I am posting for a friend, Jim Helweg. It seems if you have a free internet service you can not post here in Synthzone.

John C.

Some of you may remember that I have an old Ensoniq SD-1 synth. I spent many, many hours doing sequences for it. It's a pre-GMF (general midi format) synth, so the sequences, in their present format, are not playable on anything except the SD-1. I purchased a program from Geibler Enterprises, which (among other things) has a conversion process which will convert the sequences into MIDI format, making them playable on the KN7k. This is my current project (then the SD card change-over from floppies).

John,
why don't you play the songs into your computer, Cakewalk or what ever you use and then save them as Midi files?
Bebop

If the program works, it's going to be WAY faster than realtime, that's why!

Does the program re-map Program Changes for you (and drum kits)?

If not, import into Cakewalk or Cubase (or most any decent sequencer), and you can set up a map or macro to change them for you!

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 08-26-2005).]

I used to have an SD-1 I Loved that machine, my first synth.
I also purchased that program from Geibler enterprises. It worked well but you had to set the voices for every file.
Gm was a blessing thats for sure.

[This message has been edited by mikeathome1 (edited 08-26-2005).]

Here's a second post from Jim,

Hi John - Thanks!! I wonder if you could post this question:

All of my SD-1 sequences shared one common thing, the drumkit that was used (Ensoniq's name) was "Kitchen Sink" and I always put the drum track on Track #1. Since GMF requires the drums to usually be on Track 10, how do I move the existing drum track over to that track? Or, since the conversion to MIDI format from the Ensoniq format requires just 1 keystroke - would it be better to convert the file as-is then assign the drum track from the KN7000?? If someone would be willing to give me a mini "tutorial" on the process, I could do one then I should be able to convert the rest, since the drum track on all the Ensoniq sequences is on track 1, and the drums (I think) will be the major conversion issue. Anyone willing to do this, my email addy is jameshelwig_2000@yahoo.com I figured that this might be better rather than clogging up the forum with back-and-forth emails on the same subject.

Jim

The SD-1 had two sets of drum numbers (numbers meaning which keyboard note triggers which drum, snare,bass,etc.)one was internal the other matched the roland number set(which is now known as general midi.
I have friends that still use the sd1, and you have to change all the notes to match. You can move them to channel 10 but the notes will not play the desired sounds.
If you press F7 in the vfxsmf prog (from Geibler)then choose F2 setup drum notes you can make the numbers correspond and then the program will do it for you. You would have to check the documentation for the program I haven't done it in years.

[This message has been edited by mikeathome1 (edited 08-27-2005).]

I have found a file in the program file that a friend gave to me it says rol-vsx.drm, so I assume it is the number translation for the geibler program for the vfx to roland drum set. if you send me an email (ID yourself in the subject, sz mem or something so I know it's not junk) I will send it to you. use it at your own risk I've already told you, probably more than I know about this program.
Like I said it's been years...
But from looking it over this morning it's not hard to make your own drum map just time consuming.

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qqqwq@hotmail.com

That was brought about by people that were banned simply getting a new free email address to re-register that forced me to ban those email addresses.

But there is a work-around that. Just get your friend to contact me directly by email telling me his problem and the username he would like to register under and I can register it for him. As long as I have to be involved then the old problem is unlikely to occur.

Its nice to find another Ensoniq SD 1 owner!

I always wondered just how far the Giebler utilities could take you.

I think using any of the utilities already mentioned must be easier than my way, which I will tell you about anyhow

I've used Cakewalk/Sonar to "record" midi files being played them back on the SD1.

You can get Cakewalk / Sonar to "record" on all midi channels simultaneously, and to record the channels to separate tracks; just create a song with 16 tracks, one for each track.

You have to edit the song/sequence on the SD1 so that all the tracks are output to midi rather than using internal voices. If you use song tracks as well as sequence tracks you could have up to 24 tracks in total; I've never got so complex with my songs but if you have this issue then maybe you could record all the sequence tracks first then the song tracks?

Once you have a song setup in Cakewalk to record on the channels you want, and the SD1 is ready to go, ARM all the tracks on the PC, set Cakewalk/Sonar to use external midi clock, click record in Cakewalk then Play on the SD1 and hopefully the tracks will be recorded. The PC tracks do not get "filled" until the sing has stopped on the SD1 and you click "STOP" on the PC so don't worry about that.

Regrettably cakewalk does not do the remap job; however you could write a "CAL" script to do the job. I initially tried this but CAL script is a bit odd and I gave it up as a bad job (even though I'm a Systems Analyst/Programmer for the day job!). It isn't that hard to remap the drums by hand; use the piano roll view and you can select a song's worth of a single note by clicking on the note name in the left hand column. Then you can drag the entire set of the single note to a different note by clicking on the first note in the set and moving the mouse to the new note name.

Selecting the track voices in Cakewalk is easy enough; I used the track names in Cakewalk to hold the voice name used on the SD1 so I don't forget the mapping when editing multiple sequences.

Hope this helps.

John