Prophet 5 using 64E Core

MIDIbox HUIs
21

Ah.. thats because the back is not parallel to the front edge!

The P5 has a bit of an agressive wedge shape.

The back side (with the big heatsink & audio sockets) is at a right angle to the face (With the knobs) , where the front (Thin leading edge) is at a right angle to the base (The bit that sits on the floor).

Thats why the base (the face that sits on the floor) is longer (415mm) than the total of the face in your pic (395mm)

Hope that clears that up, and now the measurements should add up nicely (+/- a few mm)

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Ah.. thats because the back is not parallel to the front edge!

The P5 has a bit of an agressive wedge shape.

AHHHHH!! OK!! Now I got it… You know, that no matter how many photographs I looked at that isn’t immediately obvious on it. Now I know that, I’ll go adjust the model to match. Thanks again!

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

23

Now I know this… I can see it in this picture as well!

Had you not explained that one I never would have noticed it… But the angle at the back is very clear here. Only obvious now, because the machine in the photograph is upside down with the base pan removed. Makes complete sense now and yes it goes together nicely in the sketchup model. All the dimensions fit!

Cheers Bud!! Beers are on me if we’re ever on the same continent.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

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24

OK Chaps!! Time to take the plunge and order the electronics… This is how I figure it should work, If anybody can spot anything I missed out or anything else I need to do then I’d appreciate the feedback.

Keyboard Controller Section

1 X Core Module running self written software… (which I’ll upload after it’s written in case anybody else wants to use it or modify it for their own purposes)

The functions required for this are quite simple and the software examples here give all the info necessary to write it. Including note on note off for each key plus de-bounce code which is already part of MIOS. I already write Visual Basic and the C Code seems to be very similar, so I shouldn’t have any trouble with that.

2 X DIN Modules to handle input from the switches on 61 keyboard keys and + 2 buttons to set + or - for which MIDI Channel it’s transmitting on.

1 X AIN Module to handle Pitch and Mod wheels, plus a couple of inputs for external volume and mod pedals.

MIDI IN routed from synth rear panel with merge on.

MIDI OUT routed to Panel Controller Section.

Panel Controller Section

1 X Core Module running Midibox 64E

2 X DIN Modules to handle 26 Rotary Controlers

2 X DIN Modules to handle 37 panel push buttons + 8 64E Menu Buttons.

1 X DOUT Module to handle 32 LED Lights on buttons.

1 X 2X16 LED Module (backlit Red letters on Black background) for 64E Display.

MIDI IN from keyboard controller section

MIDI OUT to Synth Section.

Synth Section

Mini ITX Motherboard running a Flash Card instead of a hard drive, with XP and “NI Pro53” + “Arturia ProphetV” Which should give lots of sound options.

Monitor, Mouse, Keyboard, ports routed to synth rear panel.

24Bit Sound Card, With Midi IO… and audio inputs/outputs routed to standard 1/4" rear panel instrument jacks.

MIDI IN from Panel Controler Section.

MIDI OUT routed to Rear Panel of synth.

I’ll start ordering the parts shortly. So if the above works out, then It’s all good to go. As I said, any final input over anything I missed, before I place the parts orders, would be appreciated.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

25

Your list looks pretty good/complete to me.. (I’ve never built any MB controllers tho)

I’m still thinking you should get the PC and software running & get a controller and take it for a spin to see how it handles before you fork out $$ on other bits. It’s gonna be no good if the latency is poor.

Have you done a cost breakdown? Still not sold on a S/H controller? I respect your choice, but it would not be mine.

What about a midi merge to merge outside midi with the keyboard going into to the PC? I’ve heard about people doing it via the can bus I think.. you might need to research that.

(Actually, you prob could avoid all that if you use a midi interface with 2 in’s)

For my Minimoog restoration (Had no keyboard when i got it, so put in a midi’d keyboard with midi-CV) and big SID synth (MB6582 with keyboard) i used midi merge’s.

Regards

Mike

26

I’m still thinking you should get the PC and software running & get a controller and take it for a spin to see how it handles before you fork out $$ on other bits. It’s gonna be no good if the latency is poor.

Yup! tried it out properly today… Connected the workstation keyboard to a separate PC that was only running the software emulations. Felt pretty tight… No lost notes, no hanging notes. Felt pretty tight all round. I was playing some fast runs and it was keeping up with me just fine… Threw it a MIDI song file and whacked the tempo up to 220bpm and it was still pretty tight on the metronome. This was even with both of the NI Pro53 and the Arturia ProphetV running at the same time on the one machine. So no problemo so far.

I’m going to tackle the electronics in stages… get the KB Controller up and running first and feed that to the emulation and see what happens before I add the other sections.

Have you done a cost breakdown?

ROFL You’re joking right, I daren’t do that! I’d scare myself too much.

To be honest I’m pretty happy that I can do it all for way less than half the price of one of those Creamware Desktop Prophet copies.

The expensive parts are the replica prophet buttons and control panel knobs. They work out about £2.00 each for the buttons… I’m just going to buy one, take a mold off it and cast resin key-tops with microswitches under them. That way, I can make them myself and get them down to less than £0.30 each. Same thing with the control panel knobs. I’ve just seen a full replica set on e-bay and they want £62.00 for them!! :shocked: :frantics: Feck That!! I’ll turn my own up from solid Aluminium.

Still not sold on a S/H controller? I respect your choice, but it would not be mine.

The reason I’m going this way, is that its actually cheaper. This is only because I have 99% of the physical hardware for that section and the keyboard I’m using is exactly the right size and feels good. The core for a KB Controller and the DIN modules to handle it are not really that expensive. At the end of the day, they’re more flexible too, because I can program them to behave exactly how I want them to and re-program them any time I want to change something.

What about a midi merge to merge outside midi with the keyboard going into to the PC?

Yeah! if you look at the KB Controller Section description, you’ll see that I’m routing its MIDI in from a socket on the back panel of the synth. The MB Core modules can perform MIDI Merge internally if you give them the right commands in MIOS. So it should be able to handle MIDI input from the outside world directly.

Thanks for your further thoughts on this.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)
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27

Just figured out the position of the front edge of the keyboard… :rolleyes: In line with the Pitch wheel box, which itself sits 1/2" or 12mm back from the front edge of the synth. It all fits together, much better now.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

28

Adding some pictures from the Sketchup 3D model… I’m pretty pleased with the results. Comparing it to photographs it looks pretty damned close, thanks to the dimensions from Mike.

It’s cartainly close enough to actually start cutting wood. I only added the textures to the Sketchup model because it makes it much easier to see if it looks right.

The “aggressive wedge” shape of the end is now obvious as well :smiley:

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

29

hmmm… can’t seem to upload closeup of mod wheel section.

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hmmm… can’t seem to upload closeup of mod wheel section.

Hi Mike, I assume that there’s something I need to see there to get it right??

If you’re still having trouble uploading then, what I do is stick my photos onto www.photobucket.com and just post the http code links here. It’s free, they don’t charge for it. If it’s a text file or a code file or something, then have you tried turning it into a zip or a rar file before uploading here? That might work.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

31

Still can’t upload pictures.

I’m not a fan of offsite pictures.. in a few years they’ll be gone, and the post will be meaningless.

The pictures is just a close up so you can see the way the timber is detailed / fits / etc near the mod section..

It’s not important, just helpful.

Regards

Mike

32

Hi Mike.

I have had problems uploading pictures using Firefox 3.5 but uploading seems to work OK with IE8. I wonder if something has changed recently?

Cheers

Phil

33

Still can’t upload pictures.

The pictures is just a close up so you can see the way the timber is detailed / fits / etc near the mod section..

Thanks Mike! I found some pictures that are clear on Prophet 5 Tribute Site I think I can see there how it should go, but if there’s anything specific you want to point out, do let me know. Thanks again for all of your help, it really is appreciated that you’ve taken the time to help me with this.

I’ll update the details of the project as I progress with it. It might be a few weeks before I have anything to show and I’ve got to wait for components coming in before I can start on the electronics. But I will post again when there’s something worth looking at or when I get stuck with stuff.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

34

Another thought occurred to me today, in relation to the sound generation part of this project. A few years ago, (1998 or 1999 I think), Korg produced a PCI sound card that was designed to be plugged into a normal PC motherboard.

If I remember correctly it came with plug-in soft synths, that used the DSP’s on the board. It was called a Korg Oasys PCI. That had a very good Prophet 5 emulation. It was discontinued because it wasn’t very successful, due to the fact that Korg overpriced it. But it was reported to have next to no latency because of the on card DSP’s

If anybody has one of those Korg PC sound cards, that they no longer want, and would like to get rid of it, please contact me. I am of course happy to pay a sensible price for it and the shipping for it. Ideally I’d need it to be complete with its software and driver disks and its break out cables because those don’t seem to be available anywhere.

The downside is, that because they dumped the product, no drivers have ever been developed that will work on anything newer than Windows98 or Mac OS9. But that shouldn’t be a problem in this set-up.

If anybody has any experience of those cards, I’d also be interested to hear from them.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

35

If anybody has one of those Korg PC sound cards, that they no longer want, and would like to get rid of it, please contact me. I am of course happy to pay a sensible price for it and the shipping for it. Ideally I’d need it to be complete with its software and driver disks and its break out cables because those don’t seem to be available anywhere.

If anybody has any experience of those cards, I’d also be interested to hear from them.

Expect to pay between 200-300 Euros for an Oasys PCI. There was one on ebay a few weeks ago, that went for 200 - and that was cheap. There are people out there who dedicate a whole computer just to this beast. Sound quality is superb, but support is non-existent. Korg even removed the drivers and all from their website. Remote-controlling the thing via MIDI is possible, but if I remember correctly, that was not really straightforward - but it’s been a while… and you don’t get anywhere without a PC monitor connected.

Good luck with your project!

ilmenator

36

Expect to pay between 200-300 Euros for an Oasys PCI.

Ahhh!! OK! Thanks for that… That’s probably not a viable idea then. Way outside of my budget for this. Unless one comes up at a reasonable price, that is. I’ll go back to the original idea of something like one of those M-Audio cards or the E-mu cards. They’re cheap enough, have a DSP on board and and can output at 24bit quality.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

37

Finally some progress!! :smiley:

Cutting the timber for the case on this project tomorrow on my home built CNC cutting machine. Here’s some video of the machine in action cutting 1/4" Teak, for another project. I’ve written some multi pass software so that I can cut the 12mm Mahogany for the Prophet case and take smaller bites at it.

Here’s a picture of the finished cut from the above project… i’ll try and post some pics of the synth parts soon.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

38

Another thought occurred to me today, in relation to the sound generation part of this project. A few years ago, (1998 or 1999 I think), Korg produced a PCI sound card that was designed to be plugged into a normal PC motherboard.

If I remember correctly it came with plug-in soft synths, that used the DSP’s on the board. It was called a Korg Oasys PCI. That had a very good Prophet 5 emulation. It was discontinued because it wasn’t very successful, due to the fact that Korg overpriced it. But it was reported to have next to no latency because of the on card DSP’s

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

Maybe you should have a look at the Use-audio ASX board which provide a Core DSP synth module offering the same sound quality as the CreamWare Pro12 ASB: price is arround 150 € but sadly the Pro12 plug-in as to be bought extra for 50 € or within a 4 plug-in extra budle (including the Prodyssey, the ARP Osdyssey emulation).

I do not know if you started ordering things but this would provide you maybe something simpler to handle (through MIDI) and maybe cheaper as a miniPC + software emulation. Only drawback is the monotimbral limitation and 10 notes polyphony …

39

Another alternative as a soundcard could be an old good CreamWare PCI card: a Scope Luna/Home could provide you a 3 DSP set and 1/3 of the ASX board DSP power. It also needs a PC host. This kind of 3-DSP card can be found for less than 100 € nowadays. The same plug-in as for the ASX is available from SoniCore but would be maybe pricey (198 €). Maybe you can find one providing this plug (some 6-DSP board have been sold bundled with the so called Synth’N’Sampler pack providing both MINIMAX and PRO12 together with a few others).

I built up a fanless rack PC integrating such cards a few month ago:

some hints about it can be found there:

http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28203&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=20

In case this could help in any way.

The Luna/Home Card could also be used as a rather good PCI sound card in its own providing at least some effects and alternate synth (including some free ones).

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In case this could help in any way.

Thank you very much… Those are both excellent suggestions. I will investigate them for further projects and, they would as you say make an excellent rack PC. Yours is indeed very impressive. I read through your posts on that, and it does provide some very nice options.

For this project I think maybe it is outside of my available budget and also, because in this synth it will entirely be dedicated to running as a Prophet 5, it would be waste of the very nice capabilities of those cards. Although I have no doubt that the sound quality would be very good. I will investigate them for construction of a rack PC, which I would like to do in the next couple of years.

Thank you again.

Best Regards,

Julian (Fozzy The Bear)