dbran

Yeah. I've seen that approach demonstrated often here, but have yet to actually try it myself. There's something weird to me about putting the speaker on the floor, pointed at the floor. Does the front grill get dirty? Is it bad for the speakers to be trying to push air against the floor like that, or to be firing in a horizontal orientation rather than a vertical one? (I'll admit, that last one is a stretch). And just wasting all that power, amplifying a signal and producing sound that will end up going nowhere... seems wrong to me. I'd much rather just shut it off. Still, if this approach is Aspen-approved (and thanks for the reminder), then maybe I will give it a try. Actually, now that I think about it, the even better way to do this would be to wire the SS's volume controls a little differently. There should be one volume control for the front main speakers, and a separate one entirely for the side-firing speaker. This is not the way the controls work currently: the LEVEL knob controls both the main and side-firing speakers, and then the WIDTH knob lets you make a second adjustment to just the side-firing one (but you can't raise it at all if the master LEVEL is set to zero). This effectively prevents you from ever having just the side-firing one working. It seems like this is harder to implement than my scheme of just one volume knob per speaker, but I'm guessing it was done to prevent people from inadvertently turning up only the side-firing, and then claiming that the amp sounds lousy (which it certainly would, on its own.)

I've often wondered what it would take to mod the SS3 with a switch that could shut off the main front-firing speakers, and leave only the side-firing one active. Then you would have the best of both worlds: if you're stacking it with another front-firing speaker, you could shut off the SS3's mono output, but if you're using the SS3 as your only amp, you turn it back on.

I gig regularly with my QS8 and probably will for a long time to come. I own several, and leave them set up in various places where I rehearse, and one in the basement where I work on patches. I leave an additional one in a travel case for gigs. All of my patches come with me on an SRAM card, so it's plug-and-play wherever I go, with no setup and tear-down except at gigs. Just plug in the card, turn it on, and it's now identical to the one in my basement! I'm sure the QS8 is not the only board that can perform this trick (some modern boards must be able to load entire performance banks on and off of, say, USB sticks) but because it's so cheap out there in the wild, it actually becomes practical to own many of them and just carry around the patches, instead of the board. I love it! Of course, this wouldn't matter if the QS8 had lousy sounds or bad action, but far from it -- I love the action, and still think the AP and EP's sound great! (Those sounds are what made me buy my first one brand new, back in, maybe 1998?) The pads are very nice, many of the synth leads and basses are excellent, drums are nice, brass and strings are ok. Never cared for the organs very much, but I made a custom one that I run out through a Vent II, and it's good enough to get through a song or two. Another thing this board gives me is complete control over every sound in a mix, operating on every MIDI channel, with splits and layers however and wherever I feel like making them -- no "preset split points" or other limitations. Again, I know that there must be modern boards that are this configurable, but it seems like many of them assume I'm only going to need, oh, 2-3 layers at most, and maybe one or two split points that can go here or here, but not there. Say what? I would never settle for that! 20 years later and I'm still learning what this board can do! dB, I am so grateful!

You're very welcome! Glad to have helped!

When I first got mine a couple of months ago, there was a buzzing/rattling, only when playing a few specific notes from the organ IIRC. I was worried about having to open it up and tighten things down, as others here have described. But it turned out to be the fuse cover rattling against the housing of the plastic power supply connector part. On the back of the amp, the part I'm talking about is the black plastic housing where you plug in a three-prong power cord. The fuse cover is between the plug socket and the power switch, and it's flush with the black housing, so it's easy to miss. I used electrical tape to secure it -- just put a single piece of tape, cut to size, over the entire fuse cover to secure it to the plastic housing -- and the rattle went away. And THEN I could hear the (much quieter) "farting" noise from the unused SUB send. Plugged this up with a bare 1/4" plug, and that worked great. A little worried about the plug sticking out past the profile of the back panel (if I leave the plug in there while transporting, and it gets caught on something, it could snap or bend) so I used wirecutters to trim away the parts of the plug that stuck out, leaving just a little "stub" in there. This way it can be safely left in there all the time, and only removed when I'm actually using the SUB out. Things to try before you take it apart, anyway. Hope it helps!

Wow, this is rocking my world right now. Obviously when a program has a whimsical name like "Chocolate," I know that there is no specific synth it is trying to emulate, and the name is more about the feeling it evokes, or some other thing in the programmer's mind at the time. But I HAD always assumed that a program called "Ohbie Brass" was TRYING to sound like an Oberheim, and possibly even using direct Oberheim samples in the ROM voices to get the job done (of course, WHICH Oberheim was something I could never figure out.) And similarly, with the ROM voices themselves, I had assumed that "JuneauxSTR" came from an actual Roland Juno, etc. So... just Wow. Ok. Need to reset what I thought I knew about these sounds. Man, I am glad I asked!

Yes, this is exactly the project I had in mind to undertake. I thought that by doing this, I could train my ear better to recognize these famous sounds by name. ("That's an OB-X string sound, while this one is a Juno...") I think that many people on this forum already have that keen awareness of what different famous synths sound like, and so they wouldn't need a list like this to know what's going on inside the QS8. I was coming at it from the other direction, trying to build the awareness by building the list and playing the sounds. Better ways to spend my time... yup, point taken. Hey, thanks for responding, it's good to have an authoritative answer on this: the list probably doesn't even exist. Good to know!

Regarding the Vintage Synths QCard and the QS8 itself, I've been searching for a while to find a list of exactly which synths were sampled to create each specific voice in the ROM. From various sources, I've assembled the following list of synths that I believe were used for the QS8. In chronological order: 1965 Moog Modular 1969 EMS VCS3 1970 Minimoog 1973 Yamaha GX-1 1975 Oberheim 4 Voice 1977 Prophet 5 1979 Oberheim OB-X 1981 Moog Rogue 1981 Roland Jupiter 8 1982 Fairlight IIx 1982 Roland Juno 6/60/106 (VS card only) 1983 Oberheim OB-8 1983 Yamaha DX7 1983 Roland Jupiter 6 1984 PPG Wave 2.3 1984 Oberheim Matrix 12 This list may not be completely accurate. It comes mostly from a Sound on Sound review of the QS8 (but where did THEY get it?), with additions from various quotes I've found from Dave Bryce and others. Here's the thing I would really like to know: from which specific synth did each particular ROM voice originate? For example, the first QS8 synth voice in the ROM is called "JPad." Probably from a Jupiter, but is it a J6 or J8? Some are easy to figure out from the names, like "JuneaxSTR." But most have cryptic names like "Soundtrack" -- I love this voice, but what synth am I "really" using when I play it? I have "svengled" on many separate occasions over the past six months to try to find a detailed list that matches each ROM voice in the QS8 and VS card to its particular synth of origin. I have come up empty, except for tidbits here and there from the QS8 Architects (primarily dB and Erik Norlander). And so, I humbly ask those of you "in the know," does anyone have such a list that they could share? I would be most grateful to see it, or to know the reason why it's not a good idea -- would it be legally troublesome? Or just crossing a line somehow? I can understand that. Either way... thank you!

Thank you Synthoid! And thank you Dave! I certainly have. I also have some thoughts on the Jazz Piano Q-card, which I've used for over 10 years. In particular, the program called "Warm and Clear" has been my standard piano sound when playing blues -- it's a thick, full-bodied tone that really lets you dig in, and it's very responsive. It seems to lend extra weight and authority to solos (which means I'm not tempted to over-play), and if I'm the only one comping while the guitarist takes a solo, this sound fills the mid-range just fine and keeps the band sounding "full." However, for rock piano, or in layers with other sounds, or in a crowded mix with more than one other chording instrument, I have not found the Q-card sound to be a good choice -- it just takes up too much "sonic real estate" and starts to make it all sound like mud. In those situations, the internal "Stereo Piano" sound on the QS8 works just fine. It's a great sound in its own right, with more "bite" and less "body," and so it cuts through better, but then promptly gets out of the way of the other instruments. And it sounds nicer with other sounds in layers, like organ or strings. I think, of the two, the Q-Card plays and sounds more like a "real piano," while the internal QS8 piano sounds more like a "rock piano" (this is not a knock.) But the extra responsiveness and "depth" of this particular Q-Card sound may be the reason why it has always been one of the more sought-after cards for the QS8.

Hello all, I've played a QS8 since 1999, and still love it. Bought it for the piano and EP sounds, and am still learning about everything else it can do, even now. Also have been using the Vintage Synths Q-card quite extensively for the past five years. It has provided a great set of useful and authentic sounds, alongside the generous helping of synth samples already in the QS8 itself. So Dave, a big "thank you" for your efforts in designing both the QS8 and the Vintage Synths card! This is my first post, though I started visiting about six months ago (man, that CPS Spacestation thread is a doozy!) So Dave, a second thank you for running the forum, and thanks also to the members who have shared so much expertise. I hope to contribute where I can. In the meantime, I will keep rockin' the QS8!