Rackmount Gear Thread

[dubkitty]

ZIP drives...good god, i'm old.

[Gone Fission]

You think that’s bad. Try PCMCIA SRAM cards. I’ve got better use for the slot on my PCM-80, at least, but on VSIG Eventides of a certain age, serial port and SYSEX since I’m not paying that much for a memory card.

[Aquietcabin1978]

My latest 19"

2020-11-01 22.09.00.jpg

Nice! Always lusted after the VP9000.

[Psyre]

whats that :o

I still gotta get one of the voices fixed on the jx-8

Variphrase processing was Roland's term for their time stretch algorithm. Essentially a 6 part/track sampler intended to load 6 unrelated loops into and synchronize tempo without changing pitch. It excels at formant processing and can therefore rephrase vocals and such. They took the technology over to the V-synth with had one instance of variphrase sampling (opposed to 6) but you coukd take that one instance and use it as the V-synths Oscillator. Would have loved a V-synth XT, but for my needs and at 1/4 of the cost I went with the VP.

Do you think it's just a voice chip ( NEC D8253C-2 ) issue? I know Juno's are prone to corroded voice chip legs, and can often be sorted with an acetone bath.

You think that’s bad. Try PCMCIA SRAM cards. I’ve got better use for the slot on my PCM-80, at least, but on VSIG Eventides of a certain age, serial port and SYSEX since I’m not paying that much for a memory card.

I got a rechargeable PCMCIA SRAM with my Orville. It's pretty much only useful as a temporary/working storage as it will discharge if I don't use the Orville for about 3 weeks. Simple solution is to use the Orville more frequently
Have thought about getting the CR battery type, but yeah, tbey are stupidly expensive.

[crochambeau]

VP-9000 looks like a sexy beast, I'm guessing it has little to nothing in common with the VP-70 which is a sexy beast too, but in a much more rudimentary "line art" sort of way.

[Psyre]

I was not aware of the VP-70, but after looking into it, I can definitely see the lineage...both seemed to be marketed equally as poorly lol

[qersty]

I havent looked into it, really. Nothing is socketed tho so i dont think corrosion would cause part failure. It's hopefully just a cap job or some dead vca.

V-synth timestrech sounds juicy! Is it made to do like physical modeling or just to mangle loops? Probably a beast for jungle/neurofunk stuff

[Psyre]

I havent looked into it, really. Nothing is socketed tho so i dont think corrosion would cause part failure. It's hopefully just a cap job or some dead vca.

V-synth timestrech sounds juicy! Is it made to do like physical modeling or just to mangle loops? Probably a beast for jungle/neurofunk stuff

Ahhh, I've never looked inside of a JX8P, but my jx3p and the Juno's I've seen have had some socketed IC's, so was an assumption on my part. Jx8p is the only other analog synth I'd ever really pursue (except maybe a Matrix 1000 at pre 2019 prices), but prices are creeping up up up. I'd love to mess around with one and could easily talk about it all day which is why I keep poking about it

V-synth is dual Osc. VA (modeling) synth with PCM and sampling capabilities. The original could be expanded via 2 expansion cards, VC-1 (D-50 emulator ) and VC-2 Vocal Designer (formant). The version I'd love to get is the V-synth XT (module) which comes with VC-1&2. VC-2, to my knowledge, is a single instance of the VP-9000 BUT you can import that instance as the VA's waveform.
The VP-9000 on the other hand, doesn't have synthesis, it's intended to take up to 6 loops that in no way work together, be it timing, pitch, or phrasing, and get them to a cohesive state or to bypass the need for multisampling within a reasonable range. Essentially the only standalone timestrech hardware.
My intent is much more along the lines of a mangler with a different flavor than my Octatrack. It's loaded with effects and COSM modelling. From my research it also has much higher sound quality in regards to sampling than the V-synth, and a much lower noise floor.

The VP-9000's most known for that "Discovery" and later Daft Punk era vocal processing. They seem to process just about everything else with it too, but I've not listened to enough Daft Punk to point to any specific examples.

[qersty]

Well honestly I don't think any examples from Daft Punk would be an OMG moment. Sounds like a really cool sampler though, need to stay away from that stuff cause my current arsenal is way underused.

I really need to fix the jx8 up, the string sounds alone are *chef's kiss*

[mr. sound boy king]

I would love to play with a VSynth module but they're still too pricy for me to bite.

Lately, I have been using a lot of rack gear. I have stacked a rack and made a big rig.

1. eMu Proteus 2000. For some reason, these cost almost zero USD for what they can do, which is a significant amount. Editing is rather slow and plodding but possible. Randomizing is more fun and accessible. I use it mostly for pads and sfx every day. If you like cartoons from the 1990s, you will like the sounds made possible by this synthesizer.

2. eMu XL-1 Xtreme Lead. Recent acquisition so I'm not overly familiar with it yet. Practically the same OS as the Proteus so not too difficult to learn. Also includes Randomizer but the sounds are more geared toward... yes, techno or electro bursts, stabs, notes, drums, zaps, and slaps. This rack unit replaced an eMu Procussion, which rules, but the editing made my brains die so I put it in the Cabinet Of Lost Gear to be resurrected when needed.

3. Kurzweil K2500RS. The big dad monster synthesizer. Practically modular with its V.A.S.T. paradigm, this synthesizer has unusable presets and infinite editing capability which isn't too annoying or difficult to understand. Requires some patience to program patches because of all the intertwining parameters but then the patches sound super good so it's worth the 30 minutes or whatever. Haven't even messed with the sampling functions yet but the synth engine can produce anything known to man or beast. Recommended if you like synthesizers.

BONUS: 19 inch rack mount eurorack case which is currently used for processing the XL-1 (see above). Running old digital boys through analog filters sounds fantastic. I've got some traditional eurorack efx in there, too, such as Make Noise Echophon and etc. Nice one!

[Psyre]

Couldn't let this thread slip all the way to pg 6

Here's my current rack setup. Probably going to swap the Ashly out for my Quadraverb if it doesn't sell in the next day or two
I'll keep the Ashly loose on my table and take the Quadra/DEP-5/TX81z over to my collaborator's.

[qersty]

Been reading some manuals and slipping back into rack. Implementing into a guitar rig always gets me in the end though. Can't bother with some lukather ass guitar rig but it seems pretty much the only way to go to get maximum out of stuff. It piles up tho. I would need some kind of preamp but all of them seem designed to be super high gain. Option two is getting a head cabinet for my deluxe reverb and running it into a load box and using that as a preamp. Excessive as fuck! Then I would need two cabs with beefy speakers etc. etc. Finally I gotta midi it all up! Way too bothersome. But I it worth it? Could be; that's the worst part. Running QV in parallell with a lexicon and pedals on top of that is Idk if pedals would be as cool either even if impedance and converters etc. is already solved and I could just run it straight into my amp. Guitar multi effect pedals aren't as sexy as rack multi effects and most don't have the insane routing and modulation options of something like an mpx-1. The worst part is that this is all so that I could run always on detune without wasting the pitch factor

[qersty]

Been reading some manuals and slipping back into rack. Implementing into a guitar rig always gets me in the end though. Can't bother with some lukather ass guitar rig but it seems pretty much the only way to go to get maximum out of stuff. It piles up tho. I would need some kind of preamp but all of them seem designed to be super high gain. Option two is getting a head cabinet for my deluxe reverb and running it into a load box and using that as a preamp. Excessive as fuck! Then I would need two cabs with beefy speakers etc. etc. Finally I gotta midi it all up! Way too bothersome. But I it worth it? Could be; that's the worst part. Running QV in parallell with a lexicon and pedals on top of that is Idk if pedals would be as cool either even if impedance and converters etc. is already solved and I could just run it straight into my amp. Guitar multi effect pedals aren't as sexy as rack multi effects and most don't have the insane routing and modulation options of something like an mpx-1. The worst part is that this is all so that I could run always on detune without wasting the pitch factor

or maybe get an affordable combo amp made to be ran in stereo that has a parallel fx loop, on the market since the 70s, that would be a great platform for my never ending pile of dirt pedals jesus, am i overthinking shit or what

[Gone Fission]

I’ve seriously considered the lazy version of rig design of getting a stereo chorus combo amp with a loop with stereo returns and putting my effects rack in there. (Roland JC’s or Peaveys on the cheap.) I want to be able to do a bit more stereo spread than that, though.

On effects loops: if this is to be used with more than one device that doesn’t have an analog dry path, parallel loops that cannot be set up as serial loops can be limiting. It can be hard to run some routings with a fully wet return that takes advantage of the dry path in the parallel loop. Also, sometimes you want fully wet sounds, for instance when pitch shifting and you want to kill the source.

If you’ve got studio monitors or PA speakers or monitors, you can mic up a guitar amp into a mixer that’s running your wet rack effects, and if you know what you’re doing with the signal routing you can even run this as the wet in a wet-dry system with the amp as the dry. No load boxes needed. The Samson SM-10 line mixer has two mic preamps as well as two stereo auxes, and doesn’t cost much for what it does.

Re:pedals and racks, the differences in how they operate lead you to how to place them or how to work around them. There are level matching devices out there, often quite affordable on the used market. A lot of pedals that do “line level” don’t really do pro line levels but will be okay from an aux send returned to a mixer channel that can give a level bump—run the sends a bit low and the returns a bit hot.

(Is it obvious that I think about this too much?)

[qersty]

I have thought about the miking up thing before but it feel like a headache while at the same time really cool. I think I*ve seen robert jonston do it with like an echoplex or a reverb. The separation isn't something I had thought of. That will probably be disappointing if I wanna do weird multitap stuff. I kinda don't feel the need to run rack stuff in series tho. I kinda just wanna have it all in the end in parallell so that i can blend it in and have all serial effects before