. The maximum polyphony(not including drums) is 7 voices, hence its name MKS-7. There is an option to make the Chord section a 6 voice polyphonic synth by merging the Chord and Melody sections. This procedure is simple and outlined in the owners manual. The Chord section synth is used. The MKS-7 has 100 preset patches that all three sections (Bass, Melody, Chord) access. The Bass section can only access the first 20 (Patch 0-9) presets while the Chord & Melody sections access all 100 (0-99) presets. The main difference between the Chord & Melody sections other than polyphony is that the Melody(2 voice) section contains a white noise generator while the Chord(4 voice) section does not. The MKS-7 has no battery backed RAM but does have a RAM edit buffer making it remotely programmable. This shortcoming means that every time the machine is turned off and then on, you have to send the edited patch via Sys-Ex. The MKS-7 is a 2 space unit and for my album productions has been a useful machine. I paid $125 U.S. for mine. I probably wouldn't pay a lot more than this. I hope this helps. Steve Awiszus Electrical/Recording Engineer/Producer System X Productions, Minneapolis ------------------------------------------------------------------ From dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA Sun May 15 12:53:25 1994 Date: Sun, 15 May 1994 14:20:30 -0400 (EDT) From: Francois Dion To: Mike Perkowitz Cc: analogue@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: Re: different 106s? (and random observations) Dans la Matrice, Mike Perkowitz a dit: > > On Sun, 15 May 1994, Kim Cascone - Silent Records wrote: > > When you were programming the MKS7 could you describe what you were > > tweaking? IE: Fc, Rez, envelopes...etc etc > > pretty much everything that is on the 106's front panel seemed to be in > the MKS-7, at least in the melody and chord voices.. The only main difference is for the noise source and hpf.The melody part has noise on/off and hpf on/off, while the juno106/hs60 has noise intensity and 4 levels of hpf (btw, it is possible to hack the hs60 and probably the juno106 to have the hpf being voltage controlled over a wide range, not just 4 levels) The chord part doesn't have any noise control at all but has hpf on/off. There is also something that is present on the mks7 but not on the hs60 or juno106: dynamics. Send a note at volume 20 or 80 to a juno106 or hs60 and it will play at the same level, no difference in timbre or amplitude. The MKS7 can respond on either vca, vcf or both. This is selected on parameter 4 which is noise level on the hs60/juno106 so the sysex is not totally 100% compatible when noise source is involved. Else, when you dont use noise, it's completely compatible. 100 temporary patch storages (patch change 0-99, 100-127 are remapped to 0-27). Oh, and you have only 1 chorus level, not two like the > the bass voice was > more limited, but i didnt really have a chance to play much and i dont > recall what worked and what didnt.. It is a good thing that this is limited as this means you get bass sounds no matter what instrument sysex you send it (well almost). More precisely, it wont respond to the lfo (and the lfo intensities) the sub level, noise, hp filter, chorus, range nor the three switches (lfo/man, -/+ env, gate/env). It is on man/+env/gate, which means that the enveloppe controls the timbre, not the enveloppe. Makes great basses, but only 20 temporary patch storage (patch change 0-19, 20-127 are remapped to 0-19). Ciao, -- Francois Dion ' IdMEDIA \ Managing: \ Publishing: \ Specialising: CP 312 \ Equation de Base \ Cybernaute \ Multimedia & Telecom St-Lambert, QC \ Francois Dion \ IDM Software \ design, publishing & Canada, J4P 3P8 \ Fuzzy Logic \ Raving Up North \ testing(hard/software)