microkog xl plus sounds on the microkorg xl

diogo · Post by **diogo** » Fri May 22, 2015 11:16 am

Hi everyone,

i own the micrkorg xl and have been trying to get the xl plus mellotron sounds onto it. I came across this and loaded it up on the editor on my Mac.

http://korgpatches.com/patches/microkor ... ory_for_xl

Thing is, the tape strings sound great, but the tape flute sounds just plain wrong. I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem. I've downloaded the patches a few times, replaced the files, etc., but the problem persists. The tape flute sound, sounds nothing like what it does on the xl plus.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

JohnS · Post by **JohnS** » Fri May 22, 2015 2:17 pm

The 'mellotron' sounds on the XL+ are done with sound samples stored in an internal ROM.

The XL doesn't have that ROM so it can't do those sounds. Not possible.

diogo · Post by **diogo** » Fri May 22, 2015 3:34 pm

JohnS wrote:The 'mellotron' sounds on the XL+ are done with sound samples stored in an internal ROM.

The XL doesn't have that ROM so it can't do those sounds. Not possible.

hi John, i used to think that was the case as well, but i have it in front of me currently playing the tape strings patch from the link i posted and it sounds wonderful.

JohnS · Post by **JohnS** » Fri May 22, 2015 6:37 pm

diogo wrote: hi John, i used to think that was the case as well, but i have it in front of me currently playing the tape strings patch from the link i posted and it sounds wonderful.

It's a really black/white hardware thing, there's really no way to make it work.

The only explanation is that the "tape strings" patch you're listening to isn't a sampled sound. It's normal synthesis.

diogo · Post by **diogo** » Fri May 22, 2015 10:41 pm

JohnS wrote:
diogo wrote: hi John, i used to think that was the case as well, but i have it in front of me currently playing the tape strings patch from the link i posted and it sounds wonderful.
It's a really black/white hardware thing, there's really no way to make it work.

The only explanation is that the "tape strings" patch you're listening to isn't a sampled sound. It's normal synthesis.

That would make sense, but i don't quite understand why every other sound on that bank sounds ok but not the tape flute. Was wondering if anyone else had the same trouble with this.

OpAmp · Post by **OpAmp** » Sat May 23, 2015 12:09 am

Well... as JohnS already indicated...

The XL and XL+ have (exactly) the same sound engine. The main differences are the PCM samples that can be used for OSC1.
So, if a patch does not use any PCM sample, it will sound very close to each other on both the XL and XL+, because it are synthesized sounds, by algorithms that are exactly the same on both boards.
If a patch is based on a PCM sample and the sample on XL and XL+ is different then it will sound completely different. (Not all samples are different, some are also simply moved in the table - however no flute on the XL...)

Concerning your tape flute and tape strings. These patches use PCM sample 15 and 16.
On the XL+, sample 15 is a tape flute, sample 16 is a tape string.
On the XL however, sample 15 is a pipe organ and sample 16 is a string.
This concludes then why the the tape string patch on the XL still sounds as a tape string (but maybe the sample is even more mellotron like on the XL+) and why the tape flute on the XL sounds like an organ. So anyone with an XL trying to play the tape flt of the XL+ will hear a mismatch between the sound and what the name suggests...

To get a more flute sound, a quick edit of that patch would be to configure oscillator 1 with the pulse waveform instead of the pcm and configure the keyboard 2 octaves higher.

Have fun.

diogo · Post by **diogo** » Sat May 23, 2015 1:00 am

thanks a lot for that, it really helped.

VladiKuz · Post by **VladiKuz** » Mon Jun 01, 2015 7:34 am

diogo
Please, read my post here:
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... 146#583146

Also, read this:
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=87208