Re: //e enhancement. Iigs Audio animator and music stuff.

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Richard Kilpatrick wrote:

>On 20/7/04 11:42 pm, in article
>20040720184221.19209.00002067@mb-m04.aol.com, "Michael J. Mahon"
><mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Alpha Syntauri used the Mountain Music System pair of cards implementing
>> 16 digital oscillators to do wavetable synthesis.  Every once in a while a
set
>> comes up on eBay, as do the Alpha Syntauri keyboards.  What practically
>> never comes up is the Apple adapter card for the pre-MIDI velocity-sensing
>> keyboard.
>
>I've never seen the Mountain Music, or the keyboard, on eBay. I search for
>audio hardware quite regularly. What would I expect to pay for such a
>system? I'm also interested in the sampling hardware.

Alpha Syntauri included no sampling hardware.  They provided some
tools for building waveforms that were used in the "oscillator" wavetables.

Each wavetable was restricted to a 256-byte "sample" that contained
one cycle of the "instrument".  Multiple channels could be used with
different ADSR waveforms to create timbres.

A typical price range for a Mountan Music System set of two cards
ranges from $100-$300 depending on the degree of marketing in the
description and the avidness of the bidders.

If you can find one that is badly described and embeded in a computer
that has broken keys, you might get it for $8.  ;-)

Sampling hardware for the ][ and //e is harder to find, but also shows
up from time to time.

(BTW, I'm sure you know that it is easy to use a Mac or PC to sample
sound and then reduce it to xkHz, 8-bit, mono samples for the Apple II.)

>My article in Sound on Sound yielded some nice feedback, though as my email
>is down I can't check it - the percussion consultant on the project, Bob
>Henrit (of Argent and The Kinks!) is a specialist for a large UK distributor
>and found out about the 'retrozone' featuring the Inpulse One. Amazingly, he
>still has some sample tapes for it!
>
>> That is just a speaker connector.  The Ufonic is a complete computer on
>> a card, and drives the 5220 directly.  Just type "PR#x" and it will start
>> talking.  ;-)
>
>But how will I hear it? I know I've read a little about the Ufonic - and it
>seems that the Borg Warner and Prescription Learning models are basically
>the same beast, but the PLC model is much 'newer' - but the connector has
>far more pins than are needed for just a speaker!

That's an artifact of their desire to add an external volume control and tone
control to the speaker box.

You are correct, because of the way that the controls are wired, the
on-board speaker/headphone amplifier won't work without some resistors
or pots conntected.

Give me a couple of days and I'll dig mine out and reverse-engineer the
external speaker box...

-michael

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