Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 16:37:48 -0400 From: "Caloroso, Michael E" To: "'[*AH]'" Subject: [AH] Korg SDD-2000 Review The SDD-2000 is a programmable digital delay with 64 memory slots and MIDI in & Thru, but no MIDI Out (?!?). It has a rotary encoder and buttons for parameter access, a'la Moog Source. Much better than increment/decrement buttons. There's a four segment LED for input level. The delay can go from 0.1 to 1092 milliseconds at 18Khz bandwidth, or a X4 mode expands it out to 4.368 seconds but at reduced 4.5Khz bandwidth, which is adequate for emulating analog tape echo units. Nice touch is the digital readout of delay time, which you can dial at resolutions of 1ms (or 0.1ms at 10ms delay or less when in 1X mode). Unlike the rest of the SDD line, there are no filters available for the feedback path. The feedback (regeneration) can be inverted, the *key* to killer flange effects, and you can get up to 110% feedback for runaway loops. Each delay can be used as sampling units for playing over looped audio. Unfortunately changing the delay time interupts the audio signal which is common for a digital delay; analog delays don't have this problem. The tap tempo feature is great; you just tap the button twice to the tempo and it figures out the delay time. You can use MIDI to trigger the tap tempo. When you use it in sample mode with MIDI enabled, it will scale the sample across a three octave range for triggering the sample over MIDI, but it's monophonic with low note priority. You can either loop the sample or trigger it once. You can use MIDI pitch bend and modulation messages on the sample, and you can vary the delay and feedback parameters while a sample is playing. In my experiment it gets the best flange effect and the best echo effect of the three I have. I haven't played much with the sample feature but it will find a use, it has a good set of tools. Even though it's 12-bit A/D, it sounds *good*. The lack of MIDI Out is a mystery, since you can load patches and alter parameters over MIDI but you can't save patches over MIDI! The manual is good. It explains the functions and includes MIDI sysex protocol for remote editing (probably the only way to store sounds) but doesn't give you any basics on how to get a flange sound, a chorus sound, etc. The block diagram on the top of the unit is reproduced in the manual. Harmony Central has an excellent primer on delay processing techniques: http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/effects-explained.html MC --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions (and mistakes) expressed herein are my own and not those of my employer. If the contents of this message appear as one long sentence in your email reader, it is the product of Microsoft Exchange, which has no option to force word wrap :( Most email clients do have a word wrap option which may be disabled by default, try enabling it for better results.