Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Re S-10's 'Quick Disks'... lying marketeers in action ! [the worse
    it performs, the more adjectives]
        
    My west coast technosource tells me that Roland is announcing the
    rackmount versions of both the S-10 and S-50 (hear that, len?)

    They MAY be called the S-10R and S-50R. Imaginative.
        
    Don't see/hear what you want in your price range ? Wait a month...
    except I've been waiting for almost a year... sigh.

    The rack mount version of the S-10 is called MKS-100. I can't
    tell the price in the states but a guess would be 40% lower than
    the S-10. For the S-50 I have not seen any info sofar.
    
    Svein.
    

    I like the S-10 except for the quick disks. I dislike QDs so much
    (I don't trust anything that is not an established standard) that
    it has kept me from buying one.

    This seems like as good a place as any to post this.  Last night,
    I tried to sample a vibraslap into my S-10.  Seems the sampling
    frequency is low enough on it that this particular instrument does
    not sample well.  Yes, I checked, and it was sampling at 30 kHz.
    And, just for kicks I tried some other percussive instruments out
    to see if something was wrong with the sampler.  Nope.  Bandwidth
    kills the worth of the vibraslap (kind of a ratchety sound).  I
    also played around with the filtering algorithms enough to prove to 
    myself that this sample gets unrecoverabley squashed on the high end.
    Here and I thought I could sample anything ... ;-)   As I recall,
    the S-50 will have the same problem since it has basically the same
    guts.  Fortunately, finding an appropriate musical substitute isn't
    a problem.  I can do it with a different synth or a drum machine.
    I ain't gonna spend more dough just to get a good vibraslap ...  
    
    Steve

Hi Steve,

I have a reasonable S50/S550 sample of a vibraslap, but I agree, the high
end is weak. I had to sample at 39k on the EPS to get reasonable fidelity
from a vibraslap on a Prosonus percussion CD.

dave

    re .4, .5
    
    	What, pray, is a "vibraslap"?  
    
    Bill 
    
    PS	Are they legal in all 50 states?
    

    Hmmm.  I think it's basically a ratchet that makes noise when you
    turn the handle.  A poor approximation would be to hold down a key
    on your terminal.  Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ...... !  ;-)
    
    Steve

    A Vibraslap sounds kind of like a rattlesnake. It has a rattle-like
    sound with about a 3-5 second decay. It's used in latin music a lot, but
    it is more of a sound effect than a rhythm instrument. The "ratchet"
    instrument sounds like a desription of a Cabasa (kah-BAH-sah). 
    A Cabasa looks like a bunch of pull-chains (from ceiling lights)
    wrapped kind of loosely around a corrugated, circular piece of metal
    with a handle on one end. The player holds the handle in one hand,
    and holds the "chains" in the other, and twists the handle back
    and forth, and it sound like a ratchet.
    
    						PJ
    I was in a band with a latin drummer, and he MADE me learn about
    all that stuff..:^)

    Hmmm.  Well, the sample tape said vibraslap.  I'll take a look at
    the cabasa ...  
    
    Steve

RE: Vibraslap...

	I thought a vibraslap was a thing that had a metal rod bent around in a 
kind of a 'U' shape, with a ball on one end and an small wooden box with one 
open side.  In the box was a metal bar with holes in it, and freely moving back 
and forth within these holes were metal pins.  The unit I'm thinking of operates
by holding the rod  and striking the ball with the palm of the hand, causing the
unit to vibrate the metal pins back and forth against the resonant wooden box.  
If I remember correctly, there was a kind of a natural decay to it.  The first 
time I remember hearing the sound was when the TV show 'Room 222' was on.  They 
used that sound in the opening theme song.

	Is that the right beast?

	Dan

re: .10    Yes. That's a vibraslap.
    
    sidenote (absolutely unrelated to samplers):
    
    The Vibraslap (stupid name. sounds like an S&M marital aid) is the
    modern version of a jawbone (of an ass or horse ?) used a in Latin
    music long ago.   The idea was that the teeth rattled in the jawbone
    when it was struck...  This may have been supplemented by pebbles or
    something put inside the bone structure itself. 
    
    The best place to hear what vibraslaps *really* sound like (as well
    as a lot of other weird percussion stuff) is to listen carefully
    to a the background music on a lot of 1970s cop shows or detective
    movies...  You'll be amazed.
    
/doug_who_actually_has_a_vibraslap

 (geez, don't you hate people who inanely pursure a different
 topic within a note of a dissimilar heading?      i do.
 that being said...) 

Another vibra-slap ref: the intro to Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith.

 ( call (212)976-1212 for a free over the phone demo....)

    
    
    Has anyone seen any used MKS-100s around? Sure would be interested
    in hearing how much one of these would go for now.
    
    Mike D

RE < Note 687.13 by MAY26::DIORIO >

	Strangely enough, they have not gone down in price on the used market.
You'd be hard-pressed to find one for less than $500 in the WantAds.  Now, 
whether they are SELLING for that amount remains to be seen.  I couldn't get
$500 for mine when I sold it a year ago.

	Dan

    RE notes .13 + .14    
    
     I've seen used MKS100's going in the $400 to $435 range.......rich
    

    
    Rich,
    
    where did you see these? Are you in the NY area? In the (eastern
    MA) Want Ads, I never see them for sale.
    
    Mike D

    re:.16
    
    Yes, I am in the N.Y. area.....I work Field Service nights in
    Manhattan.I've seen them at Rogue Music (see note 9.4 bottom) and
    in the Village Voice ads.
    
    					rich c.
    

    Boy is this timely....I was checking out an S220 at Sam Ash yesterday
    they were asking $499 which seems like a real good price. They claim
    they are overstocked but I suspect that it's a closeout. I was going
    to ask you folks your opinion of the S220 anyway. I'm looking for
    some good sounds, possible sampling of my other keyboards to make
    my stage setup less cumbersome, multi-tim for helping with my home
    sequencing and all for 400-500 bucks (please stop laughing!!).
    
    So.... what do you think? HOw about those quick disks? Do you think
    only 4 internal sounds at a time will be limiting for live work?
    Can I buy those quick disks anywhere othr that Roland's 10 for 50
    dollar deal
    
    
    HELP!!!!!!!
    
    
    |
    Gary Ryan
    

If the quick disks (60K bytes max) are used to load samples, I can't
imagine that you can get very many on a single disk. The Disks are 
hard to come by (I still have a dead Yamaha MDF-1 Midi Disk Filer that
uses them). At $4.00 to $6.00 each, they are a lousy deal. Can the
S-220 do SYSEX dumps rather than only to quick disks?? If so, you might
find other devices to upload samples from. In case you are curious,
I put 20 quick disk sequences (same thing was on both sides, so there
were 20 full loads of my sequencer on the quick disks) onto a single
3 1/2 800K disk (Indian Vally Midi Disk Filer system).

If you have some other way of dealing with the loading/unloading of samples,
it might be a good deal. I'd avoid the quick disks if I were you.

								Jens

        <<< Note 687.19 by CSC32::MOLLER "Nightmare on Sesame Street" >>>
                    -< Try & find them when you need them >-

>Can the S-220 do SYSEX dumps rather than only to quick disks?? If so, you might
>find other devices to upload samples from.

Universal Sound Designer supports the S220 on the Macintosh, but of course
that's a mighty expensive load device package, and it's one sample at a time,
not an entire instrument. The S220 does apparently support SYSEX.

>I'd avoid the quick disks if I were you.

ditto.

dave

While I would avoid QD too, I've seen them in magazines at about $30 a box
of ten which is cheaper than the $4.00 -- $6.00 each mentioned here.

If you can find a "librarian" of sorts for it running on a PC/MAC/ST or even a 
C64 or 8bit Atari to laod samples with it could be a neat box for that price.

Don't expect to replace your other boxes though.  Steve Sherman had an S10,
a similar device that he really liked (I'm not putting words into your mouth
am I steve?).  Maybe he can comment.

Chad

    Well, now that you've pulled me outta the woodwork ...
    
    I *loved* my S-10.  A great sampler.  The QDs were expensive and
    as mentioned can be had for about $35 from Soundsations.  If I were
    to do it again, I'd dump samples to a PC instead of QD.  But, the
    in the setup I had I had access to several different technologies,
    so I was using the sampler for those sounds I couldn't get with
    the other technologies.  As a result, I never really needed to have
    gobs of samples lying around.  So, the limits of the sampler and
    QDs didn't really affect me.  I found 4 boxes of disks to be sufficient
    for my needs.  
    
    I would say take advantage of blowouts due to folks not liking QDs.
    If storage is an issue, invest in a PC and dump via sysex and forget
    about using QDs.
    
    Steve

    Thanks for the insight, I'm going back toda or tomorrow for a more
    detailed try-out... I'll let you know the story...
    
    Gary

    I don't want to rain on the parade, but using MIDI as a communication
    vehicle for sample dumps is probably not a good idea. 

    Samples are generally large files, and can't reasonably be dumped live
    (ie, in the middle of a song).  Sysex can take a long time (up to
    several minutes on some samplers!) and MIDI sample dumps don't include
    machine specific settings (envelopes, modulation routings, etc). 

    It sounds to me like SYSEXing would be more hassle than trying to
    find a cheap source of 2.8" QDs.

    One source from Keyboard: SOUNDSTATIONS, 370 Mt. Vernon, Grosse
    Point Farms, MI  48236 (313) 885-1539.  $32.50 per box.

-b