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Interfacing The Past (Part 1) | |
Article from Music Technology, December 1992 |
The missing sync?
For those who would indulge their passion for vintage synths, sequencers and drum machines, the journey 'back to the future' is fraught with difficulties - incompatibility, non-standardisation and plain, downright awkwardness. But help is at hand...
It was obvious that something needed to be done, and in the early eighties a Californian firm called Garfield Electronics stepped bravely in. They produced a box which converted all these different time-bases, and DIN sync signals, so that everything could talk to everything else - and at the same speed, too!
Their first product was called Doctor Click. Buy this rather chunky piece of gear, and at a stroke you could solve practically all your sync problems, and could also set up some amazing cross-rhythms and syncopations. Even awkward customers like the Oberheim DSX, and Roland's MC4, CR68 and CR78 fell instantly into step - well, they did once you'd hunted through the manual to find which timebase to select.
There were two channels available, which was at least better than one; and although there was no DIN sync input, the potential was there for elaborate manipulation of trigger timing with things like a pulsewidth variable Gate Out and a Time Lag Out - as well as invert and mask facilities, and a whole lot more besides.
The trouble was, such sophistication didn't come cheap. In Britain, a price-tag of almost £1500 meant that only top studios and programmers could really consider them. So the next move was to strip out the more esoteric elements of the Doctor Click, re-package it in 19" rack size, and sell it for half the price, under the name, 'Mini Doc'.
The Mini Doc came out in about 1984, and proved another success; although you lost much of the amazing versatility and creative possibilities of the original, you actually gained a great deal in ease of operation, and most importantly, in the ability to run virtually any number of different sequencers, arpeggiators and drum-machines at the same time.
The Mini Doc had individual outputs for each of the time-bases, so you could keep all your gear permanently wired to it, and run it all simultaneously. As a bonus, you could still produce superb arpeggiator polyrhythms with the Invert switch and 11-position Rotary Clocking Rate control - triplets included.
But Garfield Electronics hadn't yet finished the process of miniaturisation and simplification and went on to produce a third member of the 'Click' family not long after. Somehow they missed out 'Micro' and went straight to Nano Click - the real baby of the bunch - with an external power supply, and only four output and four input sockets - each handling DIN sync, 24, 48, and 96 pulses per beat.
All three products are solidly made, well-conceived, and are currently going for a fraction of their original selling price - if you can find one. But, as the astute amongst you will have spotted, they have one little omission: no MIDI. You're going to need another box to make the crucial link from (or to) MIDI.
Candidates that spring to mind are the Kenton box already mentioned: the excellent Roland MPU101 MIDI/CV interface, which can be configured to send a trigger in time with MIDI (but then, unfortunately, loses all its brilliant CV capabilities); the new dBm EXCV, and Korg's more elderly KMS-30 MIDI synchroniser.
Just as in a previous era, Korg were the only major manufacturer to produce a much-needed interface; the MS02 had been unique in the late seventies, and in the mid eighties they did it again with the KMS-30. But before I get too lyrical about it, we need to look at the circumstances which led to its development and which certainly didn't merit quite so much praise.
About this time, Korg produced a series of mould-breaking products all within a few months of each other: the world's first genuinely cheap polyphonic synthesiser, and the world's first genuinely cheap digital drum machines - the DDM 110 and the DDM 220. I remember them well.
After a break from buying any new products because they seemed (and were!) so expensive, I splashed out on a Poly 800 and a DDM 220. Surely this was going to be it: a complete music system which would revolutionise my music without breaking the bank. It came as a bit of a shock to realise that the Poly 800's sequencer was MIDI, but the DDM 220 was DIN sync, and that they had no intention of talking to each other.
In fact, I was so pissed-off by this that even when the KMS-30 became available shortly after, I couldn't find it in me to spend the £140 to sync the two instruments up. A shame, really, since the KMS-30 is one of only a handful of products to be worth almost as much now as it was new. The reason is simple. If you want to synchronise MIDI to DIN sync or vice versa - the KMS-30 does it, no fuss, no bother. Two MIDI outs, and two SYNC outs, independently switchable between the Roland and Korg standards provide all the control that is needed. Of course, you need something like one of the Garfield boxes to talk to anything that doesn't use DIN sync, but the KMS-30 still provides the vital link.
There are other ways, though. There are just a few products from the early days of MIDI whose manufacturers were considerate enough to spare a thought for the past as well as the future and were prepared to face the extra expense of including pre-MIDI connections in their MIDI machines.
Prime example here is the legendary Oberheim Xpander, which could respond to CV/gate info as well as MIDI, and do it multi-timbrally - and simultaneously. Trouble is, as an expander rather than a controller, it wouldn't be much good for our purposes. The same applies (in part) to the Roland MC4 sequencer's OP8M interface, which did include a MIDI connection, but only MIDI out. This is fine if you want to have the MC4 as the heart of your system, but there can't be many Vince Clarkes in the world!
Better for our purposes would be the Roland MSQ700 sequencer, which was probably the first industry-standard MIDI sequencer which also had the decency to include DIN sync in and out. The bizarre fact here is that these sequencers are scarcely more expensive second hand than a little KMS-30. And they do pretty much the same job and give you a limited, but great, 8-track sequencer as a bonus.
They also sync up (and send note information) via the DCB interface that Roland were pioneering before MIDI wiped the floor with it. Not a great deal of use unless you happen to have a synth like a Jupiter 8 or Juno 60, but if you do... it certainly comes cheaper than having a MIDI retrofit.
Any other ways of synchronising on the cheap? Well, I see no reason why any drum machine with both MIDI and DIN sync ins and outs shouldn't at least do the basic job of getting MIDI to talk to the previous generation of equipment - and that list includes SCI's Drumtraks, Yamaha's RX11 and RX15 and Roland's TR909, TR707 and TR727 drum machines - though of course you may need another box to turn the DIN sync into the right trigger pulses to control a particular piece of gear. In the vintage sequencer locker, so do the Roland MSQ100, a stripped-down MSQ700 without DCB, and the French sequencer from 1985, the Poly-Midi 1.
Returning to dedicated sync boxes, the Roland SBX80 SMPTE/sync box has both MIDI and DIN sync connectors, and also a fully variable trigger out socket. And its little brother, the SBX10, may miss out on the SMPTE functions, and the totally variable trigger setting, but does everything else really well.
There are perhaps only two pieces of gear that can rival the original Doctor Click and Mini Doc for versatility and comprehensive facilities - and beat them by including MIDI. One is the Doctor Click 2, which came out in 1985 specifically to cater for MIDI. In its 2U rackmount form, it has very much the same implementation as the Mini-Doc (rather than the Doctor Click), with a fantastic range of input and output connectors. Most of the inputs are, fairly logically, on the back where they are most likely to be of use in permanent installations. The outputs, on the other hand, are on the front where they can be readily changed.
The other piece of gear is the Bokse US-8, which came out in 1986, and was apparently made in Britain despite its foreign-sounding name. This unit really justified its title of Universal Synchroniser; I remember it as an excellently designed 1U 19" rackmount, with an air of solidity, and five inputs and nine outputs mounted (for accessibility) on the front panel. This made it of particular use in the studio where it could be quickly and easily set up to provide a range of different sync requirements. Certainly, it ranks equal first with the Doctor Click 2 if you want to make use of pre-MIDI sequencers, arpeggiators and drum machines.
Myself, I've still got a lot of time for the original Doctor Click and Mini-Doc - maybe because if you are going to sync up that cuddly ol' analogue stuff it's nice to have something similar to do the job. That still leaves the MIDI connection to worry about, and although the KMS-30 is small, neat and efficient, I think I'd go for the MSQ700. Sometimes being interesting is as important as being efficient.
Read the next part in this series:
Interfacing The Past (Part 2)
(MT Jan 93)
All parts in this series:
Part 1 (Viewing) | Part 2
The Games People Played - YESTERYEAR'S GEAR: Olympic drums |
SMPTE Uncovered |
Total recall - Doctor Beat - Vintage technology strikes back |
![]() Rock Around The Clocks - Synchronisation Explained |
Making More Of The Kawai K5 |
Alternative Analogue - Korg MS20 |
Taurus Taurus Taurus - Bass Pedals |
Small is Beautiful - YESTERYEAR'S GEAR: fender duo sonic guitar |
Total recall - Akai the old |
That Syncing Feeling (Part 1) |
Everything but the Kitchen... (Part 1) |
Good Enough For The Pro? - Thoughts on MIDI's Next Decade |
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