Roland FXWS07 User Manual

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Workshop
Smart Storage in the Fantom-X
© 2005 Roland Corporation U.S.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any form without the written permission of Roland Corporation U.S.
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About the Fantom-X Workshop Booklets
About This Booklet
The Fantom-X Workshop booklets explain some of the exciting features of Roland’s Fantom-X family of products. Each Workshop booklet covers a single topic, and is intended as a companion to the Fantom-X manuals.
This booklet requires Fantom-X O.S. Version 2 or higher. To learn about the latest Fantom-X software, visit www.RolandUS.
com, or call Roland U.S. Product Support at 323-890-3745.
Other Fantom-X Workshop Booklets
The Fantom-X Experience—A quick tour of how the major Fantom-X creative tools interact.
The Sounds of the Fantom-X—A tour of the Fantom-X sounds and Patch mode.
The Rhythms of the Fantom-X—Exploring the pads, drum sounds, and rhythms of the Fantom-X.
The Fantom-X Effects—This booklet helps you get the most out the powerful effects processing in the Fantom-X.
Sequencing on the Fantom-X—Learn how to record using the Fantom-X sounds and its full-featured sequencer.
Sampling on the Fantom-X—Capture loops, vocals, or any other sound with the Fantom-X’s built-in sampler.
Performing with the Fantom-X—Splits, layers, realtime controllers, and more make the Fantom-X hot onstage.
Making a CD of Your Fantom-X Music—Learn how to turn your Fantom-X music into a final audio CD.
Advanced Fantom-X Sequencing Techniques—Learn how to use time-based effects, create arpeggios, work with mastering effects, and record realtime patch tweaks.
Audio Tracks—This booklet explains how to record live vocals and instruments in your Fantom-X songs.
The Fantom-X offers a rich assortment of musical tools, from its patches, rhythm sets and performances, to its songs, samples, rhythm patterns, arpeggios, and more. To further enhance the creative flow, the Fantom-X provides a speedy and intuitive working environment as well as a variety of places in which to store your work.
As you explore all that the Fantom-X has to offer, you’ll inevitably want to know how to best preserve and keep track of your work materials. That’s what this booklet’s all about.
Understanding the Symbols in This Booklet
Throughout this booklet, you’ll come across information that deserves special attention—that’s the reason it’s labeled with one of the following symbols.
A note is something that adds information about the topic at hand.
A tip offers suggestions for using the feature being discussed.
Warnings contain important information that can help you avoid possible damage to your equipment, your data, or yourself.
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Making Memories
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This section explains the Fantom-X’s “memory,” a geeky term for “the place it puts things.” It’s important to understand how its memory operates as you develop your own way of working on the Fantom-X.
Detour—How the Fantom-X Measures Things
The Fantom-X has quite a lot of stuff to hold onto, from its built-in waveforms on up to the songs you record. There are:
In the next few sections, we’ll be talking about the sizes of certain things: memory sizes, song sizes, sample sizes. You’ll see things described as being so many “K,” “MB,” or “GB” in size.
things the Fantom-X needs to do its job—such as the PCM waveforms that provide the basis for patches and rhythm sets, the factory patches, rhythm sets and performances,
If you know what these abbreviations mean, you can skip this section and head straight to the next one. If not, take a moment, and read on.
the Fantom-X demos, their samples, and so on.
your own materials—such as your patches, rhythm sets, performances, songs, samples, the user rhythm patterns, rhythm groups, arpeggios, and your system settings.
The Fantom-X measures objects by their size in bytes, as any computer-based device does. Even the smallest samples and songs are thousands of bytes in size, so their sizes are counted in thousands of bytes to make life easier: kilobytes,
Since these materials are used in different ways, the Fantom-X utilizes three different types of memory, with each one perfectly suited to the stuff it holds.
or “KB.” But those are smaller samples and songs. Bigger ones are thousands of kilobytes in size—that’s a million bytes, son—and they’re measured in megabytes, or “MB.” One form of memory in the Fantom-X can be a billion bytes in size, or 1
ROM
“ROM” is the acronym for “Read-Only
GB for “gigabyte.”
Okay? Moving on...
Memory.” It’s called “read-only” because you can use what it holds, but you can’t
RAM
change, or “re-write” it, yourself. ROM’s where the Fantom-X keeps its:
PCM waveforms—These are the built-in sound recordings that the Fantom-X patches and rhythm sets play when they aren’t playing samples you’ve captured or imported.
presets—These are the preset factory patches, rhythm sets, performances, demos, and demo samples.
“RAM” stands for “Random Access Memory,” though that doesn’t matter much here (computer historians, look elsewhere). What matters is what RAM is: lightning fast. Because of this, RAM makes an ideal place for holding things you’re working with, or working on. When you play or edit most anything on the
Fantom-X, it’s in RAM.
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While RAM makes a great workspace, it’s temporary—each time you turn off the Fantom-X, its RAM is cleared of its contents. As a result, you can’t actually store anything there. The Fantom-X provides a different sort of memory for permanent storage, as we’ll see.
Audio tracks are a special case. Work RAM holds the audio tracks themselves. The samples that audio tracks play, however, reside in sample RAM. To learn more about audio tracks, see the Audio Tracks Workshop booklet.
We haven’t mentioned effects because, technically, an effect is an element within a patch, rhythm set, or performance. Still, when you edit effects, that, too, takes place in work RAM.
We’re sorry to repeat ourselves, but we can’t emphasize this enough: Anything in RAM is there only temporarily. It’s critical that you save your work to one of the Fantom-X’s permanent storage areas to avoid losing it.
Whenever you edit something you’ve already saved, you’re ac tually working on a copy it that’s been loaded into RAM. This is great because it means that you’re free to experiment as wildly as you like, secure in the knowledge that the original is safe and sound in permanent storage.
While most Fantom-X activities take place in its general-use RAM—an area we’ll call “work RAM”—sampling has its own workspace we’ll call “sample RAM.”
In the Fantom-X Owner’s Manual, work RAM is called the “temporar y area.” Sample RAM is called “temporar y memory.”
What Goes On In Work RAM
Outside of sampling, most everything you select, play, edit, and record in the Fantom-X is in work RAM while you’re using it. When you:
select—patches, rhythm sets, performances, songs, rhythm patterns, or arpeggios, they’re loaded into work RAM.
edit—patches, rhythm sets, performances, songs, rhythm patterns, rhythm groups, arpeggio styles, or chord memory forms, you do so in work RAM.
record—sequencer tracks in a song, you do it in work RAM.
Work RAM has a pre-designated area for each of the items it holds. The currently selected patch is loaded into its own area, the current song goes into its own area, and so on.
Preserving Work RAM Work
Each time you select something new for one of these areas, it replaces what’s currently there. Therefore, If you’ve been editing or recording, be sure to save your work to a permanent storage area before selecting something new to play or edit.
The Fantom-X helpfully provides some visual cues that let you tell at a glance if something you’re viewing has been edited or recorded but hasn’t yet been saved in its current state.
Patches, rhythm sets, and performances
that need to be saved have an asterisk.
In other cases, you’ll see
the word “EDITED.”
Later in this booklet, we’ll tell you where you can learn about saving and loading all of the things that work RAM can temporarily hold.
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What Goes On In Sample RAM
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Store, Then Play
Sample RAM, logically enough, is where you work with samples in the Fantom-X. In fact, a sample has to be in sample RAM to be played or edited. All new samples go straight to sample RAM when they’re first captured. When you record an audio track, its samples also go into sample RAM. You can load samples manually into sample RAM, or the Fantom-X can load them for you automatically at startup. You also import samples into sample RAM.
As shipped from the factory, the Fantom-X sample RAM is 32 MB in size, a good size for getting you started.
For more involved sampling work— and for recording audio tracks—you can expand sample RAM up to 544 MB by installing SDRAM memory chips, as explained on Page 244 of the Fantom-X Owner’s Manual. This provides ample room for even the largest samples and longest audio tracks.
The Sampling on the Fantom-X Workshop booklet discusses the use of sample RAM in detail, and explains how to capture, edit, play, save, load, and import samples. It also explains how to set up the Fantom-X to load samples for you automatically.
When you play a sample on the Fantom-X, you play it in a patch or rhythm set. Sample-playing patches and rhythm sets identify their samples by their storage locations, so it doesn’t make sense to use a sample in a patch or rhythm set until it’s been stored. Store the patch in permanent memory before using it in a patch or rhythm set.
Flash: User and Card Memory
For permanent storage of your work, the Fantom-X uses a type of memory called “flash” memory. Flash provides a very secure place for the permanent storage of your data. The Fantom-X offers two kinds of flash memory in which to keep your work:
user memory—The Fantom-X provides 32 MB of built-in flash memory, referred to as “user” memory.
card memory—You can install a PC card (purchased separately) in the Fantom-X’s rear-panel PC CARD slot to add up to 1 GB of additional flash storage space. You can also use a Compact Flash or Smart Media card with a Compact Flash-to-PCMCIA or Smart Media-to­PCMCIA adaptor. Swapping multiple cards in and out of the Fantom-X gives you lots of extra storage space.
From now on in this booklet, when we refer to “PC card” or “memory card,” we mean all three types of cards that can be used in the Fantom-X.
Preserving RAM Samples
Since sample RAM is cleared each time you power-off, it’s absolutely vital that you save all of the new samples and audio tracks you want to preserve—as well as any sample you’ve been editing—to a permanent storage area before turning off the Fantom-X. Otherwise, they’ll be lost. Yes, this is the third time we’ve said this—it’s important.
PC Card Compact Flash
card
Smart Media
card
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