No noise or delay between patches

[Arghblarg]

Can anyone do some measurements in Sound Forge or something similar with the supposed noisy DACs and tell us what the noise floor looks like?

My board, set at good high levels through a Mackie VLZ mixer -> Foxtex mixer/multracker -> PC in has a noise floor of about -72 dB (according to the Tools->Statistics... stats in Sound Forge, analyzing a few seconds of Fantom-X sitting idle). I should measure the F-X directly into the PC, to eliminate any noise introduced by the mixer, but -72dB is just as good as my other boards, even though I suspect I have an old mobo.. I'd be interested in hearing what others have from their boards.

Error 144 - Reboot y/n?

[Jordi]

"Can anyone do some measurements in Sound Forge or something similar with the supposed noisy DACs and tell us what the noise floor looks like?"

I got -80.77dB with your method, but using Wavelab, and with my FX6 plugged to a Behringer Eurorack MX 1604A mixer.

Is my Fantom X6, purchased in july 2004, supposed to have noisy DACs?

Greetings,
Jordi

[pwroberts]

Bit late I know, but here goes anyway

http://www.m3fe.com/~paul/fx8_patchdela ... oberts.wav

Fantom-X8, OS 1.04
Purchased in September 2004
Serial: ZS53098

Paul Roberts
http://www.m3fe.com/

[EuroFantom]

to everyone who's wondering about the new DAC's please read my post called "More News On the Motherboard Replacement" found in the general discussions area this details all motherboards and what's fixed this is confirmed by a service manager at roland hope it helps:)

Fantom X6
EMU 1212m
Sonar 4 Producers Edition

[nsheldon]

I finally had my Fantom-X8 main board replaced a week ago and thought I'd see if the new board also improved patch switching delay compared to my previous main board.

Just to keep everyone up to date, back when I had my original main board, I created a short SVQ that switched patches in Patch mode. I used Skip Back Sampling to capture the playback of this SVQ as an audio file and used Sound Studio 2.0 (on Mac OS X) to measure the time in milliseconds of silence between each patch switch. My results (posted many months ago) indicated an average of about 330 ms for my X8 with the original main board. This seemed fairly consistent for others with an early version X8 main board. I've now run the same test on my updated X8 with the new main board and here are the results.

There is an overall decrease in patch switching delay for most patches of about 30 percent from around 330 ms to about 225 ms (though there was one patch change in the SVQ test that exhibited a 50 percent increase in delay after the new main board from 112 ms to 226 ms).

In any case, subjectively speaking, I've noticed an overall speed increase in sample waveform displaying, patch switching speed, and a slight improvement in data loading time. Of course, almost all new Fantom-X owners won't have to worry about any of this as they'll have the revised main board already installed, but for those of us who go the Fantom-X a year ago when it was first released, this might be interesting information.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

[Kakaroto]

Its so sad that the FX has a patch delay..

Can you please tell me if I have a bad MOBO once and for all?
Someone said that only in the bad mobo's there should be a noise when switching tempo real time in the Chocolate EP.
Is this true? I think the number is 36 in Preset F not sure!

thx.

Yours, Guy

A proud owner of a Fantom X8 !!
"Life is not a waffle" - G.a.b.a.b

[nsheldon]

Kakaroto: I can't tell you "once and for all" because I don't have a list of Fantom-X serial numbers with bad main boards. I can tell you that my new main board exhibits the same sound when changing tempo with the PRE-F 036 Chocolate EP sound. I believe this is normal (my old XP-80 did this too with EFX effects that were dependent on tempo for delays). The reason for the noise you are hearing when changing tempo is because the delay time of the effects is determined by the tempo of the system and by changing tempo in real-time, you change the delay time in real-time. This causes slight clicking as the effect processor increases or decreases it's audio cache.

So, this sound you are hearing does not mean you have a bad main board. You have a bad main board only if you hear a reverberated popping sound when you switch patches quickly every once in a while. If you don't hear this, then your main board is fine. As for the delay in switching patches, it's really not that bad. And if you turn off the MFX processors, the delay will be extremely brief if there at all.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

[Kakaroto]

hmmm...ok so now I'm not sure I have a bad one hehe=D

Those with the bad DAC's. This means the digital to analog right? Noise in the outputs. If so, I don't think I should even check this out because even if my mobo has that problem, its probably very hard to make it heared.

About live play mode. As everyone knows, there is a huge switching delay, in performances its much more sensible than patches actualy (changing performances in live play mode).
Is there any change with the new mobo? Just want to know if it worths checking my mother board...
Is it possible to keep the sound played after that switch - before pressing the key again to make the next sound (like holding down chords). I know its possible in patch mode. But in life mode, the same solution doesn't work.


One more question if I may, regarding patch changing time.
The problem is kind of how the Fantom works and maybe its entire hardware (and software). But Would expanding the RAM affect it somehow?

Sorry for being annoying. Thank you all very much!

Yours, Guy

A proud owner of a Fantom X8 !!
"Life is not a waffle" - G.a.b.a.b

[nsheldon]

Regarding the changes of sounds in Live Play mode, I did notice faster changing times in that mode as well compared to the old main board, but I have no concrete values as I did in Patch mode to measure exact improvements. However, the patch switching noise was apparently related to an under-clocked DSP (clock frequency was set lower than it should have been) which would be directly related to changing MFX algorithms since the WX DSP handles all effects and sound production processes.

So, my point is, if you don't hear the patch switching noise, your WX DSP is running at an acceptable clock speed and patch switching speed is about as fast as you're going to get.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

[Kakaroto]

ok thx...

So about the RAM, it shouldnt affect the patch switching time right?

Yours, Guy

A proud owner of a Fantom X8 !!
"Life is not a waffle" - G.a.b.a.b

[madAhorn]

Funny..I was just going to start a thread about the live play mode...All I know is that after my motherboard upgrade, the live mode responds great. The splash screen stays open just as long, but I can play some patches instantly when switching and others in less than a second. The descrepancy, I believe, exist because some patches either have the same FX or not at all, and therefore load intantly.

I am very happy indeed!

[nsheldon]

Kakaroto: No, the amount of installed RAM will not affect patch switching speed. However, some have reported that when they installed PC100 DIMMs, as opposed to PC133 DIMMs, their Fantom's seemed to respond a bit slower. I have no data to back this up though.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

[Kakaroto]

thx

Of course some patches load instantly. The problem in live mode is to load performances.

Anyway, I hope Roland will make their next synth so it will switch sounds instantly like Kurzweil. Not that I will be able to buy it or something, lol.

Yours, Guy

A proud owner of a Fantom X8 !!
"Life is not a waffle" - G.a.b.a.b

[robbie50]

Hello,
everthing seems oke....but???
My X7 has the serial ZS83406
is it oke?
or.........?

hope anyone can tell me....

greetings,

rob

[Kakaroto]

I *think* my is ok, and the serial is ZS84...

So far most of the bad mobo's were in the ZR's I think.

Yours, Guy

A proud owner of a Fantom X8 !!
"Life is not a waffle" - G.a.b.a.b