After celebrating my 30th birthday a few days ago, I'm fully ready for another blog post.

Anyone familiar with early 90s electronic music, especially video game music, has probably heard of the E-mu Proteus series. What isn't as readily known is that there was also a 4 MB sound expansion for the Proteus 1, and by a third party at that: ProtoLogic, by InVision Interactive.

Due to the additional components, and the consequential heat generated, many expanded Proteus 1 models also came with a 2U faceplate extension with the InVision branding on it. How I managed to find one expanded Proteus 1XR without this is a good question, that said, but regardless, the sounds are there.

In a nutshell, most of the Protologic ROM is dedicated to picking up where the sound ROM of the famous Proteus 1 left off, meaning additional pop-oriented sounds, most notably some synth pads, distorted guitars, some TR-808 samples, and a few ethnic percussion sounds. There are lots of mixed thoughts about how the Proteus 1 sounds without it, so in my opinion, this made it much more worth collecting, even if it is still constrained to the programming limits of the Proteus series (i.e. no easily-programmed filters). It comes with an additional 128 ROM presets to get started with as well, which makes having it for a Proteus 1XR all the more recommended since the XR series inherently has more RAM presets (a total of 512 presets combined!).

Alas, one reason why I'm making a big deal out of this: there is no modern software alternative to these particular sounds, not even from Digital Sound Factory. Aside from InVision being a third party sound developer, they faded into obscurity shortly after this came out, and even their sample CD's seem to have been better remembered despite many being based on other soundware brands of the time such as Sound Genesis and Northstar. The consolation: I've put in the effort of sampling the ROM as best as I could, and while I hesitate to publicly share my results in the event that the copyright owners are still around and take notice, know that some archiving of these rare sounds have been done, complete with an attempt of recreating the presets in SFZ format. I'm also considering dumping the firmware EPROM's, which, rest assured, I am more willing to share if I do for the sake of the longetivity of these rare units.

Thanks for reading!

It's been a while since I wrote anything relating to synthesizers and sound libraries as well, though it's partially because I've also been taking it easy on buying new equipment, no thanks to the pandemic, among other things, ramping up prices.

Needless to say, I was surprised when I found an early 90s keyboard on Reverb for only $100 before shipping.

Granted, as shown above, two keys do have some sort of cigar burn, and I could smell that much while unboxing. Fortunately, despite the cosmetic flaw, and a loose connection for the power cord, the keyboard seems to work almost perfectly!

Said keyboard's name: the E-mu Proteus MPS Plus Orchestral, based on the famous E-mu Proteus rackmount modules of the early 90s. The early Proteii as a whole consisted of ROM-plers with 4 MB of ROM (8 in the case of the Proteus/2) with decent quality samples of largely acoustic instruments, though one of the limits involved is lack of a traditional filter cutoff. Having toyed around with this keyboard a bit already, I have confirmed that such a statement is only partially correct: the modulation section of patches include a destination referred to as "Tone Control", which is essentially a sort of keytracked filter applied to each sample, normally modulated (aka made darker) for the purpose of lower velocities.

To say this is just a keyboard of such limited ROMpler's (specifically the Proteus/1 plus Orchestral), however, sells itself a tad short: one benefit of the MPS keyboards over the modules was that they also had room for internal effects. One slot is normally reserved for reverb while the other can be a tad more creative (including even distortion and ring modulation, though the latter doesn't have any editable parameters for some reason).

Likely because of said feature, the MPS keyboards also have different presets, and the presets that were recycled from the Proteus/1 and /2 have added chorus and reverb. The patches are also organized a bit differently: 100 patches per bank (500 total when including an optional memory card) instead of the modules' 64 (192 total for standard modules, double for the XR variants).

In terms of the sound, I personally feel it's alright. Extremely dated ROM samples, yes, but what it can do it does pretty well, especially for the early 90s. The "Plus" aspect to the name is because it contains orchestral samples in addition to a pop-oriented soundset, though also noteworthy is that the piano multisample is not what's on the Proteus/1, or at least the DSF samples based on it. Rather, from what I've heard from other music-heads, this particular piano multisample was based off of the Proformance module instead of the Proteus modules. Why the inconsistency is a minor mystery to me, but given how this sounds relative to the Proteus/1, I'm not complaining too much.

I'd share a video or audio demo of how it sounds, but, while I may work on that later, I think it would be more fun to say listen to the soundtrack of the first Myst game: that early 90s adventure game's music (and apparently a small few of its sound effects as well) were all generated from this keyboard model!

Personally, while I'm fully aware that the Proteii as a whole are not for everyone in terms of sound, if you do get tempted to acquire anything other than the Proteus/3 (which was dedicated to ethnic sounds), I say save up the money and space for this over the modules, for the sake of the included effects engine.

UPDATE: finally remembered to attach demos here:

I realize it's been nearly a year since I updated this blog, which I apologize for: been caught up with various projects, both relevant and irrelevant to music.

During the time between blog entries, I acquired the Korg X5DR rackmount synthesizer since I didn't have the budget for the 01/RW. Overall, it was a worthwhile purchase in my book.

The X5DR is primarily a General MIDI module, though it does contain 200 non-GM programs and combinations (each) as well. Partially for this reason, it also has the benefit of both multi-timbral mode and up to 64 voice polyphony! The sounds themselves are fairly bread and butter for the most part, but I enjoy them all the same.

While it's great for General MIDI playback and, unlike the more advanced followup TR-Rack, allows editing of all non-GM sounds without an external MIDI editor, I do find myself frustrated in other small ways. Probably the biggest gripe: the 200 programs and combis are stored in two banks, and only one of those banks can be loaded by the synth at a time. This can definitely be a hassle for sound designers if they have too many sounds to fit into only 100 patch slots.

This particular post isn't just a review, however: I also managed to find a way to rewrite 01/W presets to load at all in the X5DR. Obviously, waveshaping is not an option in this module, and there are a few missing samples as well (which I tried my best at replacing with similar ones), but if you don't have the budget for an 01 series keyboard either, then you could consider trying out my converted patches on an X5DR, or its keyboard version, the X5D.

That's all I have to say for now about this module, except to say that if enough people express interest, I may make a followup video exploring the other bank of programs from the module as well as my 01W patch conversions.

First of all, Happy Holidays to everyone, and hope everyone has a happy new year and decade!

One way my Christmas proved interesting was learning that Korg finally made another VST clone of another of their ROMplers: the Korg Triton series. For me, they do hold a place: my first ever professional-quality synthesizer was a Triton Extreme, which I had received in light of my interest in its predecessor (the Trinity series). Needless to say, I was excited to see this in a VST form.

The Triton VST seems based on the Triton Extreme for the most part in that it includes not only the standard programs and combinations, but also those of its eight expansion cards, which means quite a fair number of waveforms alone to work with! The sounds it does come with are pretty impressive as well, even if some are a bit dated for today's standards, and speaking as a past hardware owner, I failed to notice any major sonic differences!

The interface seems fairly straightforward to use, especially relative to the hardware. The original Triton series made use of touch screens, a tradition that was started with the Trinity, so it felt a little strange to me not focusing on a pixellated display to make my edits to sounds, but I'm not complaining there.

Sadly, that's not to say I don't have any criticisms. Granted, most of the editing limits, such as no choice for multiple filters per oscillator like even the Trinity, were the case in the original hardware, except for one software limitation that I honestly was hoping for: sampling. At least some of the Triton models, including the Extreme, were capable of some small scale sampling, with a whole bank of blank sounds meant specifically for them. Unfortunately, both the sampling and the sample-based patch bank are nonexistant in this VST, which I imagine is especially a blow for Trinity fans like myself since not all of the Trinity ROM waveforms were included in the Triton (though a small number of those reappeared in their later M3). I sincerely hope Korg addresses this later, especially since I imagine it will help prolong the life of this particular VST being able to run your own samples through its impressive effect processing (much better pitch-shifting than the RolandCloud VST's, for instance).

Still, overall good job from Korg, and I look forward to using it occassionally in my future work! For more information and to buy, feel free to go to the below link:

https://www.korg.com/us/products/software/korg_collection/triton.php

One of my most successful YouTube videos is, instead of one of my songs, a demo video I made of the Roland JV-2080 (viewable at the bottom of this post), a synthesizer I since sold in favor of the XV-3080. While there are no plans to make VST’s officially of either model to my knowledge, RolandCloud, a subscription based service by Roland for VST’s and sound libraries, has recently released the next best thing: a VST of the JV-1080, which both the 2080 and 3080 are based on.

Anyone who’s owned any JV synth knows how sophisticated the 1080 onward were: a minimum of four banks of 128 presets, not only with resonant filters (unusual for late 80s and early 90s ROMplers) but also many modulation options and a huge variety of effects, from the usual chorus and reverb, to pitch shifting with feedback. All of these options also control up to four sample-based waveforms at a time. Needless to say, these features, combined with its large library of expansion cards, made them very popular among electronic musicians, especially 90s game composers.

Upon installation, my first disappointment came in: only the factory 1080 presets are included. While the expansion cards would probably take a while to fully implement anyway, it still would’ve been nice to get some presets exclusive to the XV series, especially since the VST advertises additional included waveforms, though I haven’t had the time to confirm differences in the waveform list between it and my XV3080.

Still, overall, it’s both useful for music production and very faihthful to the original hardware. In all honesty, the interface makes it easier to navigate than even the screens on the JV-2080 and XV-5080. Because of this, admittedly, it took the easy-to-use interface to make me realize that the JV synthesizer line allowed modulation of one waveform, no matter how complex, with another (hard sync).

Most of the sounds are useful, especially when processed enough, and most of the essential 90s pop sounds are there. My only complaint about the sound, that said, is the pitch-shifting effect. Not only does it sound a bit glitchy to me, especially when shifting up, the original hardware used a better-sounding pitch-shifting implementation. Hopefully RolandCloud will address this issue, as even some of the presets are negatively affected by this.

Still, overall, it’s a good job from Roland’s software development team. Even better is that they recently announced SRX Orchestra, which is based on the SRX-06 expansion card, which, in turn, compiles sounds from the SR-JV80 02, 13, 16, and, to a lesser extent, 07 cards for the JV-1080. Most of these sounds were obviously dedicated to orchestral sounds. Expect me to review that VST shortly after it comes out as well.

The JV-1080 VST is exclusive to the RolandCloud subscription service. More info about RolandCloud and its catalog can be found here:

http://www.rolandcloud.com/

Those of you who have watched my YouTube videos may remember this video:

Frankly, this was made using samples of the Roland D-50, and about a month ago, I finally have the rackmount version of the real deal: the D-550!

Back in 1987, Roland realized that people wanted a larger variety of sounds than the mere analogs of the years before, but due to tight budget and technological limits could only afford a small amount of sample ROM. This transformed into what they call "Linear Arithmetic" synthesis, in which the typical patch would combine PCM samples (usually short attack snippets of an instrument) with what is arguably the first virtual analog engine. Add built-in chorus and reverb (with the ability to have two different chorus effects to a patch), and you have the bulk of the Roland D-50 synthesizer!

From my personal viewpoint, it's amazing how much effort went into many of the patches. This was thanks partially to the fact that, while traditional synthesizers have four stages of an envelope (the first and last being constant), the D-50 and D-550 have five stages, all of which are completely customizable in level and time. This feature is made especially clear through the famous patch "DigitalNativeDance", a patch almost impossible to accurately recreate with traditional ADSR envelopes.

While drum samples are not included (again, sample size limits of the time), what is included is very impressive. Four samples or synth waveforms can be used in a patch. The PCM samples have three different kinds: the aforementioned attack partials, some wavetable-esque loops (the most complex loops are all unusual synth sounds titled "Spect"), and, finally, some basic sequences of samples recorded in a loop. The synth section has the traditional sawtooth and square/pulse waveforms, but can also have a ring modulator applied to it.

If you're feeling too lazy to program yourself, thankfully, there are several SysEx patches for the D-50 and D-550 online, including dumps from all four expansion cards.

Course, the D-550 has the drawback of its LCD screen and lack of easy editability. I had purchased this unit with a very dim backlight, and evidently, I am not the only user with this problem. Thank God for MIDIQuest.

Overall, while difficult to edit without a MIDI librarian, the sounds you can generate from this device will often be worth it, especially if you're into the sound of the late '80s, whether it be synthpop or new age (whose most famous musician, Enya, was also a D-50 user).

I will try to find the time to remake the video, and for the sake of everyone who may be interested in acquiring one, I hope to play short pieces with ALL of the patches in this remake.

Finally got around to this like I promised. That being said, here is an overview of a JV/XP/XV expansion card that was a collaboration between Roland and Spectrasonics, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was founded by former Roland sound designer Eric Persing.

Well, I figured I should give some sort of update to make up for my goal to slow down a little bit on music sharing: another review of one of my synths. Technically, this one is not a synth, but, in fact, an expansion card for a synth: the Roland SR-JV80-01 card.