Trinity HDR V3 vs original Trinity?

[creativeforge]

Hi all,

Glad I found this forum, maybe I'll finally get some answers!

I had a Trinity in 1998, and worked with it for 3 years, filling disk after disk of sequencer songs and sketches. I lost it at the time, and spent 10 years without one. Just coming back to music after all this time, the world of technology has exploded. I'm almost entirely VSTis, now.

A few years ago, however, I bought a used Trinity HDR V3 (61). For some inexplicable reason, the patches don't seem to have the same sounds. Even after resetting, reloading the PCGs I had on disk from the Trinity, I feel like I've actually downgraded... Something is definitely different.

Is it all in my head? Has anyone else noticed this?

To be honest, I'm a bit technically challenged today, and have not found any use for any of the extra options the HDR V3 has. So I'm trying to swap/sell it so I can get myself something faster (I mean, the sequencer in particular is deadly slow).

I read on this forum that the HDR doesn't have an internal hard drive, so what do I tell potential buyers? (It won't be on eBay).

Here are a couple songs I composed entirely with the sequencer at the time (they're not definitively mastered yet):

https://soundcloud.com/barefootheart/patmos

https://soundcloud.com/barefootheart/fathers-lament

I'd love to be able to use that sequencer again, but I don't find it practical. Is there a VST or software program allowing us to use a version of the sequencer and then load the songs into the machine?

Thanks for any help!!

Regards,

Andre

[bobmusic]

I had a Trinity in 1998

Did you had any options installed on your first Trinity?
When it was a Trinity Plus, that it had the monophonic Prophecy-Board installed, that means 64 extra programs on bank S.
The optional PBS-FlashRom doubles Program/Combination Banks (4 banks instead of 2 banks) and S-banks (128 Programs instead of 64). And most important, it adds 8MB Flashrom for storing own samples.

A few years ago, however, I bought a used Trinity HDR V3 (61). For some inexplicable reason, the patches don't seem to have the same sounds. Even after resetting, reloading the PCGs I had on disk from the Trinity, I feel like I've actually downgraded... Something is definitely different.

The HDR means that you have a 4-track harddiskrecorder and coaxial Digital in & out. Nothing changes the PCG-Data here, on the contrary, the digital output makes the sound even better,...


...but: the V3 means, instead of a Prophecy-Board on the Trinity Plus, it has a six-voice polyphonic MOSS-Board installed. That could be one reason, for different sound, if you had a Prophecy-board on your first Trinity and you used this sounds in your songs, they will not load because they are not compatible with the MOSS-Board.

On he other hand, if your old Trinity had the PBS FlashRom and your new one has not, there a two other possible reasons for not loading the right sounds . First: the programs in the additional banks won't load correctly in your old songs and would sound wrong. Second: additional samples loaded in the old Trinity via PBS are missing now.

I read on this forum that the HDR doesn't have an internal hard drive, so what do I tell potential buyers? (It won't be on eBay).

You need a SCSI-Drive, hard to get these days. I use an iomega jaz-drive, i has removable cartridges with 1 or 2 GB. PCG and Sample-Data can also stored ans loaded this way, as an alternative to the floppy-drive.

Here are a couple songs I composed entirely with the sequencer at the time (they're not definitively mastered yet):

Sounds nice, good luck to get it to work again, hope this helps.

PS: i wouldn't sell it. To have a digital output is awesome, and also the MOSS-Option. If your first Trinity was without any option installed, then you should get it to sound right again, it's only a question of loading the right PCG-data.

[creativeforge]

Thank you Robert! I'll have to take this in very slowly...

The first Trinity, I got no options for it. Just plain silver beast. The V3 I now have has options I don't know what to do with. I only got it so I could retrieve my songs. Do you know if a Trinity rack would offer me the same banks as the original?

You may be right concerning the added banks, it's possible that the PCGs are a bit different in order to be able to produce the extended range of sounds.

The V3 sequencer does feel much slower than the original one I had too. Is there something that can be done? Adding memory? If so which one? The firmware right now is version 3.1.2.

Thanks again! I despaired hearing from anyone...

Regards,

Andre

[bobmusic]

Did you work with the preload-PCG only, or did you ever change or edit your programs?

Regarding the slowness of sequencer i can't say anything, didn't ever work much with it. I can imagine that the added features such as audio tracks are the reason.

Memory can't be installed, except the PBS and this is for samples and more banks.

You could try a fully reset , all PCG is erased and reseted, and you have to load Factory-PCG again. If you made changes, save first.

The reset is done by holding "Enter" and "0" while powering on.

[creativeforge]

I normally would save the PCG/Combi settings along with the sequencer's songs. That's how I noticed the difference in sound. But I haven't tried the Factory reset option. Thanks for the suggestion!

Andre

[bobmusic]

I normally would save the PCG/Combi settings along with the sequencer's songs.

Then your are save and don't have to worry i would say, when you load both PCG and the SEQ which belong together.

Another thought; how do you monitor? Through headphones? I had an issue with headphone-output, had only one channel, the volume-fader was bad and had to be changed and that fixed it.

Or have you connected the analog L/R to a mixer or amp. I also had more then once issues with L/R-output because of broken contacts on the board.

Did you change anything over the years in your monitor setup?

If you have the opportunity, try the coaxial SPDF output, i.e. when you connect it to an audio interface with digital-input, it sounds far better. It's important to do the right sync-settings in this case and also that you work in 48 kHz only.

[creativeforge]

Hi Robert,

I found these disks in my pile. Is this what I need to do a factory reset? Notice the version is older than the one I have now...

Which ones do I need, and which one should I leave aside? How about the Playback Sampler?

Thanks!

[bobmusic]

HI Andre,

to do this reset i talked about you don't need to do a new System install.
What this reset does is it initializes all programs and combinations. So the only thing to do after the reset is reload the original PCG.

But another thing is what i remembered in the meantime:
On my original Trinity-floppys, before i did the upgrade to V3, there where 2 PCG files. Both contained the same Programs and combinations, but in a different order. The second one was called Producer.PCG when i remember it right. That was the one i worked with, because the programs were sorted by instruments, the other one had another kind of sorting. So maybe you have now the wrong PCG- file loaded. I looked for that file on the V3 floppys, but didn't find it. Tomorrow i will have a look to my jazz-drive, there should the old stuff backed up.

[creativeforge]

Hi Robert,

I was able to find a disk I had made of my sounds BEFORE updating my former Trinity. So I just loaded this PCG file into this V3 and so far it sounds perfectly aligned with what I remember the patches sounding like. I especially hear this with some of the patches I had modified to create my own sounds.

So I'm very happy now with what I got! Brings me back...

I have a few more questions, should I start a new thread? These here:

1- I also found a link to Trinitro on the forum, and wondered if it was tested with Win 7 64?

2- And could I make an archive of sequencer files with it?

3- One last thing, and this would be a dream come true: is there any software out there that replicates the Trinity sequencer to use on a PC? It would make completing some songs I started much easier.

Thanks again!

Andre

[bobmusic]

I was able to find a disk I had made of my sounds BEFORE updating my former Trinity. So I just loaded this PCG file into this V3 and so far it sounds perfectly aligned with what I remember the patches sounding like. I especially hear this with some of the patches I had modified to create my own sounds.
So I'm very happy now with what I got! Brings me back...

Great!

3- One last thing, and this would be a dream come true: is there any software out there that replicates the Trinity sequencer to use on a PC? It would make completing some songs I started much easier.

I guess there is no chance for such a replicate.
But you can of course export your song fragments to midi-files and import them in a sequencer of your choice (i.e. cubcase). This way you can still edit sounds in seq/prog-mode at Trinity, but performing all of he sequencing remotely from your pc. hope this helps.

Regarding your 2. question, i think both programs, Trinity and PCG-Tools have ibrarian functionality only, seq-files are not supported.

[Timo]

I have a few more questions, should I start a new thread? These here:

1- I also found a link to Trinitro on the forum, and wondered if it was tested with Win 7 64?

I have used Trinitro on XP 32-bit, Vista 64-bit and currently Win8.1 64-bit. All work great. One only niggle is that for some reason I get an 'Access Violation at address 00000006' message whenever the application is closed down - this happened to me on all OS's - but it certainly doesn't affect its operation in any way.

2- And could I make an archive of sequencer files with it?

Unsure, I've never tried it.

Unsure about #3 too, although I think Ableton works in a similar block/clip-based way.