Midi Saxophone expander

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 2:46 am

HI,
A friend just got his midi saxophone and asked me what would be the best as a sound expander. In softwares, I told him about edirol orchestral and the yellow tools forthcoming saxophone, but I think he preferes a hardware expander.

Anyone knows what would be nice for him ? I think the sax expanders are not made anymore by yamaha but I'm not sure....
Anyone can help ?
thanks

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 3:16 am

The VL-70m is still made, and can also be found for relatively cheap on ebay or alike.

Pretty modelization of wind instruments, made expressely for wind controller.

Pretty cool sound

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 3:59 am

a good modulation matrix is important, so you can assign several (!) parameters to each breath and afterouch.
I was always tempted to buy a Nord Micro Modular for that purpose - now that they sell out around 300 bucks.
But don't laugh, the old Yamaha DB50XG works great in connection with a shareware called XG-Gold (turns the card into a QS300)

cheers, Tom

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 5:00 pm

The Yamaha VL70-M is a fantastic little hardware synthesizer. Half the presets are intended for midi wind instruments and the other half to be played on a keyboard. It is a physical modeling synthesizer specifically designed for wind and string sounds. It has nice acoustic bass sounds.

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 5:36 pm

plus the vl70m is easy to carry to come to my place

he only has a laptop so audio cards like the db50x is not possible...
I think he is already looking for a 2nd hand vlm70... I will let you know...

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Jun 03, 2004 7:16 pm

I wouldn't want to talk him into the DB50XG, beware of that

but actually the thingy is an expander, just without powerlines and midi.
+5V, + - 12V and an optocoupler for midi-in is all that's needed

Of course it's the XG-Gold software that finally does the trick.

cheers, Tom

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Fri Jun 04, 2004 10:43 am

+5V, + - 12V and an optocoupler for midi-in is all that's needed

lol, easy !

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 05, 2004 6:54 pm

no need to DIY - Yamaha has a little box called MU10XG which contains exactly the DB50.
Just stumbled across one on eBay

cheers, Tom