October 18, 2006

Cheetah Master Series 5V mod wheel problem

The latest in my series of things I have fixed that I couldn't find anywhere else on the 'net.
I've recently been using East West's Symphonic Choirs with my old Cheetah midi controller keyboard and Cubase SL3. It sounds fantastic, but I had problems with the cross-fading functionality that is controlled using the mod-wheel. Basically whenever I was moving the wheel I was getting break-up of the samples, some might call it 'zipper'-type noise. It was enough to make the mod-wheel unuseable.
The fix: It turns out the mod-wheel on the Cheetah (CC#1) is actually outputting a value of zero between every updated value. All you need to do is in Cubase set-up a midi input transformer which filters out any event which is CC#1 and of value 0. Works a treat - crossfades are now smooth and lovely.
That input transformer is also handy for my Casio Privia piano (excellent but cheap weighted keyboard by the way) which only outputs midi velocity up to a maximum of 100 instead of 127. Set up a transform to multiply the input velocity by 1.27 and Bob's your uncle.

Posted by Jez at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2005

Doing it right

Style over content / useability. I hate it! When I'm surfing I want to find the information I need with the minumum of fuss and as quickly as possible. Remember Accessible Odeon? The Odeon is a particularly pitiful attempt at a web site - it won't even open in anything but Explorer!
Anyway, Sound Control isn't quite as bad as that, but it's still a site I do not get along with. If you're looking for a product you have to wade through pages of image-heavy product lists, in no particular sort-order. The code behind it is truly a mess too. Since I quite like to see what deals are on there, I decided to do something about it - introducing Quicksound.
Frequently-updated data, quick to use and W3C compliant. The Sound Control affiliate scheme means I might make a quid or two from it too, which would be most welcome. Let me know what you think.

Posted by Jez at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)