by razmo » Sat May 15, 2004 11:08 am
Hi!
I'm also suspecting sampler motherboard and rfx bord revisions to maybe be the cause of things. You have to be VERY well listening to hear the bug in some cases. My RFX for example, is only introducing VERY short clicks that pan wrongly, and it's only hearable on VERY percussive samples, and is most noticeable on headphones, BUT THEY ARE THERE!!! ... I'd suggest you try out your rfx with headphones, and then use a mono-sample preset with a waveform that does NOT start at zero-crossing, but at max amplitude. Then pan this preset using the channel pan all the way to the left, and now press a few keys about 64 times (128 times for a 128 voice machine). After this, pan the preset all the way back to the middle and then press the keyboard repeatedly when listening carefully. In my case, there will be very short clicks (the attack of the sample) sounding from the old position on the left, but the rest of the sample (without the attck) will sound from the center. This will continue untill all voices has been cycled throug, then the attack is back with the rest in the center and everythings fine. Also try to pan the preset from left to right while pressing the keyboard rapidly at the same time. When you have panned the preset from left to right once, then center it, but keep pressing the keys. You should hear the sample click take the "old route" through the panning field later on until it catches up with the current settings. The length of the wrongly panned sound may differ for you, and may even sound like two of the same sample mixed together at different pan settings, as I witnessed this on another CPU RAM block.
I think that the length of the clicks is related to the type of CPU memory you have installed. I've tried three different types and all seems to give slightly different results.
The E5000 was the later models build so I'd not be surprised that it has a much newer board in it. My E6400 was bought when it was released, and so too with my RFX, so I've got them old motherf...... So I guess that if my sampler and RFX can be fixed to work, everybody should be able to.
What speed are the CPU memory that people are using? ... Especially those who have "working" machines with RFX? ... I'm wondering if changing from a 70ns to a 60ns would make any difference?
I think that instead of asking for info on those who have faulty machines, that we should rather focus on those who say that they have machines that WORK with their RFX, and figure out, what revisions and RAM types they have!
I hardly doubt that EMU would have missed this bug when they tested the RFX in production, so I'm confident that there must be a configuration that should work. The machines they tested on must have been good ones that work, or they will surely have noticed the panning bug.
I also tried to run all things on flash once. I copied both RFX setup and Multisetup into flash memory, to see if reading from that RAM made any difference, but I found no solution with that. If the machine anyways copy the current settings from flash to some edit-buffer in CPU RAM it would of cause make no difference if the CPU RAM is the prob.
I really hate this bug. I'd really like to use the RFX with my sampler, but being unable to use the pan pots is just beyond what I will accept. This beast sampler can fire some trance hoovers off that will make even a JP8000 look puny, and with those RFX reverbs etc. this beast is perfectly capable of working on it's own! ... but with good presets comes the need to pan voices left and right etc. Damit why don't they just fix this problem!? ... It cannot be that they do not have enough info...
I've got the 1820m connected to my sampler now, and unfortunately, the effects algorithms in that is just not even close to the RFX in quality and flexibility. I really hope they will convert those RFX effects to the 1820m in the future as I've read they might (some emu guy if I recall right).
As I see it, there are four major bugs that need fixing:
1. Panning bug
2. Output burst bug (never witnessed that one though)
3. RFX Setup setting faulty-memorization (the effects placed on busses don't remember the settings of the effect type and mix value... verry irritating!).
4. Buggy floppy drive code...
And then it would be nice to have the MIDI specification made up to date, or rather up to the OS. The RFX is not controllable, and not all cords can be accessed, so making a good remote control using MIDI is not possible...
Razmo
Regards, Jess D. Skov-Nielsen.