AKAI S900 Fed into VX90 over 13-Pin Interface

[HideawayStudio]

!!Happy New Year to All on VSE!!

Over the years I have found myself a little frustrated by some who have said the notion of feeding samples into the AKAI VX90 (or AX73) from the S900/950 over the infamous 13-pin interface is not worth the hassle of experimenting with. Despite having over 40 synths in my sound design studio to pick and choose from I still keep this combo for good reason. Frankly I hate comments like that and often such statements only drive me more to explore these things... rather too much reminds me of equally rediculous exclamations that Polymoogs sound thin.. my experience of the 203A during several restorations being quite the opposite!

To demonstrate I made this quick test recording showing how many different timbres can be made literally from one complex source oscillator by feeding them into different synth patches on the VX90 (with its internal oscillators switched off).



This combination formed the basis of my first commercial sample library a few years back called S-VX. In this case I sampled around 80 complex oscillators as long single shot samples into an S900 retrofitted with a Lotharek Rev.F HxC disk emulator (there was no way I was going to juggle 80 floppy disks during that mamoth sampling exercise!) and then played them into a full set of patches on the VX90 thus rendering an eye watering number of sonic combinations!

In this case the source waveforms were generated in the main by the Minimoog, JUNO-106 and ARP OMNI-2.

[Sir Ruff]

The VX-90 is 6 (or 3) voice, whereas the S-900 is 8--I had read somewhere that that can create voice cycling issues somehow. Is that the case at all?

[HideawayStudio]

The VX-90 is 6 (or 3) voice, whereas the S-900 is 8--I had read somewhere that that can create voice cycling issues somehow. Is that the case at all?

In short no...

Connecting the VX90/AX73 to an S900/950 is far from self-explanitory and is very poorly documented. It is very possible to get the combo sort of working but not in fact correctly as the synth, sampler and cable need to be correctly configured.

If configured correctly there should be no issues with voice allocation because the VX90/AX73 acts as the note assigner ie. midi is sent to the VX only with the sampler connected to it's midi output (and NOT the thru socket). The VX determines which voices need to be triggered on the sampler, and sends the voice assignments over 6 midi channels to the sampler. The sampler, which must also be correctly configured, fires up to 6 voices back over the 13-pin cable on separate audio channels.

[MomoMusic]

I just recently picked up an AKAI VX90 and I'm getting a S900 tomorrow so I can hook the two together. I am curious if anyone knows of where I may be able to find the 13 pin cable, or if there is info on how the wiring needs to be configured to make one?

Also, I've been searching for the factory patch tape sounds to load, if anyone has any I would greatly appreciate them! I did DL some from the user "Rasputin", who posted 4 different sound files, but unfortunately I was unable to load any of them.
Here's the link
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=98194&p=804091#p791076

Any advice or guidance is greatly appreciated!

[HideawayStudio]

I just recently picked up an AKAI VX90 and I'm getting a S900 tomorrow so I can hook the two together. I am curious if anyone knows of where I may be able to find the 13 pin cable, or if there is info on how the wiring needs to be configured to make one?

Also, I've been searching for the factory patch tape sounds to load, if anyone has any I would greatly appreciate them! I did DL some from the user "Rasputin", who posted 4 different sound files, but unfortunately I was unable to load any of them.
Here's the link
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=98194&p=804091#p791076

Any advice or guidance is greatly appreciated!

This cable is a bit long but will work:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-13-PIN-M ... 0982763684?

I have the factory tape image and can give you some raw oscillator programs in HxC format for the S900 that will configure the sampler correctly if you want to PM me.

[skyshaper]

Hi everyone!

I have been looking into getting a VX90 for our old Akai samplers X7000, S612 but primarily for our S950. How ever, can someone confirm that it takes a bit of work with the S900 (and S950, having the same OS?) as written in the SoS article from 1987:

"To use an S900 sampler with the VX90 is a slightly more complicated affair, however. You must connect it to the VX90 in the same way as the S700 but there is a lot more to be done on the S900 internally.

Firstly, you must copy every 'keygroup' in a program six times. I had it explained to me why you must do this but I can't quite remember the reason. So, rather than mislead you with duff information, let's just leave it at that. Having copied each keygroup you must then assign each one a separate MIDI channel (from 1-6) using the [MIDI Offset] page in the Edit Program. In other words, if you have a string sample with four keygroups you must copy keygroup 1 six times, keygroup 2 six times (and so on) and then, using [MIDI Offset], you must end up with a situation where keygroups 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25 are set to MIDI channel 1; keygroups 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26 are set to MIDI channel 2; etc..."

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/the-m ... roach/1979

Cheers, thanks!

[crochambeau]

Apologies on the display of necromancy!

I was messing about with my S900 & VX90 today and observed the following:

In unison at the VX, everything appears to function fine.
In dual, the second sample is dropped/ignored if I'm holding a note and strike another key.
In poly, the sampler does not send audio over the 13 pin line at all.

I've tried with my six S900 keygroups starting at the VX (and S900) MIDI channel and finishing at +5, and starting at +1 to +6.

Does that sound normal? I'd like to have access to samples in poly.

[crochambeau]

It's a wonder what freshly caffeinated brains are capable of.

Turns out I did not have my mono output assignments fanned out across each key group as well. So, apologies on waking the dead!

(edit: also, for some reason I must have portamento set to a non zero setting to get multiple sampler note access)

edit the second: non zero portamento turns this into a mono synth, which means I have not solved my issue. I plan on building a fresh 13 pin DIN cable before continued badgering.