Howdy. Nice to some fellow Korgians.

So, I've had the n364 for about 5yrs and made some really nifty stuff with it. But I need more sounds. I confess I haven't really edited my existing ones (Any tips on that? Seems my old Roland Alpha Juno 2 was more user friendly in editing sounds, given its simplicity.) I notice there are some sound patches available out there, but I've personally never had any experience buying them or loading them.

I don't want to get a CD Rom of sounds-- I do have a sampler, but I know how much time it takes to cut up and place the buggers. Besides, samples are not as dynamic as '364 patches, with the subtle differences in velocity and such. (That's also my reservation about downloading sounds, about which I know nothing) So:

Who do you guys like as far as sounds go? Heard some good things about Pro-Rec:
http://www.pro-rec.com/N3.html

Any good?

Also, assuming I do get discs I can load right into my '364, where do the sounds go?? Do I have to over-write my precious patches?

So, basically, I'm looking to breathe new life into a great machine. I want to widen my palette (esp better leads, trancier electro stuff, better drums, orchestrals). Getting a bit put off by the small display and 16 track limit, but that's a software concern probably best served another day.

Thanks, in any case, for the forum.

-m

It's good that you asked first. Yes you will be overwriting existing patches. You should do a bulk sysex dump to your PC and make sure it is good before you start experimenting with new sounds. See if you can send it back again from the PC to the synth OK. That way whatever happens you can always go back to what you have now. Most MIDI sequencers have sysex support and there are some freeware utilities out there as well.

Now if there are some particular patches you want in the the new setup you may need to do a sysex dump of individual voices so you can bring some of them back later without bringing them all. Or vice versa when you load the new sounds you may just want a few of them to load into your standard setup.


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 01-02-2005).]

Hey thanks, Nigel. Not sure what a sysex dump is, though, or how I'd even do it (not sure how I'd connect to the computer).

I thought of this after I posted, but couldn't I just save my patches onto floppies first? Are you saying that a sysex save is less volatile/safer?

Wish there was some way to upgrade my memory on the 364 so it could hold more patches-- or sequences, for that matter, but alas. Better than my old M-1, though. At least I can save stuff onto floppy instead of starting my sequences over from scratch every time.

Sure, you can certainly save your patches on the internal floppy. I wasn't sure whether the N364 had a floppy drive. That is certainly easier. But make sure you do save your patches and any other important data before loading up new sounds.

At some point though get a sysex receive/transmit utility for your computer and keep a backup of the N364 on your hard drive because even floppies end up failing after a long time or can be damaged. Your N364 manual will tell you how to do a bulk dump of the entire synth over sysex to a computer. It's just nice to have a backup.

you can save all data (global)into a FD in n364(can also save individual prog/combis).