Reading Ensoniq EPS .EDE floppies

Since I was a kid I wanted a sampler; back then, samplers were expensive and a standard synth was more flexible for a lot less. Then computers catched up with hardware and samplers became more and more obsolete. Got Kontakt, wich is not bad (don't like the workflow) but sounded astonishingly great. But a "wave cooked" by an old DSP doesn't sound the same, and near zero latency is noticeable (if not, very cool). Then I saw a local ad for a Ensoniq EPS16+. Got it and it rocks. It does sound different, the keys are great and the sampling facility is also well made. Sadly, I have a some 144 Error+, hope to be able to fix this thing... Anyway, the the device came with 300 floppies...

I have read and read on the net a way to read the original diskette that comes with it. Because the information is mixed from 1991 to 2012; there is a lot of dead software and alternative solutions. Here is a quick status on what you can do with Ensoniq EPS disk:

1. You will need a PC floppy reader; USB floppy drive will not work. This is because the program needs to do low level calls to the floppy reader that are not implemented in a USB floppy drive. It is possible to do those calls with a complete floppy emulator like this: Kryoflux; but an old PC might be less expensive.

2. Originally, only the DOS program epsread was able to read EPS disk; this program didn't ran on NT (read XP and more), so you needed an old windows/dos installation to read those disks. Somebody was kind enough to write a Linux and Windows software that does the low level calls : epslin. Open source. Works on XP and Windows 7 using a lowlevel floppy driver called fdrawcmd.

3. File format: ".img" files are a 1 to 1 I/O dump of a EPS disk. (sidenote to Linux users: dd if=/dev/floppy out=epsdisk.img will not work since the sectors are not align like a pc disk, use epslin to do that). A ".ede" format is like a simple dump image (.img) with a 512k header that contains the disk description. Use this format since it is the most common one.

4. Once you have extracted the ".ede" files, you can use epslin to extract the actual instrument called ".efe". Another program named EnDiskEx can also extract ".efe" instruments from multiple ".ede" files. Once it is extracted, it is possible to load the instrument (".efe") in Kontakt.

4A. There is commercial alternatives to read ".ede" disks, but I didn't tried them : Chickensys Translator Pro or Awave Studio; it should translate ".ede" to the format you want.

5. There is a way to get rid of the floppies by using HxC Floppy Emulator. Plug the 34-pin floppy interface from the EPS sampler from this device and you will be able to read ".ede" floppies from a SDCard; directly from the sampler.
youtube demo

Some dated but usefull info on the EPS, EPS16+ and ASR10 format: Ensoniq EPS/ASR KB

OrganSeq

After years of working with a organ drumbox, I've found out some great potential playing with those machines. Yes, I know, they do have an awesome analog feel, especially those with a spring reverb but there is also another secret about those machines: some bands in the '70s from Berlin (godfathers of ambiant music), a dude from Paris (godfather of new-age) and a band from New-York (godfather of synthpunk and new wave) did use it pretty well.

While those machines had only pre-programmed beats (rumba 1, rumba 2, latin 1, latin 2, rock 1, rock 2, etc, etc...), there were a quick hack: if you press both "beat select" buttons at the same time (example: latin 1 + rock 2) : it actually mix both sequences together. This feature gave the organ drumbox a awesome live/jam possibilities. A possibility that any modern (if you call a 808 modern) forgot to support. I recall that the Boss DR-55 had the hi-hat feature for sequencing them all open on 8 step or 16 step with a single switch. Very fun to play with.

This max for live patch is a re-creation of this feature: a way to mix multiple patterns together, whatever musical signature.

Features :

• 16 step programmable sequencer


• each of those sequences are bound to a different time signature and length


• all of those sequences are played independently and can be played at the same time


• the triggers to start/stop a sequence are mapped beyond the midi note c-7. Other midi notes are pass trought the midi effect, this way you can still send midi notes on your own.

Download it here: organseq.zip

I know there is still work to do, especially for more presets, but consider this as a first draft.

Loopex 1.1

Update of my loop based software.

Loopex is a all propose looping machine written in Max/MSP. Loopex can cut/copy/paste/pastemix/delete any regions loop to any buffers.

see demo:



get it here: loopex-1.1.zip

Sync that DR-55

We are now on the working on producing the show from our new album. one of the songs uses arps, midi sequence and a boss dr-55 drumbox. If we want to make that song, we need to sync it with midi gear; the dr-55 is almost 30 years old you know...



The be able to do that, I looked at the external port that comes with the device:

DBS: on this port; we can see a analog tick at each 8ppq. Since the internal clock can be ridiculous fast, I've change it to a 48ppq!!!

CSQ: I don't know what this one does, it doesn't seems to output anything. according to what I've seen, it is supposed to be an output port for other roland gear (CSQ stands for Computer SeQuence). maybe this port is an input port, good for slaving the device ???

Foot switch: I've heard you can slave a Dr-55 with the foot switch, but it only seems to start/stop the sequence. quite useless to sync midi gear to my opinion.



Now, to be able to sync that device with midi, I wrote a simple max/msp application that reads the analog signal and then transform it into midi 0xF8 clock sync status byte. not perfect but it does the job. 30 years old and still young, like me???

max patch

The worlds ugliest midi controller

Okay, this is my first electronic project. Maybe more practicing with the Dremel would have been better...

I needed a small midi device that I could put on my Nord Wave keyboard to control my Nord G2 Modular Rack on stage so I don't have to bring a computer to simply change the volume/change preset.

The arduino was a perfect fit for this since it can easily work with midi. The midi input is quite straight foward, a 6n138 octocoupler does the job. I took this advice and it worked perfectly: led midi controller. The arduino is pretty fast, I never lost a midi "byte" and it does repeat midi message without problems.



The only problem is that at first, I was trying to filter the midi message in the same function; if I got a midi 0x90 (note on) message, I was using

while ( Serial.available() == 0 );
byte2 = Serial.read();
while ( Serial.available() == 0 );
byte3 = Serial.read();

That solution didn't worked, I was loosing midi byte message and my filter process was waiting for a message that was already sent by the synth. The only solution I found is to process midi message with a buffer, so the Serial.available() was always executed in the arduino loop() function.

Now this code works. Now I really look amateur on stage.

source code

simple xpath for python: minixpath

To me, if XML is still alive today it's because of xpath. xpath in it self was able to resume a complex XML search into a single string, making XML finally easy to parse.

Still today, full xpath spec is difficult to support on many language; sadly including Python. While xpath is pretty powerfull, sometime you just need xpath to get node with a filter name. But still, 'sum', 'count' is cool, it does add the complexity and support for the expression parser.

Since Python doesn't come with a native xpath support, I wrote a simple xpath parser. It was written with the "minidom" concept in mind... Again, to my opinion, it does 80% of what you need for a xpath parser does: find a node...

Source: http://le-son666.com/asb2m10/minixpath.py.txt

gnome do

Something was missing in gnome and it was the 'dock' station... I know, OS X done it before, but when you get use to the docker, you just miss something when you come back to linux or windows. The docker is not perfect, but you get what you want 90% of the time and this is why I miss it.

The gnome-do project, did a nice implementation of the docker to gnome. It's not a copy, it's an upgrade. It's a mix between Quicksilver and Dock. Clever idea. And to my humble opinion, it's better and more stable than AWM.

http://lifehacker.com/5145499/gnome-dos-smart-dock-takes-app-launching-to-another-level
http://do.davebsd.com/

Kudo to the gnome do team.