Sadly no SS-30 in this otherwise fairly comprehensive film about string machines, but then the SS-30 was never sold in the US. Yes, it says the SK-20 was the first Yamaha stringer too, but you have to forgive them.
It's lots of fun - despite this carping - and I haven't seen anything else cover as much ground in video form with actual examples of so many different instruments.
Edit. The SS-30 has a cameo in this Syntaur film about the DX1!
This post has been moved to https://norgatronics.blogspot.com/2021/11/sd-8081-tuning.html
I saw this post on Matrix Synth and it made me wonder if I should change the Bucket Brigade Delay chips in the SS-30M. It's certainly very noisy, so it might be worth the effort.
The video tries to show that new (old stock), unused MN3004 chips are considerabley quiter than those taken from a venerable old Roland Juno.
the SS-30 has three of the MN3004 ICs and replacements are available these days. For example at this link https://cabintechglobal.com/mn3009 there are Xvive parts for sale.
It might work. Or it might be a form of vandalism. One to pponer carefully.
This post has moved to https://norgatronics.blogspot.com/2021/11/tr-808-white-noise.html
When I chose the CliffCon ZC connector for my PSU to SS-30M hook-up I was slightly concerned that I had never seen any other product using this kind of power coupling.
Details of that here: https://ss30m.blogspot.com/2018/05/current-affairs-power-couples.html
It wasn't that I was particularly worried that it wouldn't work or be of
poor quality so much as it's just more comforting when you
have seen something in use already.
It was heartnening then when I started looking into buying an Avantone Mixcube and discovered that they use the CliffCon ZC series connectors for its PSU. This is a powered speaker and to keep the dimensions right all of the high quality power supply is kept outside in this custom unit.
Whilst I'm here a small digression into the Mixcube. I recently started reading Mixing Secrets For Small Studios by Mike Senior. A great book and strongly recommended. Despite being a Sound On Sound reader and subscriber for many years a lot of very good advice didn't really 't sink in or is half-remembered. It is very good now to have a concise and focussed guide in one place.
In the book Mike lays out all the problems found with typical home-studio near-field monitoring. Relatively cheap ported monitors with two drivers come with a number of issues which compromise the clarity of the sound. Porting screws up the transients and frequency response, the cross-over blurs the mid-range etc. Then the room will create some kind of problems in the bass region with nodes and other nasties. And the stereo image itself will probably be flawed and more detail will be lost or obscured.
It's quite sobering to read but happily there is one solution to most of these problems which won't break the bank or force complete rennovation of the studio room. In fact even top mix engineers with the best of everything swear by the a cheap mono speaker which sounds really bad.
The simple answer to stereo imaging issues is to switch to mono. I do this anyway with a bluetooth speaker, but that's not a refernce monitor and the frequency response is tuned for listening pleasure not accuracy. The solution to poor clarity is to switch to a single driver in a sealed enclosure. This naturally limits the bandwidth and would seem to be a bad idea. The counter argument is that a good single driver mono speaker focussed on mid-range solves so many other problems that using one as an additional monitor to your full-range system is far better (and cheaper) than any other option.
It may not be a very nice listening experience, but the other reason to use a limited mono speaker is that this is what most people will hear you music on most of the time. The absolute attention it puts on to the mid-range is also sensible as most of of your listening is really not concentrating on bass and high frequencies and you can probably fix problems with them without too much trouble using analysers. The hardest mix balancing problems are in the mids anyway, so the more you think about it the more you want to get that part right.
Happily a good quality product exists at an affordable price. You can pay more or less (as always) but the recoomendation from Mike Senior is the Avantone MixCube, which handles transients etc. better than anything else in the home studio market. It is available as a powered option bypassing any need to add an amp to your system and the only problem you might need to solve is summing a stereo mix to mono cleanly. Switching between full-range and monitors also needs some thought. Postioning a mono speaker with a single driver is also not critical. Mike says you can situate it almost anywhere that you like because with no stereo image or driver cross-over to consider it just has to get to your ears from the front and without causing you to strain your neck. His is placed above his computer screen, which is a bit off-axis, but apparently fine.
Sold!