Workstation PSU?

Just curious here... why is it that no workstation with sampling capability and SAMPLE RAM has ever tried to incorporate an integrated rechargeable PSU? Something like this would make it easy to preload sample data at gigs backstage.

Also, didn't the trinity or some other old workstation have FLASH ROM? With the memory market drastically decreasing in price with all the competition with portable music devices, usb sticks etc., wouldn't it make sense for the workstations to take advantage of that?

Imagine a 4GB rewriteable FLASH ROM! Sample RAM would and should be history. If price is any indicator of what can be done, one only needs to look at the Alesis Fusion 6HD for $999.

flash is fiddly and somewhat slow to write to and a lot more expensive than hard drives for storage. This is just starting to change now, I use a SCSI-CF 'drive' for my samplers for example.

B>

where have you found a SCSI CF drive? Ive been looking...

Well hard drives wouldn't be bad if a workstation had DFD streaming, but there would still be a lag time when switching patches for the samples to load. If you could load all your samples to a FLASH ROM, all of them would be available instantaneously.

It was the Korg Trinity V3:

"The Flash ROM option lets you add up to eight megabytes of newly sampled waveforms. These sounds can come from Korg sound libraries, AkaiTM format (S1000/S3000) sound libraries and .WAV or AIFF computer formats. When you add the Flash ROM option, you also get two more banks of programs and combinations-that's 512 programs and 512 combinations in all!"

That from a keyboard over 10 years old...

Get over to the emusonacid forum, there has just been a thread in the general discussion area on various options for this very thing

B>

yeah, and go look up the prices of the flashrom option. you payed a hell of a premium for what (even ten years ago) was a very small amount of sample ram.

for the record, the SY85 and 99 both had flash rom options. There was also a flash rom for Akai and emu samplers. they have always been extremely expensive..

Personaly, I'd rather have 512mb of ram I load from a CF card before a gig - something I can easily have a backup of if the first CF card fries or is lost - than have a very very expensive and limited ram inside the keyboard itself. FlashRam is only now begining to come down in price.

Where is there a product released in the last 5 years that has used Flash ROM? And where is there prices for the Flash ROM?

It seems to me I can buy a Flash RAM drive up to 4 GB stick now for around $100. Just a year ago 2GB was the max and it was twice that. Prices have been coming down tremendously in this market the past 5 years.

Not so sure about the price of Flashable ROM myself.

Flash ROM = no load time... I think customizable ROM would be an awesome option with presets programmed for each. Imagine a 4 GB ROM that is supported by the manufacturer with downloadable ROMsets with presets tailored to particular genres. They could support it by releasing new ones all the time.

Screw the SRX, JV, EXB etc. cards!

Flashroms != no load time.

flash roms used in CF cards are NOT fast enough for use as sample ram. Pleanty of products have had CF and SD cards installed in them for a few years now..but the truth is those rams are just NOT fast enough for real time applications. a 4gb flash rom with enough speed for real time applications would be *very* expensive. for further reading, I reccomend you go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

Emu actually had this for their samplers and synths - you could get a flash ram board for and E4, load it up with presets and samples, and then pull that ram out and put it into a Proteus 2000 or 2500 or command station. This was, like 2 or 3 years ago, and the ram was $300 for 16mb.

Thanks for the reference. I checked it out and it seems to reinforce what I already knew about non-volatile memory.

The reason why the CF card is slow to load samples is because you are copying them to RAM. Once they are there you do not even need to have the card in place.

ROM (or nonvolatile RAM) can be straight from the hardware and load instantaneously, like the onboard ROMs that ship with modern romplers.

So explain why it's so slow if the CF is fast enough to be instantaneous and the RAM is instantaneous? Where do you think this slowdown occurs exactly?

B>

I dont think you read the whole thing, so ill quote it here:

NOR-based flash has long erase and write times, but has a full address/data (memory) interface that allows random access to any location. This makes it suitable for storage of program code that needs to be infrequently updated, such as a computer's BIOS or the firmware of set-top boxes. Its endurance is 10,000 to 1,000,000 erase cycles. NOR-based flash was the basis of early flash-based removable media; Compact Flash was originally based on it, though later cards moved to the less expensive NAND flash.

This is the type a synth would need. Its VERY expensive still to this day in a cost per megabyte comparison.

NAND flash, which Toshiba announced at ISSCC in 1989, followed. It has faster erase and write times, higher density, and lower cost per bit than NOR flash, and ten times the endurance. However its I/O interface allows only sequential access to data. This makes it suitable for mass-storage devices such as PC cards and various memory cards, and somewhat less useful for computer memory. The first NAND-based removable media format was SmartMedia, and numerous others have followed: MMC, Secure Digital, Memory Stick and xD-Picture Cards. A new generation of these formats is becoming a reality with RS-MMC (Reduced Size MultiMedia Card), the TransFlash and miniSD variants of Secure Digital and the new USB/Memory card hybrid Intelligent Stick. The new formats exhibit a greatly reduced size, usually under 4 cm

Sounds like the limitation of the CF, bus, OS, interface, or combination... My original intention was not "removable or portable" media here anyway. I am referring to hardwired internal ROM CHIPS. You know the ones that are most often used in ROMPLERS? Only flashable, yo!

Tony has made reference to EMU samplers that have used these but were very expensive. I did read in the article that EEPROM was more expensive, but with the falling cost of memory I would be curious as to what it is these days.

You're not paying attention. THe cheap flash you see available is not suitable for this application. The flash you need is expensive. Far more expensive than the cheap 4gb sticks you were talking about earlier.

Doesn't matter if you want it wired in or removable, this is a memory-cell and chip-level difference.

Read. Learn.

B>

I was using the 4GB stick as a basis for comparison in the market in how memory prices have been dropping. I understand the difference here.

What I don't know is actual market price of the memory required for this operation. I have a general feeling towards the workstation market based on history that it is far behind the tech industry in innovation/pricing. Too small/niche/not enough competition in brands (beyond big 3).

I am paying attention thank you very much.

So anyway... why no PSU for all the high priced workstations with samplers with lonnnnnnng load times? I take it no one has done this yet?

I thought I posted this before, but weight and cost are a big concern. Laptop manfuacturers are buying those batteries in a large enough quantity to justify the cost. also, most keyboards dont go on stage - the majority sit in studios where power conditions are not as big an issue.

Mostly, though, I think weight and cost cover it.

I see... they don't exactly make workstations to be of low power consumption. Would probably need a hefty PSU or battery. Maybe for skimmed down units like performance boards that still offer sampling like a Fantom XA/Korg TR-61. Having a internal battery option would be awesome.

actually, no - the average workstation could probably run for a long time on a battery. Unless it has an internal hard drive, you'd probably get significantly better time than you would on a laptop computer (the screen on a laptop is largly what takes all the power).

I think you would have to balance it with the fact you can add an external battery to any synth for $99, and then the weight factor is all on the user to decide if they want it.

Weight should be pretty light... would be a nice add-in don't you think? I know I use performance boards pretty much ONLY for live use. Samples I preload with my laptop backstage on battery power, but when I go onstage I make sure to plug it in.

hmm... I'm a dumbass... it seems I found my a solution right here:

ALESIS FUSION

Sounds in the built-in 64MB (comparable to 128MB linear) Flash ROM can be exchanged for other samples that are stored on either Compact Flash or the internal 40 Gigabyte Hard disk. This means you have access to a virtually unlimited library of sounds.

Now I guess my question is... is there a load time when changing patches on a FUSION?

Would be nice, but taken in the larger context of cost it would add to the board it just may not be feasible.

A rep from Alesis once explained it to me when I was asking why the pitch shifting in one of their lower end processors wasnt better. They basicaly said you can do anything...but doing it will cost something and then their product becomes to expensive for their market. batteries are cheap for laptops but that doesnt mean they will be cheap for synths. When dell provisions a battery supplier, they are making a deal for hundreds of thousands of units per year. if Akai or roland or korg were looking to put these in their keyboards it would be for a significantly smaller percent. Then there is the whol cost of engineering it into their products, dealing with the added weight and safty concerns and also dealing with the environmental concerns associated with these batteries.

Its certainly a good idea, but if its a good idea that didnt have some other problem associated with it, do you think someone wouldnt have tried it by now?

Yes there is. a short one, depending on the type of patch and its size.

Tony

Even from the FLASH ROM? And if so... then why is it near instantaneous from something like a Korg Triton Extreme?

Is it the type of memory (NAND vs NOR) or is it the size of the samples?... or something.. else...

Actually, its partly because of the flash rom: the samples need to be loaded into 'standard' ram in order to function as part of an instrument. on a triton, these are in ROM and so instantly accessible.

also, the DSP's in the fusion need to be reloaded, which will also cause a small gap.

This all depends on the size of the program being loaded.

there is no free lunch.

It's not the flash rom medium that's slow, it's the processor inside the synth/workstation. I mean that's not a Pentium/Athlon/Core Duo/Motorola in there. It's not even a Celeron! The Akai MPC2000 has an equivalent of a 386 inside.

Veneficum, I think the advances in nonvolatile memory you want will occur, but not for a few years yet. Sorry.