Korg 168RC, Studer Dyaxis II

[CJ_Miller]

I have been trying to not go too crazy with the audio equipment, but these were too cheap and useful for me too pass up.

The Korg is part of their mid-late 90s "Soundlink DRS" series of products for handling digital audio as 8-channel ADAT streams. It is a digital mixer with 8 analog ins/outs, and two 8-channel ADAT ins/outs with 2 mic pres, MIDI control, DSP effects, and word clock. Even though I have been working with audio circuits for almost fifteen years, I have never had a decent mixer. My only mixer lately has been a low-end Mackie which cuts out constantly, it is aweful. This Korg is nice, can be used for a bit of analog i/o along with mixing between two Macs using my Oasys and 1212 PCI cards, or connecting them to my Yamaha samplers, ADAT, etc. Very useful for the setup I have here. And it looks brand new! Shipped to me in the original box and packaging with rack ears and documentation.

The Dyaxis II is probably going to be a bit of a project. These were a high-end Nubus A/D-D/A and hard disk recording interface for NuBus era Macs, with multi-channel MacMix software by Adrian Freed - one of the inventors of the OSC protocol. It is a four-channel, expandable setup. Comes with documentation and software, which is crucial. Supposedly a "complete system", but I am skeptical of this. Still, worth the little I paid for it. Due to arrive in a week or so, can hardly wait!

 

[Bunsen]

That mixer is definitely a nice score. And shiny too!

http://www.sweetwater.com/publications/sweetnotes/sn-winter97/WinterSN_01.html

The SoundLink series are a bit of a secret trove of awesome IMHO. My band partner picked up the PCI ADAT card for cheap to integrate with his studio, and it's changed his life.

Korg in general seem to make quite a bit of highly under-rated kit. I

I'll definitely be interested to hear more about the Dynaxis system when it arrives. I've never heard of them. Is there any onboard DSP?

 

[CJ_Miller]

I agree about the Korg awesome! What started me was scoring a cheap OASYS PCI card a few years back. Despite limited polyphony it is a very powerful synth/effects/recording setup. Also it is the only product for which Korg ever licensed their SynthKit program for end users - which is a development environment for prototyping and compiling audio algorithms. They used it for the synthesis engines of Triton, Trinty, Wavedrum, Prophecy, Electribe, and I am sure many others. It includes a module for the target output so the OASYS PCI version only compiles to run on that card. I have run a few of my own crude synth algorithms on it and it was great fun. The SoundLink DRS stuff I often find for quite cheap. A few months ago I bought a 1212 PCI I/O card and 880D/A rack, so the mixer now allows me a convenient way to mix digital audio between two Macs - and the whole pile set me back only a few hundred total. Also the OASYS is great for physical modelling when I want to play with sounds beyond a stereotypical synthy-sounding waveform.

Mac+Mac->ADAT, Mac1212->OASYS FX->ADAT, A4000+Mac->Mac/ADAT... with two Macs and two samplers which are lightpipe fitted, and this mixer and one ADAT - allows for a lot of flexibility for easily trying out new ideas.

As for the Dyaxis II, there is some DSP. I know that the first version used a NuBus card for DSP and interface to the rack. I know even less about the second system. The MacMix program I believe offers basic DSP for summing, fades, EQ, normalization... and coding hooks for including other DSP. Since the platform never caught on like ProTools did there was never any 3rd party development so far as I am aware. Probably not the most useful thing for a modern studio, but quite excellent for what it is. The seller was abroad when I bought it, he just returned and shipped it this week from the next state over. I will follow up in a few days once I get to check it out.

As for tonight I am home from work with hurt knees and will be exploring SoundLink land!

 

[Bunsen]

Also it is the only product for which Korg ever licensed their SynthKit program for end users - which is a development environment for prototyping and compiling audio algorithms.

That's awesome. Does that mean you can decompile their existing algorhythms and examine or alter them?

I briefly messed about with TurboSynth on the Audiomedia II years ago. That was loads of fun, kind of like a Nord Modular visual patching environment, but ridiculously unstable.

 

[CJ_Miller]

That's awesome. Does that mean you can decompile their existing algorhythms and examine or alter them?

It does come with some example instruments and effects which can be modified. One can open a SynthKit project and mess around with it, but IIRC once a project is compiled it won't open in SynthKit anymore. Doing a raw decompile with some program would probably be a bit interesting but less useful than 56k code examples. What I wish was that I could get their other target modules so I could load new algorithms onto their other gear... but that's probably not going to happen. Still, they are good enough on the PCI card.

I briefly messed about with TurboSynth on the Audiomedia II years ago. That was loads of fun, kind of like a Nord Modular visual patching environment, but ridiculously unstable.

Indeed, SynthKit is a lot like that. There is visual patching, and you can type in 56k code if you know the syntax (I sure don't), and it is quite stable. It is a bit lower-level, more like MSP. It has an old-school feel, the whole environment was done in Think C.

Also I have what I think is an earlier version of TurboSynth, called SoftSynth, which I use on my SE. Can do weird partial editing and FM patches, and dump to samplers. My 68k Macs excel at communicating with old samplers.

 

[xanderbeanz]

It does come with some example instruments and effects which can be modified. One can open a SynthKit project and mess around with it, but IIRC once a project is compiled it won't open in SynthKit anymore. Doing a raw decompile with some program would probably be a bit interesting but less useful than 56k code examples. What I wish was that I could get their other target modules so I could load new algorithms onto their other gear... but that's probably not going to happen. Still, they are good enough on the PCI card.

Indeed, SynthKit is a lot like that. There is visual patching, and you can type in 56k code if you know the syntax (I sure don't), and it is quite stable. It is a bit lower-level, more like MSP. It has an old-school feel, the whole environment was done in Think C.

Also I have what I think is an earlier version of TurboSynth, called SoftSynth, which I use on my SE. Can do weird partial editing and FM patches, and dump to samplers. My 68k Macs excel at communicating with old samplers.

Hi CJ, I just registered here, I was wondering if I could buy a copy off Softsynth off of you to use with my samplers?

no worries if not, thanks.