Dan South Posted August 29, 2003 Share Posted August 29, 2003 That wouldn't cost much, would it? Instead of 16 or 32 or 64M of tiny, looped samples encoded with data compression, just put a few gigs of 16/44 or 24/96 full bandwidth samples right into the ROM. Make the ROM blocks replaceable and expanable for upgrades. Maybe dedicate a full 2G to just the piano sound, layers and layers of chromatic samples. Why skimp? The Black Knight always triumphs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeon Posted August 29, 2003 Share Posted August 29, 2003 this could be done now with a hard drive. true, they are not as sturdy as ROM, but at the same time, modern drives shock performance, both when powered down and during use, is far, far better than it was in days past, and I think more than durable enough for a modern sample-based synth. check their specs...you would literally have to throw your synth to the ground with great force while it was on to do anything...and that is if the drive was not damped/isolated from shock! and Dan, you can get over the data compression issue...keep in mind that the methods used by current makers is non-lossy...you get back just what went into it. and 4GB would not be enough...consider the Scarbee RSP73...that lovely Rhodes set is a few hundred megabytes all by itself! Go tell someone you love that you love them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan South Posted August 29, 2003 Author Share Posted August 29, 2003 Bug 4G WOULD be an improvement. The Black Knight always triumphs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeon Posted August 29, 2003 Share Posted August 29, 2003 true that...but given the cost of a 4GB ROM mask and manufacture, not to mention the surrounding memory controller and addressing, I would go with the HD anyway, and get the benefits of truly massive space. Go tell someone you love that you love them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan O Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 Originally posted by Dan South: That wouldn't cost much, would it? Instead of 16 or 32 or 64M of tiny, looped samples encoded with data compression, just put a few gigs of 16/44 or 24/96 full bandwidth samples right into the ROM. Make the ROM blocks replaceable and expanable for upgrades. Maybe dedicate a full 2G to just the piano sound, layers and layers of chromatic samples. Why skimp?Hey Dan , Some of this is already being done with the Ketron SD1 . 6gigs out of the box and the samples from the hard drive can sync with a midi sequence or loop . Record onto the hard drive, edit off the hard dirve and more . Just FYI ... Dano / former Ketron Sd1 demoguy www.esnips.com/web/SongsfromDanO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RABid Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 I'm surprised someone does not put out a massive piano ROM. A couple Gig for piano and ep. Robert This post edited for speling. My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coyote Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 Great idea! Wish I'd thought of it If a $400 PC can address a gig or more of RAM, certainly a digital synth can do the same with ROM. I used to think I was Libertarian. Until I saw their platform; now I know I'm no more Libertarian than I am RepubliCrat or neoCON or Liberal or Socialist. This ain't no track meet; this is football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan O Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 Utilizing a hard drive is a great tool for keyboard manufacturer's . Dano / Ravens Fan www.esnips.com/web/SongsfromDanO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dementia13 Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 It might actually be difficult to get a hard drive of "only" 4 GB these days. What if the synth was designed with a USB 2.0 or FireWire port, and you could hook any drive you want up to it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlito Posted August 30, 2003 Share Posted August 30, 2003 Utilizing a hard drive is a great tool for keyboard manufacturer's . Dano / Ravens Fan .... and a keyboard that would let you stream samples from the HD a la Gigasampler. Now, about these "massive" wave ROMs of today. These new keyboards with almost 200Mb of ROM are not a big step up from the ones that only had 64meg five years ago.Or are they? And I'd prefer a synth with only 32megs of my favorite samples than 175megs of whatever they wanna put in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
realtrance Posted August 31, 2003 Share Posted August 31, 2003 I'd say maybe a good compromise solution would be to have 4-8GB of RAM, and then -- with 160GB hard drives going for dirt cheap now, probably even cheaper by the time this thing would come out -- make it possible to simply hot-plug and -unplug an HD to load the RAM rapidly, and then make it possible to keep everything loaded in RAM alive until the synth is powered down. As long as you could re-plug the HD any time you needed to, this would be a pretty workable solution. Then instead of expansion boards, companies could just sell multi-gig hard drives with all the requisite samples loaded. And you could "upgrade" your 160GB piano sample drive from MegaGigaBedroomStudio any time via the net. rt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Pierce Posted August 31, 2003 Share Posted August 31, 2003 Yeah, realtrance's solution probably makes sense. A hardware engineer might chime in with more specific knowledge, but if I understand this correctly ROM is quite a bit more expensive than RAM. And while RAM has certainly gotten a LOT cheaper, 4GB is still well over $1K. --Dave Make my funk the P-funk. I wants to get funked up. My Funk/Jam originals project: http://www.thefunkery.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vincepro Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 I don't think lots of hardware synths are really being held back by memory limitations. You can really do a lot with just 32 MB..But perhaps maybe in the near future we'll have hardware Gigastudio-type rompler synths that will have 500 GBs of sounds...beautifully recorded basses, Garritan strings, drums, 30 different grand pianos, etc...Do you think when that happens all our current Tritons and Motifs will be worthless? Or do you think there will still be a place for them in the studio? There are certain Gigastudio patches that aren't too different than patches on my XP-30 keyboard, even though the Gigastudio ones are several hundred MBs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coyote Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 If ROM is too expensive, then make it low-draw battery-dependent RAM. If you had a bank of rechargable batteries which were refreshed every time the unit were plugged into AC line power, they might die in a few years - at which point you simply get new batteries and reload the samples. This ain't rocket science; it's merely expanding from what we're used to into what is possible (and easy, in this instance). THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX I used to think I was Libertarian. Until I saw their platform; now I know I'm no more Libertarian than I am RepubliCrat or neoCON or Liberal or Socialist. This ain't no track meet; this is football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan South Posted September 2, 2003 Author Share Posted September 2, 2003 Originally posted by Dave Pierce: Yeah, realtrance's solution probably makes sense. A hardware engineer might chime in with more specific knowledge, but if I understand this correctly ROM is quite a bit more expensive than RAM. And while RAM has certainly gotten a LOT cheaper, 4GB is still well over $1K. --DaveIf this is true, it's a new development. Historically, Read Only Memory has been cheaper then Random Access Memory. The Black Knight always triumphs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vincepro Posted September 2, 2003 Share Posted September 2, 2003 Wouldn't it take a looooong time for the sound programmers to come up with 4 GB of sound? Or am I not understanding this? Would it mean you would get hundreds of times the number of sounds in a Triton rack? Or would it mean you would get Gigastudio in hardware synth form? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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