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Wavestation tips, pointers, links, etc.

Wavestation EX

Current Operating System versions on the various Wavestation models

   WS         3.19 (upgradable)
   WS EX .... 3.19
   WS A/D ... 1.25
   WS SR .... 1.15
You must contact Korg or an authorized service center to obtain these as upgrades.

Thanks to the Wavestation mailing list for this information.

Wavestation SR


Wavestation SR compatibility with O1/W and O3/W PCM cards

01/W PCM card compatibility with the SR. You can read the PCM data, but it may not always sound right. The playback (TG) chips are different and use different interpolation techniques. Due to an unfortunate "feature" in the WS's TG, the PCM data had to be scaled slightly down from full scale, and some loops had to be tweaked. This does not mean the WS cards or the WS TG sounds inferior, it only means the data had to be massaged to work correctly in some cases. Most 01/W PCM card samples will sound the exactly the same as on an 01/W, but some will not. (John Lehmkuhl can tell you which work best.)

The problem is with the interpolator overshooting when the amplitude is within a few points of full scale and the slope changes sign. This happens with high frequency sounds and with some loops. To fix the problem, the data is renormalized to stay below the problem region. The gain change is under a fraction of a dB, but must be done at the factory: i.e. you can't just adjust the osc volume to fix it.

Thanks to Joe Bryan for this information.

The wavestation SR does indeed read the 01 and 03 PCM cards. I've tried both, and it turns out that the PCM's used for the 01 and 03 cards are exactly the same. There is an unfortunate catch; The cards are usually divided into "multisounds" and "drumsounds." The multisounds will read just fine, but the drumsounds cannot be read by the wavestation. Apparantly the SR-exclusive card sets circumvent this by putting the drum and percussion samples in with the multisounds. As far as I know, Korg made six sets of these cards:

Invision interactive also made two cards, Pop & Acoustic with some very nice sounding PCM's for the 01, and most recently there is a "Synth Legend" Card available (I've never heard it...anyone? anyone?).

Thanks to Jason Lifton for this information.

Wavestation AD


Notes about compatibility of M1 PCM cards in Wavestation, Wavestation EX and Wavestation A/D

The PCM playback chip used in the Wavestation and 01/W series treated PCM slightly different than its predecessor (used in the M1 and T-series). The interpolation technique requires 2 samples *after* the end of the loop, which the M1's PCM chip did not - so M1 cards don't have those extra samples.

When an M1 PCM card is inserted into the Wavestation or Wavestation A/D, the loops are adjusted forward by 2 samples. For some sounds, this will work; for others, it will not. It depends upon the particular sample data being played (specifically, how closely the two samples at the end of the loop match the two just before the loop start). Because of this, Korg does not officially recommend the use of M1 cards with the Wavestation and Wavestation A/D (if you have an M1 or T-series card lying around, though, you might try it out - as above, some samples on a given card will sound OK, some will not).

For hardware reasons, it was apparently impossible to provide a complete fix (I believe that the main CPU does not have access to the actual sample data, for instance, so it couldn't mock up an extra two samples....).

Thanks to Dan Phillips (a Wavestation developer) for this information.


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