German Article on the EEH Zaunkönig

You might remember the EEH Zaunkönig brochure posted here.

Cord Mueller sent in these scans of an article written in German about the EEH Zaunkonig from Musik Spezial, Sonderheft 'Musik mit Computern', August/September ’85.

Translation of the first page via xonox in the comments, ocr-ed with Mac OS Preview and translated with Google translate second page will take some more time):

The "Zaunkoenig" is an eight-voice polyphonic sound sampling unit. It is the basic building block of an expandable system that is constantly being expanded.

A unique feature of this system is the ability to play sampled sounds time-corrected. This means that the stored sounds always remain constant in terms of their speed (length), no matter where they are played on the keyboard. At first glance, many will probably attach little importance to this quality. But anyone who has ever worked with sampling systems will know that it is hardly possible to play the sounds in a meaningful way if the transposition constantly changes reading speed changes (until now it was the case that notes played higher and shorter became shorter and notes played lower correspondingly longer).

With the time correction of the "Zaunkoenig" you can set the expiry time of saved words, noises or complete orchestra parts yourself for the first time. The speed can be faster or slower than that of the wrapa Keng: ing occurs without affecting the pitch! In this way, sampled tone sequences, rhythms or tiles from vinyl recordings can be synchronized with your own pieces of music. Conversely, with the Zaunkoenig it is also possible to tune a sound without changing its length.

Taken together, these two working techniques represent a really important development for the musician, because any sound material with any pitch and speed can be adapted exactly to any piece of music with any key and speed.

In the basic version, the "Zaunkoenig" stores sounds up to a length of 6.4 seconds with a dynamic range of 16 bits and a frequency range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. This also meets the highest demands.

In order to save storage space (i.e. to increase the recording time), the frequency response can be limited upwards in 1 kHz steps. With a frequency response of up to 14 kHz, e.g. a recording time of 9.1 seconds, at 10 kHz it is 12.8 seconds, etc."

Update: and the 2nd page also thanks to xonox in the comments:

The basic version of the Zaunkoenig has eight voices. A different sound can be assigned to each voice, whereby the combination with a sequencer is particularly recommended in MIDI mono mode. The voices can be routed to the mixer via mono, stereo or individual outputs.

The Zaunkoenig can be played with velocity, as long as it is connected to a corresponding MIDI keyboard (the Zaunkoenig does not have its own keyboard, so it is an "expander"). The tones can be modulated via two sockets on the back. Velocity and modulation sockets are freely programmable, i.e. you can determine separately for each sound which parameters should be changed for a modulation (or different playing dynamics).

Sounds are recorded either via the microphone or line input. The recording begins either automatically when a certain minimum level is exceeded, or manually by pressing a button. After reading in, the recording can be played immediately without having to make any settings. After assessing the sound, the contents of the memory can easily be changed using the 19 rotary knobs. The start and stop points, loops and all parameters known from the synthesizer can be influenced on the reqlers. With "Zaunkoenig" each voice has two VCFs, a VCO, an LFO and five (!) envelope generators (i.e. a total of 16 VCFs, 8 VCAs, 8 LFOs and 32 ADSRs). A second waveform can be added to each sampled waveform, similar to a synthesizer's second oscillator. The two waveforms can be detuned against each other in order to program fuller sounds or intervals (however, the eight-part playing style is retained). These parameters are related to all of the post-processing and do not relate to the actual recording.

Two loops can be set on the Zaunkoenig. Loops are repeated repetitions of a specific point in the stored sound (similar to a tape loop). This loop is defined by a start and end point, each of which has a controller assigned to it. The first loop sounds as long as a key is held down, the second starts as soon as the key is released (Release). Using a special calculation method, the computer only provides the loop points that can be used to form loops that are free of interference and clicks!

If you save e.g. B. a spoken sentence, then with the help of the loop functions, words, letters or even just individual waveforms can be tapped, from which new wave sets can then be created. Words in a sentence or letters in a word can also be resorted in this way.

Finding interesting waveforms is also made easier by a sampling window that can be freely adjusted in width, with which the memory content can be searched by hand. In order to achieve optimal sound quality, the "Zaunkoenig" has various selectable calculation methods (algorithms) available, according to which the processing of a recording takes place - e.g. B. for speech, vocals, strings or complex sounds.

The standard waveforms of the LFOs can later be exchanged for the selected waveforms or entire sets of waves, making frequency and amplitude modulation possible. Furthermore, all sounds can modulate each other.

In the keyboard program, each key of the keyboard can be assigned an individual pitch that is not tied to half or whole tone steps in terms of tuning. In this way, new scales can be developed or totally weird tone sequences can be programmed.

Since multisampling is possible, multiple split programs (i.e. different sounds in different layers) can also be programmed. The Zaunkoenig recognizes how many voices are played in the respective keyboard area and switches the voice cards independently of the keyboard assignment. As a result, each section has eight voices (of course, there can never be more voices than there are voice cards). Another keyboard layout makes it possible to assign different sounds or several sounds to individual keys at the same time.

All finished sounds can be saved via the built-in floppy disk drive. When loading the sounds, all the data on the floppy disk is transferred to the Zaunkoenig's main memory, so that once it has been read in, all the data is immediately available without resorting to the floppy disk again.

Memory cards can be used to expand storage capacity to up to 32 seconds at full bandwidth.

In order to increase the sampling time even further, a Winchesterdisdrive will soon be available, with which 6.4 minutes (that's 386 seconds!) can be recorded with full frequency response. The eight-voice basic version can be expanded to a maximum of 16 voices with additional voice cards. Finally, add-on cards are available that enable stereo sampling. This method is particularly suitable for recording spatial sounds (reverberation). took or CD disks original. to record faithfully (stereophonically). SMPTE, terminal, sequencer, analogue MIDI Wander and the Winchester disk drive are in preparation. The basic version of the ZK costs - approx. 20000 DM (incl. VAT). The device is expected to be available from September.