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63-408: The EPS has a straightforward interface that is easy to use, with configurable controls geared for live performance. Because it has two processors, it can load and play up to eight instruments simultaneously (with another eight on reserve). The display is a 22-character, single-line vacuum fluorescent display . It boots from an integrated floppy disk drive (sourced from Sony or Matsushita ), or from

126-428: A SCSI drive connected to the expansion bay. The EPS has 256 Kwords of RAM on board. Ensoniq offered both a 2x (512 Kword) Memory Expander and a 4x (1 Mword) Memory Expander with SCSI interface. A company called Maartists offered both 4x and 8x memory expanders, allowing a total of 2 Mwords RAM. Extra RAM allows for longer and higher quality samples. The "2x" expander contains one 1x256Kbit and three 4x256Kbit chips, for

189-522: A hot cathode ( filaments ), grids and anodes ( phosphor ) encased in a glass envelope under a high vacuum condition. The cathode is made up of fine tungsten wires , coated by alkaline earth metal oxides (barium, strontium and calcium oxides ), which emit electrons when heated to 650 °C by an electric current. These electrons are controlled and diffused by the grids (made using photochemical machining ), which are made up of thin (50 micron thick) stainless steel. If electrons impinge on

252-568: A "hybrid" configuration. Whereas traditional analog synthesizers were only capable of 5 or 6 waveforms per oscillator, the PPG Wave 2 offered for each oscillator 64 selectable waveforms available from 30 individual wavetables. There were a total of 1,920 waveforms per oscillator available for use. As with the Wave Computer, Tangerine Dream helped with developing the synthesizer. A third envelope, front panel controls and resonance were added to

315-462: A CRT. The insulating layer in a VFD is normally black, however it can be removed or made transparent to allow the display to be transparent. AMVFD displays that incorporate a driver IC are available for applications that require high image brightness and an increased number of pixels. Phosphors of different colors can be stacked on top of each other for achieving gradations and various color combinations. Hybrid VFDs include both fixed display segments and

378-401: A VFD is a triode vacuum tube because it also has a mesh control grid. Unlike liquid crystal displays (LCDs), a VFD emits very bright light with high contrast and can support display elements of various colors. Standard illumination figures for VFDs are around 640 cd/m with high-brightness VFDs operating at 4,000 cd/m , and experimental units as high as 35,000 cd/m depending on

441-607: A controller of other instruments or connected to a computer. The EPS was superseded by the EPS-16 Plus which upgraded the sample size to 16 bits and added a 24-bit effects system. Other improvements include CD-ROM support in the optional SCSI interface and FlashBank storage for the OS and favorite sounds. The keyboard is of thick plastic construction of a dark gray color with 61 weighted keys. There are assignable pitch, modulation wheels, and two patch select buttons. The interior of

504-534: A dedicated sound engine so that playing can be done whilst loading another sample. The main processor handles the I/O while the sound engine is responsible for keeping the audio running without interruption — this made the EPS especially useful for live performance situations. The interface, although operating through a single-line fluorescent display, offers rapid access to all functions by the intelligent way that functionality

567-481: A feature quite unique at the time. The user can boot the EPS and load some sounds while playing the ones that are already loaded. Then sample in a new sound, only to find that you're out of floppies to save your new sample to — the EPS OS will allow you to go ahead, format another floppy disk, and save your new sound without the system function getting in the way of playing the audio. True to their user-oriented approach,

630-451: A graphic VFD in the same unit. VFDs may have display segments, grids and related circuitry on their front and rear glass panels, using a central cathode for both panels, allowing for increased segment density. The segments can also be placed exclusively on the front instead of on the back, improving viewing angles and brightness. Besides brightness, VFDs have the advantages of being rugged, inexpensive, and easily configured to display

693-534: A large influence on synthesis and electronic music as a whole. The PPG wave's unique sound, and its widespread usage on numerous electronic and new wave records could be argued to be a cause for the rise in the popularity of digital synthesis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Wavetable synthesis is still prevalent and used in various hardware and software synthesizers alike, and the Wave's unique integration of analogue and digital circuitry influenced synthesizers such as

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756-421: A marked advantage over fixed-color, fixed-character VFDs. This is one of the main reasons for the decline in popularity of VFDs, although they continue to be made. Many low-cost DVD players still feature VFDs. From the mid-1980s onwards, VFDs were used for applications requiring smaller displays with high brightness specifications, though now the adoption of high-brightness organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)

819-401: A matrix of alkaline earth and very small amounts of group III metals, doped with very small amounts of rare earth metals. VFDs can display seven-segment numerals, multi-segment alpha-numeric characters or can be made in a dot-matrix to display different alphanumeric characters and symbols. In practice, there is little limit to the shape of the image that can be displayed: it depends solely on

882-450: A new concept, dubbed " wavetable synthesis ". Wavetable synthesis allowed for the storage of short samples of a larger soundwave into individual slots of a “wavetable” that was stored in the memory of the system. The first PPG synthesizer to implement wavetable synthesis was the Wave Computer 360. It provided 8 voice polyphony and a choice of 9 polyphony modes allowing to stack its voices with two different sets of preset parameters. The PPG 360

945-580: A number of discrete samples which are patched into Layers - each with their own ADSR-like envelopes and keyboard ranges. A loop editor allows you to define envelopes, cross-fades, and sample start-end, and loop points in real-time. It is possible to modulate the loop start with any source to give complex evolving sounds. On the EPS-16 Plus, the Transwave loop mode allows the start point to be modulated in exact "single-cycle" steps, giving effects similar to

1008-402: A positive potential. The microprocessor cycles through illuminating the digits in this way at a rate high enough to create the illusion of all digits glowing at once via persistence of vision . The extra indicators (in our example, "VCR", "Hi-Fi", "STEREO", "SAP", etc.) are arranged as if they were segments of an additional digit or two or extra segments of existing digits and are scanned using

1071-544: A projected retail price of almost US$ 60,000 (GB£34,000). As such, it was never sold, and never got beyond the prototype phase. There are rumored to be two prototype versions in existence, each with slightly different front panel controls. As interest in Palm's other products waned, the cost of developing the Realizer put PPG into debt. As such, PPG officially ceased business operations and closed its doors in 1987 after shelving

1134-512: A prototype for the Realizer, an all-in-one studio machine not unlike modern day music workstations which combined production, recording, sequencing, and mixing tools into one machine in addition to a sophisticated sampling and synthesis system. It also had the ability to load emulations of other popular synthesizers, such as the Minimoog . The system was too complicated and unfeasible for its time period, and its expensive manufacturing costs caused

1197-407: A significant drawback for battery-operated equipment like calculators, so VFDs ended up being used mainly in equipment powered by an AC supply or heavy-duty rechargeable batteries. During the 1980s, this display began to be used in automobiles, especially where car makers were experimenting with digital displays for vehicle instruments such as speedometers and odometers. A good example of these were

1260-400: A total of 13x256Kbits in addition to the onboard memory. The EPS is unusual in having a 13-bit sample memory word length, left-justified into the most significant bits of a 16-bit word. The EPS uses double-sided, double-density 3.5" disks, formatted to 800k with ten 512-byte sectors per track. It can also read (but not write) Ensoniq Mirage sample disks. The EPS uses MIDI and can be used as

1323-492: A vacuum tube triode . Electrons can only reach (and "illuminate") a given plate element if both the grid and the plate are at a positive potential with respect to the cathode. This allows the displays to be organized as multiplexed displays where the multiple grids and plates form a matrix, minimizing the number of signal pins required. In the example of the VCR display shown to the right, the grids are arranged so that only one digit

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1386-405: A wide variety of customized messages, and unlike LCDs, VFDs are not limited by the response time of rearranging liquid crystals and are thus able to function normally in cold, even sub-zero, temperatures, making them ideal for outdoor devices in cold climates. Early on, the main disadvantage of such displays was their use of significantly more power (0.2 watts ) than a simple LCD. This was considered

1449-436: Is a display device once commonly used on consumer electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders , car radios , and microwave ovens . A VFD operates on the principle of cathodoluminescence , roughly similar to a cathode-ray tube , but operating at much lower voltages. Each tube in a VFD has a phosphor -coated carbon anode that is bombarded by electrons emitted from the cathode filament . In fact, each tube in

1512-449: Is a hybrid synthesizer. Each of the Wave Computer's digital 8-bit oscillators is tuned by its own analog VCO and followed by a discrete analog tracking lowpass filter and an analog VCA. This mixture of early digital and late 1970s analog technology design gives the Wave Computer a very distinct digital yet smooth and pleasing sound. Only about 40 Wave Computers were produced and sold mainly to German and European customers before its successor,

1575-439: Is broken into Modes and Pages . Modes are: Load, Command, and Edit. Pages are: Instrument, Sequence, MIDI, and System. In addition to eight soft instrument buttons, it has a number pad (0-9), four cursor buttons, a value slider, and 'Yes' - 'No' buttons. The vast majority of functionality can be accessed with less than three clicks: Mode - Page - Number Pad. There is also a dedicated button for Sampling, and three for

1638-511: Is capable of storing the OS in the optional FlashBank, which removes the need for a boot disk. An optional Output Expander module allows access to eight discrete mono outputs on the machine, allowing to separately mix levels and effects for each loaded sample. The key limitations of the EPS were its proprietary disk format, and later a lack of support from Creative Technology , the current owner of Ensoniq. A 19" rack-mount version of both machines were also available in limited numbers. This model

1701-424: Is illuminated at a time. All of the similar plates in all of the digits (for example, all of the lower-left plates in all of the digits) are connected in parallel. One by one, the microprocessor driving the display enables a digit by placing a positive voltage on that digit's grid and then placing a positive voltage on the appropriate plates. Electrons flow through that digit's grid and strike those plates that are at

1764-518: Is pushing VFDs out of these markets. Vacuum fluorescent displays were once commonly used as floor indicators for elevators by Otis Elevator Company worldwide and Montgomery Elevator Company in North America (the former from the early 1980s to the late-2000s in the form of (usually two) green 16-segment displays , and the latter from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s in the form of (usually 3) green or blue 10x14 dot-matrix displays , one for

1827-499: Is slightly different shape (see photo of DM160 and IV-15 for comparison). Palm Products GmbH Palm Products GmbH (commonly abbreviated to PPG ) was a manufacturer of audio synthesizers . Founded and owned by Wolfgang Palm , PPG was located in Hamburg , Germany and, for 12 years from around 1975 to 1987, manufactured an acclaimed and eclectic range of electronic musical instruments, all designed by Palm. Wolfgang Palm

1890-499: Is sometimes a problem with VFDs. Light output drops over time due to falling emission and reduction of phosphor efficiency. How quickly and how far this falls depends on the construction and operation of the VFD. In some equipment, loss of VFD output can render the equipment inoperable. Fading can be slowed by using a display driver chip to lower the voltages necessary to drive a VFD. Fading can also occur due to evaporation and contamination of

1953-425: Is then partially etched to create holes which are then filled with a conductor like graphite , which in turn is coated with phosphor. This transfers energy from the trace to the segment. The shape of the phosphor will determine the shape of the VFD's segments. The most widely used phosphor is Zinc-doped copper-activated Zinc oxide , which generates light at a peak wavelength of 505 nm. The cathode wire to which

Ensoniq EPS - Misplaced Pages Continue

2016-487: The PPG Wave . The Ensoniq manuals were famous for including quality tutorials for sampling and editing new sounds. The Sequence pages allow you to define sequences and songs. Simple quantization is available, along with a crude, but effective, step-editor to tweak individual sequence elements. Sequences (with up to eight instruments playing simultaneously) can be assembled into Song Steps. In assembling songs, you can define

2079-491: The 340 Wave Generator). Despite its own shortcomings, which included its complex functionality and its high price, it received publicity when it was used by Tangerine Dream and Thomas Dolby during the early 1980s. PPG soon found more success with the release of the Wave 2 , which debuted in 1981, priced at around US$ 10,000 (GB£5,500). It contained analog envelopes, LFOs and filters, combined with digital wavetable oscillators in

2142-475: The 340/380 System, a complex digital synthesizer workstation which consisted of the 340 Processor Unit, the 340 Generator Unit (featuring the PPG 360's voice cards), and the 380 Event Generator (a 16-track sequencer ). It also came with a "Computer Terminal" which included a monitor, 8-inch floppy disk drives, and a 5 octave keyboard used for manual playing of events into the sequencer and for polyphonic playing with

2205-409: The EPS boot disk not only contains everything needed to run the sampler, but also a tiny operating system with the ability to create a bootable version of itself. This was an improvement on the earlier Mirage sampler, which required a special boot disk with a formatting program, and could not make copies of its own boot disks. Vacuum fluorescent display A vacuum fluorescent display ( VFD )

2268-630: The MicroWave (alongside its keyboard-equipped equivalent the Waldorf Wave) continued to be used long after production ended in the mid-1990s. Later Waldorf products like the fully-digital MicroWave II, XT, Q, microQ, and the Blofeld had all or several of the original wavetables and waveshapes of the PPG Waves. In 2002, Steinberg released PLEX , a software synthesizer he designed. Palm had

2331-402: The Realizer project. After the decline of PPG, Wolfgang Palm continued work in the area of synthesizer technology. For Waldorf Music he designed the digital ASIC for the first Waldorf product, the MicroWave (1989), a hybrid rackmount module which essentially contained the complete sound engine of the PPG Wave 2.2. Used by many professional artists (including Ace of Base and Depeche Mode ),

2394-577: The VFD was the first to be developed. VFD and LED displays were used in early handheld calculators. LED displays were an alternative to VFDs in this use as they had simpler power requirements, not requiring the high voltages. Choice of display technology varied through commercial decisions by the manufacturer, with companies such as Casio, Canon & Sharp dropping LED displays in preference to VFDs and early LCDs, whereas Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard, both manufacturers of LED displays, continued with LED technology for much longer. Later, once LCD technology

2457-434: The Wave 2 was introduced 1981. Due to the rarity of the PPG 360 Wave Computer, false information about a 4 voice version and "harsh and tinny" sound circulate. The lack of broader success was due to the Wave Computer's radically new concept, apparent lack of a filter, relatively high price tag of 9,000.- German Marks and no international distributor. Shortly after releasing the Wave Computer 360, in late 1979, PPG introduced

2520-891: The analog VCF in order to satisfy customer demands for a more classical analog synth feature set that was marketed by PPG as offering "the best of both worlds". In total, around 1,000 Waves were manufactured between 1979 and 1987 with two different updates to the model: the PPG Wave 2.2, which added more waveforms and samples , and the 2.3, which added multitimbrality and MIDI . It was the most successful product PPG manufactured. The PPG Wave has been used by artists such as David Bowie , The Fixx , Thomas Dolby , Depeche Mode , Art of Noise , The Cars , Jean Michel Jarre , Pet Shop Boys , Rush , Gary Numan , Robert Palmer , Costin Miereanu , The Psychedelic Furs , Talk Talk , Tangerine Dream , Tears For Fears , Ultravox , Steve Winwood , Stevie Wonder , and many others. By 1982, Wolfgang Palm

2583-484: The arrow and the other two for the digits). In addition to the widely used fixed character VFD, a graphic type made of an array of individually addressable pixels is also available. These more sophisticated displays offer the flexibility of displaying arbitrary images, and may still be a useful choice for some types of consumer equipment. Multiplexing may be used in VFDs to reduce the number of connections necessary to drive

Ensoniq EPS - Misplaced Pages Continue

2646-538: The built-in sequencer. The EPS-16 Plus also has a dedicated button for configuring the effects DSP. Easter Egg: There is a hidden menu in the Command-ENV1 page which contains Software Information, the names of the designers, a DC Offset Adjustment, and a keyboard calibration command. Instrument pages are prefixed by clicking a Mode (Load, Command, or Edit) -- yielding functions relating to loading, editing, and tweaking EPS sampled instruments. Instruments can contain

2709-581: The case using Nixie tubes or Panaplex neon digits or for LED displays on pocket calculators. In the UK the Philips designs were made and marketed by Mullard (almost wholly owned by Philips even before WWII). The Russian IV-15 VFD tube is very similar to the DM160. The DM160, DM70/DM71 and Russian IV-15 can (like a VFD panel) be used as triodes . The DM160 is thus the smallest VFD and smallest triode valve. The IV-15

2772-441: The cathode. Phosphors that contain sulfur are more susceptible to fading. Emission may usually be restored by raising filament voltage. Thirty-three percent voltage boost can rectify moderate fade, and 66% boost severe fade. This can make the filaments visible in use, though the usual green-blue VFD filter helps reduce any such red or orange light from the filament. Of the three prevalent display technologies – VFD, LCD, and LED –

2835-466: The color of the (usually light blue) light emitted by the phosphors. High power consumption and high manufacturing cost contributed to the demise of the VFD as a videogame display. LCD games could be manufactured for a fraction of the price, did not require frequent changes of batteries (or AC adapters) and were much more portable. Since the late 1990s, backlit color active-matrix LCD displays have been able to cheaply reproduce arbitrary images in any color,

2898-426: The design of the popular Minimoog , Palm introduced the 1002 and 1020 synthesizers. Both were portable, analog , monophonic , and relatively compact. The 1002 used voltage-controlled oscillators ; however, the 1020 was revolutionary in its implementation of digitally controlled oscillators , which were much more stable and had a distinctive sound that later became PPG's trademark. In 1979, Wolfgang Palm introduced

2961-518: The display. Several radio amateurs have experimented with the possibilities of using VFDs as triode amplifiers . In 2015, Korg released the Nutube , an analogue audio amplifier component based on VFD technology. The Nutube is used in applications such as guitar amplifiers from Vox and the Apex Sangaku headphone amplifier. The Nutube is sold by Korg but made by Noritake Itron. Fading

3024-477: The drive voltage and its timing. The choice of color (which determines the nature of the phosphor) and display brightness significantly affect the lifetime of the tubes, which can range from as low as 1,500 hours for a vivid red VFD to 30,000 hours for the more common green ones. Cadmium was commonly used in the phosphors of VFDs in the past, but the current RoHS -compliant VFDs have eliminated this metal from their construction, using instead phosphors consisting of

3087-444: The high-end Subaru cars made in the early 1980s (referred to by Subaru enthusiasts as a digi-dash , or digital dashboard ). The brightness of VFDs makes them well suited for use in cars. The Renault Espace Mk4 and Scenic Mk2 used VFD panels to show all functions on the dashboard including the radio and multi message panel. They are bright enough to read in full sunlight as well as dimmable for use at night. This panel uses four colors;

3150-431: The number of repetitions of each sequence that comprises a song step. This makes it relatively easy to score and arrange a song. Sequences depend on having instruments loaded into one of the eight instrument banks in the right order. Banks of instruments can be saved which can be loaded in by a song sequence so that loading the song loads all the appropriate sounds into the right places so everything will play when you start

3213-403: The oxides are applied is made of tungsten or ruthenium-tungsten alloy. The oxides in the cathodes are not stable in air, so they are applied to the cathode as carbonates, the cathodes are assembled into the VFD, and the cathodes are heated by passing a current through them while inside the vacuum of the VFD to convert the carbonates into oxides. The principle of operation is identical to that of

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3276-407: The phosphor-coated anode plates, they fluoresce , emitting light. Unlike the orange-glowing cathodes of traditional vacuum tubes, VFD cathodes are efficient emitters at much lower temperatures, and are therefore essentially invisible. The anode consists of a glass plate with electrically conductive traces (each trace is connected to a single indicator segment), which is coated with an insulator, which

3339-562: The same multiplexed strategy as the real digits. Some of these extra indicators may use a phosphor that emits a different color of light, for example, orange. The light emitted by most VFDs contains many colors and can often be filtered to enhance the color saturation providing a deep green or deep blue, depending on the whims of the product's designers. Phosphors used in VFDs are different from those in cathode-ray displays since they must emit acceptable brightness with only around 50 volts of electron energy, compared to several thousand volts in

3402-476: The sequencer. In the EPS-16 Plus, an effect is also assigned to a bank. The EPS supports polyphonic-aftertouch on its 61 keys, and therefore allows a fair amount of expression as a MIDI controller. Sys-ex messages are supported over MIDI, and can transmit and receive on multiple MIDI channels simultaneously. By using a dedicated sound engine in addition to the main processor, sound generation and disk I/O are handled separately. This allows so-called load-while-play,

3465-404: The shape of phosphor on the anode(s). The first VFD was the single indication DM160 by Philips in 1959. The first multi-segment VFD was a 1967 Japanese single-digit, seven-segment device made by Ise Electronics Corporation. The displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices. In the late 1980s hundreds of millions of units were made yearly. The device consists of

3528-494: The unit is accessed by removing four hex screws under the front of the keyboard and swinging open the rear-hinged control panel. The whole unit is configurable through a custom operating system (latest version was 2.49 for the EPS and 1.30 for the EPS-16 Plus). After the system boots from the floppy drive, it flashes a "Tuning Keyboard - Hands Off" message while it calibrates its polyphonic after-touch keyboard. The EPS-16 Plus

3591-517: The usual blue/green as well as deep blue, red and yellow/orange. This technology was also used from 1979 to the mid-1980s in portable electronic game units. These games featured bright, clear displays but the size of the largest vacuum tubes that could be manufactured inexpensively kept the size of the displays quite small, often requiring the use of magnifying Fresnel lenses . While later games had sophisticated multi-color displays, early games achieved color effects using transparent filters to change

3654-492: Was active as a keyboardist in bands in the Hamburg area before becoming aware of the then-burgeoning synthesizer market. Palm started his company in 1975. Although he had reportedly built many synthesizers on his own, his first commercially available synthesizer was a modular synthesizer , dubbed the 300 Series, which, despite being fairly sophisticated, failed to sell in large quantities. Motivated by his failure and inspired by

3717-475: Was designed to be used with many of PPG's synthesizers, including the Wave, by specifying points on a graph displayed on the screen. One could also sample acoustic sounds, or use sounds provided by PPG on disks. The Waveterm was manufactured through 1985. By this time, to raise sales, PPG had dropped the prices of many of their synthesizers, including the Wave, which would now be sold at around US$ 6,500 (GB£3,500). In 1986, Wolfgang Palm designed and began work on

3780-549: Was set on introducing computers to music with the Waveterm, a rack-mounted computer system with a built-in monitor, two 8-inch floppy drives (later upgraded to 5.25-inch), and a proprietary Flex9 -based operating system running on a Eurocom II motherboard created by the German company Eltec. In the Waveterm B, this was replaced by a proprietary Motorola 68000-based motherboard running an entirely proprietary operating system. It

3843-485: Was superseded by the EPS-16 Plus , released in 1991. The EPS-16 Plus is very similar to the EPS. Its main addition is integrated DSP effects and stereo audio routing. Due to the upgrade to 16-bit audio, the Output Expander on the EPS-16 Plus is different, instead providing three pairs of stereo outputs, two from before the new effects chip. The EPS is a performance sampler. Besides the main processor it contains

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3906-553: Was the single indication DM160 by Philips in 1959. It could easily be driven by transistors, so was aimed at computer applications as it was easier to drive than a neon and had longer life than a light bulb. The 1967 Japanese single digit seven segment display in terms of anode was more like the Philips DM70 / DM71 Magic Eye as the DM160 has a spiral wire anode. The Japanese seven segment VFD meant that no patent royalties needed to be paid on desk calculator displays as would have been

3969-412: Was well established, it displaced LED displays and VFDs in handheld calculators, offering lower power requirements at lower cost. More recently, outside the education sector, calculator applications on mobile phones have for many replaced the pocket calculator, and there is progression from LED backlit LCDs back to full LED displays in the form of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. The first VFD

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