From: dan@korgrd.com (Dan Phillips)
Subject: Re:Wavestation limitations
Organization: Korg Research and Development, Milpitas, CA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 22:36:46 GMT

Bart-Jan writes:
>I think one of the serious limitations of the Wavestation is that in
>multi-mode (use of multi setups) the effectsprocessors' scope is the
>whole range of 16 performances and NOT just 1 setting for each of 
the
>performances. It greatly reduces the power of the individual
>performances when you combine them in a multi-setup I think.
>What's your opinion about that? 
>Do you know of other synths that have this limitation? Is it common?

Just wanted to clear this up a bit.

The Wavestation's effects processor provides two simultaneous, dis-
crete effects, each of which can provide any of the 55 available 
effects programs (except for the two 9-band stereo vocoders, which 
use the entire processor). Some of these 55 effects programs are sim-
ple, single effects, such as reverb, multi-tap delay, stereo chorus, 
etc.; others are serial multi-effects, such as chorus-delay; still 
others are comprised of two discrete mono effects, such as a mono 
delay on the left and distortion on the right. This last category - 
known as Rdual monoS effects in Wavestation parlance - works in con-
junction with the FX Bussing system (described below) to make the 
Wavestation family, and especially the new Wavestation SR, one of the 
*most* flexible platforms for multi-timbral effects. 

The Wavestation's effects processor has four input Busses, A, B, C, 
and D. Each Part in a Performance (the Part contains a Patch and 
associated volume, key and velocity zones, transposition, and so on) 
can be assigned to one of these Busses discretely, to a stereo mix 
between A and B, or to both C and D together (it is also possible to 
assign each of the four oscillators in a Patch to any combination of 
the four Busses, although that is a strict on/off assignment (no pan-
ning) and is generally used for special non-fx purposes only). 

As with all other FX devices, the Wavestation's effects are finite - 
you have the same processor available in Multi mode as you do in nor-
mal, single-Performance Poly mode. If the sound of a Performance 
relies on unique effects, you will have to either a) dedicate the 
processor to produce these effects or b) change the sound of the Per-
formance. All other instruments that I am aware of have the same lim-
itation. To allow one Performance special effects while others are 
dry or less processed, the Wavestation's serial effects routing 
enables you to route sounds around the effects entirely (to appear 
dry at the 3/4 outputs) or to route the sounds through only the sec-
ond of the two effects, even when other sounds are going through 
both.(I should note that the parallel routing requires that 
sounds go through one or the other effect).

The dual mono effects allow you to use up to four discrete paral-
lel effects; for instance, one sound might have distortion, 
another a chorus, and two other sounds their own, individual 
delays. This is particularly groovy in a Multiset, and I'm not 
aware of any non-Korg instruments with this feature (although it 
isn't particularly difficult to do). 

The one inconvenience is that the Wavestation keyboard, Wavesta-
tion EX, and Wavestation A/D use the Performance's FX Bussing in 
the Multiset as well; this means that every time you want to 
change the effects routing in a Multiset, you have to edit the 
Performances - and for each time that you use the Performance with 
a different routing, you must save a new version of the Perfor-
mance. A drag, I admit. This is changed in the new Wavestation SR, 
in which the Multisets themselves store FX Bussing for each of 
their 16 Performances; this makes editing Multiset FX much more 
convenient.

Also, perhaps this is just a misinterpretation on my part, but it 
seems as if Bart-Jan implies that the FX processor should suddenly 
multiply into 16 individual processors when the user enters Multi 
mode. Since we are talking about a piece of DSP hardware here, 
this is simply not possible (unless those are *much* simpler ef-
fects...)
-- 
Dan Phillips			KORG Research and Developement
____ "Stupid quote"    "Cheerful Remark" Meta-Sigs Inc. ________
Opinions here are not necessarily those held by my employers.
Or mine, either. Maybe.
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth,rec.music.synth,misc.forsale