Prophet 5 cassette loading problem.

[EdGs]

Now for the next issue with my prophet......

I posted about this problem a while back and have an interesting issue. My Prophet does not have MIDI and I was trying to load the factory patches in from a tape I bought from Wine Country.

I must have tried 150 times to load them and no matter what I did, no luck. If i was loading with the volume of the tape low, the machine would just sit there with the load light on. If the volume was higher, the load light would blink after 10 to 20 seconds or so, and only some of the patches would load.

Then, a few weeks ago, I read a post on another forum about someone who was trying to load a Prophet T8 from tape with a Wine Country cassette, and he could not get it to go either. He then discovered that the sync signal of his machine was somewhat higher in pitch than the tape. When he changed his tape speed to match the pitch, he got it to load OK.

I played around with the few patches that I got to load, changing this and that, and recorded those into positions that were blank. I did a save to tape and that procedure went ok. When I compared the sync signal of my machine to that of the Wine Country tape, I noticed that my machine was slightly higher in pitch also.

Has anyone run into this before?

I downloaded a program called Audacity, you can change pitch without affecting speed, change speed, add effects, etc... I have to transfer the patch tape to the computer to try it out though. Is there an easier way, perhaps?

Also, the length of the sequence on the Wine Country tape is alot longer than the sequence on mine when I saved to tape.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks

[loungedumore]

No easier way I can think of . That should do it though as long as the information from the tape is correct . I haven't used that particular app however if you don't have any luck with it . You may try it with Ableton Live as it's pitch/time algorithms are pretty good . Free demo here http://www.ableton.com/downloads (Live Intro could do it to )

If Doing your patch backup / retrieval seams to be a pain with a computer you may try a small digital recorder in the future .
Hope you get your patches back .

Note : if these are just Factory patches you may Google around for audio files and screw the tape all together.

[cornutt]

I wouldn't apply any fancy pitch algorithms to the tape signal... they will screw with the waveform and you'll get bad data. Just use your DAW to scale the total length of the track until you get the pitch right. Keep in mind that it was recorded at a certain speed, and if it's playing back too slow, it's also too long.

[EdGs]

Thanks guys,

The two signals weren't off by much, maybe 5% or so, but it is noticeable. I will try changing it to fit the length as soon as I can get the tape transferred into my computer.

I had originally tried the patches from the Prophet 5 tribute site, but no luck with those either. When I listened to that signal compared to my machine, the lead-in pitch is nearly the same. It might be a couple of days before I can get it sorted, too hard to work on things with all the activity at my house the past few days.

Does anyone know what the total duration of each 40 patch file should be? Lead-in length? Data length? I do know that the lead-in signal on the WCS tape is somewhat longer than the one on the tribute site. Sorry to be such a noob with this.

Thanks

[cornutt]

Thanks guys,

Does anyone know what the total duration of each 40 patch file should be? Lead-in length? Data length?
Thanks

Do a save on your P5 and time it. The lead-in probably isn't critical, but the data length needs to be close.

[EdGs]

Well, I finally got the patches loaded into my computer from the WCS tape.

I had to increase the speed of the signal +3.2% to match up with the sync pulse from my P5. I have not had a chance to try and load them yet. Maybe this weekend.

The only difference is that the Data length is very much shorter on the file that I recorded from my Prophet (a little less than half the length of the data from the WCS tape). I'm not sure if this will be another problem or not. When I asked Wine Country about the length of data on the cassette, the guy said that the data is actually repeated so that the prophet can verify it.

Hopefully, this will finally work.

[Steve Jones]

What rev. Prophet is it? I find the rev 3's to be pretty easy to load from tape. Perhaps the comparator in the synth is faulty?

[cornutt]

The only difference is that the Data length is very much shorter on the file that I recorded from my Prophet (a little less than half the length of the data from the WCS tape). I'm not sure if this will be another problem or not. When I asked Wine Country about the length of data on the cassette, the guy said that the data is actually repeated so that the prophet can verify it.

The Juno-106 cassette interface works the same way: when you do a save, it writes the data set out to the tape twice. But it only needs to read it once to load it back in. The duplicate is presumably so that if you had a bad spot on the tape, you could cue it to the redundant set.

[EdGs]

It is a rev. 3.3 s/n 4992. I have not yet had a chance to try reloading it since I modified the speed on the the tape. It is hard to do with all of the activity at my house at the present time.

Actually the data portion on the WCS patch tape is a little more than double the length of the data portion that I recorded from my prophet when I did the Save to Tape. I am hoping that this is normal.

Or maybe it is something I was/am doing wrong. When I reread the loading from tape section of the manual, I started to get a little confused because they were talking about loading a "bank", which to me means only 8 patches instead of 40 that are in a "file".

It is a bit frustrating because I have gotten this machine this far from it's original state only to be stuck at the finish line, so to speak.

[EdGs]

Well, finally had a chance to give it a go again after changing the speed to match the pitch of the sync pulse, and I did get some success.....

When I was loading file 1, the blinking load light did not happen until just a couple seconds before the end of the data stream. And I did get about 30 of the patches to load. I did not have success with file 2 - only a few patches there. File 3 also only loaded a few. But it is more than I had, so hopefully I am on the right track anyway. Very frustrating. So close and yet so far.... I will doublecheck those speeds again in case I am still off a little.

I will be replacing the 1/4" jacks soon. My connections might not be good enough. I cleaned them the best I could, but with all of the oxidation issues I had with this machine, I do not trust them.

I also have a new EPROM that I got from WCS. The original was a 9.5. The new one is a 9.7. WCS said it would work OK for me. Way back when I ordered it I was having the problem of no tune light at power up and it did not fix that problem, but I left it in anyway. Turned out my Z80 was bad. I can't really believe the different EPROM should cause any problem with loading though. I will have to do some swapping back to see what is up there. I don't know what the differences are with the version #s.

It'll be a couple days befrore I can try again.

I am not sure what to do beyond this. I really need some mojo....lol.

Thanks

[robflys]

I know this is old (what a way to resurrect a thread) but what ever happened with this? I am going through similar . . .cannot get my P5 rev 3.3 to load from audio.

Thanks!