From PPilgrim@Teleglobe.CAFri May 19 10:21:12 1995 Date: 19 MAY 95 09:29:24 EDT From: PPilgrim@Teleglobe.CA To: electronica@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Drum machines/modules I've evolved from Roland's to Emu's to Alesis' and now to a Kawai XD-5. The Roland visual interfaces were my favoutite (ie the scrolling led + switches on the 808, 909, 707 and 606) However, I feel that the softwre sequencer + drum module is now the best way to go. It is faster and more convienient for storage, editing and tweaking. My first rack mount drum sound module was an alesis D4. It's trigger implementation is very good but the drum sounds are too realistic. I use it when I do my guitar/bass type music. Since I am bipolar wrt music and do very un-naturalsounding synthetic music, the D4 just doesn't work. The XD-5 instantly filled the requirement. This synth/drum makes such unbelievable drum sounds (Kraftwerkish to ravish to what ever you can imagine). Its ability to cross-modulate (they say Ring Modulate) far outweighs the need of LFOs. On top of this they provide a VCA AND VCF envelope + Cut off and Resonance. I recommend it to anyone seeking synthetic drum sounds. I also heard of some drum modules from Yamaha which can warp drum sounds. Does anyone know of these units? I have always been hesitant about Yamaha equipment. Typically it exhibits poor performance and high costs. I've had amps, drum machines, guitars, noise gates, midi processors and reverbs from Yamaha but they seemed to be inferior and more than their competition. Philip Pilgrim From interval@netcom.comFri May 19 13:23:28 1995 Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 12:35:05 -0700 From: Scott Morgan To: electronica@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: XD-5 bottom line Hey-ho: I worked on the XD-5 sound development years ago & know the architecture inside & out. While the basic engine is based on the K4r (not the K4 keyboard which has effects), there are many differences, mainly having to do with making the XD-5 more suited for percussion than a synth. The XD-5 is 16-bit 44.1 (with a few samples @ 22.05). The midi response time is faster (there are no software LFO's), and things like the autobend are exponential. Otherwise the engine is pretty much the same as the K4 (i.e. same digital filters, etc.) Trivia: We were faced with cramming too many sounds into too little ROM space. I was lobbying for a kind of electro-ethnic-hip-hop-in-a-box, and Danny Sofer (the other co-developer) wanted Terry-Lewis-Jimmy-Jam-in-a-box (this was during the height of Janet Jackson's career). We both wanted Kraftwerk-in-a-box & I made sure to include all the 808 stuff and a "sub-woofer" waveform (which is great for adding to a kick drum), decent noise generator, and other synthy things. We called the 808 stuff BOB Kick, BOB Claps, etc. Japan called up one day asking "Who's Bob?". The BOB nomenclature made it into the owners manual! This was good for a laugh. Most of the drum sounds were recorded at Capitol Records Studio B (Neve) to Sony PCM, with some additional percussion sounds coming from Steve Reid's library. - Scott Morgan - Interval Music Systems - interval@netcom.com