Hi Pasbel,
the ASX and the X-Synth are using MIDI signals (5mA current loop), not TTL. So you need to use signals from a MIDI IN connector.
Benoit
Wow, great project Benoit. Your prototype looks great!
Hi Benoit
I tried to connect power supply 3.3v only (but not MIDI connection), 0v to SV2 pin 1 and 3.3v to SV2 pin 2.
USB link with a PC computer doesn’t work.
I use 3.3v out from an arduino board, perhaps there isn’t enougth power for X-Synth board ?
The ASX requires 9V to work. Not sure what connector number.
See this old picture for the connector:
The ASX works between 5V and 9V (the CME keyboard provides 9V). Take an extreme care about this voltage: the integrated circuits for the DSP power supplies (3.3V and 1V) do not accept more than 12V as MAXIMUM LIMIT. So use a regulated power supply, or you may destroy quickly everything.
The X-Synth is powered on 5V by the iCON keyboards, but since it’s 99% the same board as the ASX (especially voltage regulators), I think it would support 9V too (but I did not make the test, all my boards are powered on 5V)
A last remark for Pasbel : take care about the power consumption. The ASX and X-Synth take around 250mA on 5V. You may reach quickly the capabilities of a 5V regulator on an Arduino board
I’ll test that tomorrow
Thanks for your response
See image for X-Synth connector…
hi, any updates on this? I have the asx card, Im looking for a method to save patches without being connected to a pc
On 28/11/2015 at 9:39 PM, colm said:
hi, any updates on this? I have the asx card, Im looking for a method to save patches without being connected to a pc
Hello Colm,
sorry, I did not come on the forum since some time (extremely busy with some new designs for my company… and I did not get any notification even with the “notification = ON”…)
Personnally, I use a SD card attached to the SPI to store and retrieve the patches. It’s not complex to do: the patches are just a list of Control Changes and Aftertouch parameters (yes, they use Aftertouch to pass over the 128 parameters limit.. rather than using the standard MIDI method of NRPN, which would allow to have 16384 parameters…)
Tell me if you need help for that
Benoit
On 29/12/2015 at 7:09 AM, BEBDigitalAudio said:
On 29/12/2015 at 7:09 AM, BEBDigitalAudio said:
Hello Colm,
sorry, I did not come on the forum since some time (extremely busy with some new designs for my company… and I did not get any notification even with the “notification = ON”…)
Personnally, I use a SD card attached to the SPI to store and retrieve the patches. It’s not complex to do: the patches are just a list of Control Changes and Aftertouch parameters (yes, they use Aftertouch to pass over the 128 parameters limit.. rather than using the standard MIDI method of NRPN, which would allow to have 16384 parameters…)
Tell me if you need help for that
Benoit
Hello Colm,
sorry, I did not come on the forum since some time (extremely busy with some new designs for my company… and I did not get any notification even with the “notification = ON”…)
Personnally, I use a SD card attached to the SPI to store and retrieve the patches. It’s not complex to do: the patches are just a list of Control Changes and Aftertouch parameters (yes, they use Aftertouch to pass over the 128 parameters limit.. rather than using the standard MIDI method of NRPN, which would allow to have 16384 parameters…)
Tell me if you need help for that
Benoit
hi Benoit, thanks for replying
I discovered they used aftertouch values while I was looking for midi cc’s for the effects, had never seen that implemented that way
I just bought another asx card and was hoping to use pro12 or prodysessy but not even sure if you can get these legit anymore
so its just storing midi snapshots via SPI? Im very new to digital
(I didnt get a notification either)
Hi Colm,
my best wishes for 2016
I am almost happy to know that I am not the only one experiencing issues with the notifications
Yes, they are using the AT in parallel with CC (and not only for the effects), because they went over the limit of 128 parameters… More precisely, they split the parameters betwen CC and AT even when there are still empty slots in CC (look for the B4000 parameter table, it’s a typical example)
Officially, UseAudio still exists, but their website did not change since 2011 or 2012. I contacted them one time two years ago, and they forwarded me to inDSP (the designer of the card in India), because they simply sell the boards. They did nothing in terms of software development (as far as I understand). And at this time, the contact I had at inDSP explained me that there was only one guy remaining who know the details about the ASX/Plugiator/X-Synth (which are exactly the same devices). I think that now, there is no more people at all working on that. I submitted them some work I did (like a VST plugin to control the ASX in place of their ugly and buggy Flash applications…), they thanked me and told me that all development were stopped.
Apparently, it is still possible to buy vouchers and download new synths from the UseAudio website, but simply said, nobody sells the vouchers anymore. I can tell it still works, because I have been able to use one of the vouchers I have here to download a synth I lost.
Technically speaking, the ASX is completely running over the 21364 DSP. The microntroller (ATMega32) does nothing at all in the sound synthesis control (compared to many other synths where envelopes or LFO are typically computed on an external processor while the DSP deals with the audio). On the ASX, the ATMega32 only receives MIDI from the expansion connector (true MIDI current loop at 31250 bauds) and the MIDI from the USB chip. It also reads the SPI Flash sector per sector and uploads the binary data for the program into the DSP via SPI. Period.
The pain is that inDSP has encrypted everything within the Flash and also on the MIDI USB, probably to protect their intellectual property (however, this protection is incredibly easy to defeat with a simple logic analyzer which costs 30 euros… ).
Personnally, I do not want to steal their software, I am also a programmer who sells programs and I see no reason to give for free somebody’s else work (that’s why I said earlier that I will not transmit the binary images I have made). I use this as a backup (I already lost two ASX in the past because of the microcontroller, becoming suddenly unable to reload the DSP). As I said, I started also to tweak one of my ASX, to load DSP images over RTP-MIDI (it takes 2 seconds to load the DSP on RTP-MIDI while the USB takes more than 3 minutes )
It’s not an easy task to do (and you need a Visual DSP license to create the SHARC program), but if somebody is interested, I can give the details.
Benoit
Nobody sells the synths anymore either So i guess your solution will be the only way to use this, once the Useaudio software stops working on current Windows/OSX.
Offtopic: i am looking into the notification problems.
I just checked the UseAudio website… it’s even older than what I wrote : the last news is from 2009
About getting the synth, it still appears as an active product within iCon catalog (http://icon-global.com/product/x-synth/). I can still find some on Amazon and from some vendors in France. Nnow, they are probably selling all they have in stock, nothing else (but the price is incredibly high : 185 dollars each on Amazon, 80 euros for the French vendor - I got mine at 30 euros )
And iCon never, never provided any link to download the optional plugins (I think they never got the license from inDSP or something like that), so the X-Synth will live and die with the three base plugins.
Of course, if one day, all of them disappear (or as Shuriken said, if their software does not work anymore on the last OS… which basically the case already : just look to the OS compatibility list on the iCon webpage… it’s scary : only supported by XP and Vista 32 bits…and they forget to say that it also requires an obsolete version of the Flash player which is not supported at all)
, then I will consider these boards as abandonware… and do what is necessary to share what I have
All the Icon stuff seems to be going EOL. At most places i looked the expansion cards and the master keyboards they go with are on sale.
Offtopic: i got a notification off your post
13 minutes ago, Shuriken said:
All the Icon stuff seems to be going EOL. At most places i looked the expansion cards and the master keyboards they go with are on sale.
You really want me to reveal the secrets of the DSP loading or what…
14 minutes ago, Shuriken said:
Offtopic: i got a notification off your post
Got it too this time
I have 5 X-Synth board, bougth 19€ to 24€… (and 1 G-Synth board)
I try one with 9v power supply and MIDI in DIN, it work, and MIDI USB too
14 hours ago, pasbel said:
I have 5 X-Synth board, bougth 19€ to 24€… (and 1 G-Synth board)
I try one with 9v power supply and MIDI in DIN, it work, and MIDI USB too
Excellent
I was pretty sure that it would work with 9V, but I did not make the test.
But I think 9V is really the maximum. When I look to the datasheets of the Intersil regulators used on the board, they say 10V max on input.
The CME keyboards have a 7809 regulator, so there is no risk, but I would be very cautious with chinese “regulated power supplies”… (I have one here which is a killer : there is a slider on it to choose 6V, 9V, 12V output… but it’s delivering 15V on the 9V position )
On 6/1/2016 at 7:53 AM, BEBDigitalAudio said:
Hi Colm,
my best wishes for 2016
I am almost happy to know that I am not the only one experiencing issues with the notifications
Yes, they are using the AT in parallel with CC (and not only for the effects), because they went over the limit of 128 parameters… More precisely, they split the parameters betwen CC and AT even when there are still empty slots in CC (look for the B4000 parameter table, it’s a typical example)
Officially, UseAudio still exists, but their website did not change since 2011 or 2012. I contacted them one time two years ago, and they forwarded me to inDSP (the designer of the card in India), because they simply sell the boards. They did nothing in terms of software development (as far as I understand). And at this time, the contact I had at inDSP explained me that there was only one guy remaining who know the details about the ASX/Plugiator/X-Synth (which are exactly the same devices). I think that now, there is no more people at all working on that. I submitted them some work I did (like a VST plugin to control the ASX in place of their ugly and buggy Flash applications…), they thanked me and told me that all development were stopped.
Apparently, it is still possible to buy vouchers and download new synths from the UseAudio website, but simply said, nobody sells the vouchers anymore. I can tell it still works, because I have been able to use one of the vouchers I have here to download a synth I lost.
Technically speaking, the ASX is completely running over the 21364 DSP. The microntroller (ATMega32) does nothing at all in the sound synthesis control (compared to many other synths where envelopes or LFO are typically computed on an external processor while the DSP deals with the audio). On the ASX, the ATMega32 only receives MIDI from the expansion connector (true MIDI current loop at 31250 bauds) and the MIDI from the USB chip. It also reads the SPI Flash sector per sector and uploads the binary data for the program into the DSP via SPI. Period.
The pain is that inDSP has encrypted everything within the Flash and also on the MIDI USB, probably to protect their intellectual property (however, this protection is incredibly easy to defeat with a simple logic analyzer which costs 30 euros… ).
Personnally, I do not want to steal their software, I am also a programmer who sells programs and I see no reason to give for free somebody’s else work (that’s why I said earlier that I will not transmit the binary images I have made). I use this as a backup (I already lost two ASX in the past because of the microcontroller, becoming suddenly unable to reload the DSP). As I said, I started also to tweak one of my ASX, to load DSP images over RTP-MIDI (it takes 2 seconds to load the DSP on RTP-MIDI while the USB takes more than 3 minutes )
It’s not an easy task to do (and you need a Visual DSP license to create the SHARC program), but if somebody is interested, I can give the details.
Benoit
thanks , same to you
I’m supposed to be working on an album so maybe its not a good idea to start this now! I have zero coding experience
I found these, but I dont want to buy the full package, just prodyssesy
https://www.jrrshop.com/use-audio-plugiator-plug-in-bundle
http://www.vasquez.de/webshophtml/html/1370.html
this might be of interest to someone, the cpu is pretty weak but might be worth it at this price
https://www.jrrshop.com/sm-pro-audio-v-machine
JRR are usually great with pricing but the asx card is $399 there!
Ive been using 9v with mine, can I use regulated 5v supply? does that 9v get converted to 3.3v or 5v?
the physical midi output, is that the usb midi out?
(Got notification this time, but too busy to answer immediately )
Interesting links, Colm. I stopped to look for the plugin packages since a long time, convinced that nobody were selling them anymore. Clearly not the case… 85 euros is a very good price for the whole package. I paid twice the price when I bought my first ASX a few years ago…
If I would need to give a personal evaluation to these plugins:
-
Prodyssey : 9/10
-
Pro12 : 9/10
-
FMAgia : 7/10 (sounds good, but I prefer myTX81Z for this kind of sounds). Deserves experimentation and can give you good surprizes (the factory sounds are not good)
-
Drums&Bass : 3/10 (clearly something they delivered in emergency, because they promised it). Easily beaten by a PC running ReBirth… (and I don’t like ReBirth )
Now, I would recommend to be careful about these “packages”. When you buy them, you just get a voucher code, not a file or something like that. You then need to connect to UseAudio website, create an account, provide them the voucher code and the serial number of the ASX or the Plugiator. Their server then sends the file to the plugin manager software. So first, you should check that the plugin manager works on your machine and is able to see the server. The plugin manager is based on a very, very old version of Flash, and it simply does not work anymore on recent versions of Mac OS or Windows (ok… it never worked on Mac…)
The last time I played with the plugin manager, I had to remove the last version of Flash and force an obsolete version to install… All of this manually… So rather funny to do… (but very cool to be busy for a whole rainy weekend)
On 9/1/2016 at 0:00 AM, colm said:
this might be of interest to someone, the cpu is pretty weak but might be worth it at this price
I don’t like this machine. It’s a Linux computer with a Windows emulator (Wine) to run VST plugins. It fails with almost all commercial plugins (because it does not support the copy protection mechanisms) and many freeware plugins act buggy on it. The Receptor from Muse is much better… but the price is also much higher. And as you said, the CPU is rather on “low end” side… giving high latency (15ms is common)
On 9/1/2016 at 0:00 AM, colm said:
Ive been using 9v with mine, can I use regulated 5v supply? does that 9v get converted to 3.3v or 5v?
the physical midi output, is that the usb midi out?
Yes, it can work with 5V too. The local switching regulator on the ASX turns it into 3.3V and 1.0V (needed by the DSP). As far as I know, there is no 5V component on the board
And, no, the USB and the MIDI OUT are completely independant. They did that clearly on purpose, to avoid “sniffing” the System Exclusive when you load a new firmware in the Flash
1 Like
I found another one board = 6 X-Synth !
V-Machine is a very cool machine, but there is inside a very noisy fan, and too big plugins, and/or unoptimized plugins (a lot) doesn’t work well.
I don’t know why, but during my test, all synthmaker plugins (not synthedit, they work fine) crashed.
But for this price.it’s a wonderful machine.