MATRIXSYNTH: Blue Mondayish ELKA OMB5 with Custom Drum Kit


Thursday, December 12, 2024

Blue Mondayish ELKA OMB5 with Custom Drum Kit


video upload by ohm_studi_ohm

"I just finished servicing an Elka OMB5 and building a custom drum kit for it so I had some fun with it.
All sounds are from the OMB5, no fx used."

ELKA OMB 5 with custom drum kit

video upload by ohm_studi_ohm

"herre is a demo of an Elka One Man Band with custom drum sounds.

The OMB5 is a nice 4 part arranger with rhythm channel, bass channel and 2 accompaniment tracks. Sounds are FM (from the elka ER/EK/EM 44) and the drums are PCM sampled from the Drumstar 80. It has MIDI in and out so you can either control and play the different part from the keyboard or from MIDI, it syncs and transmits clock as well as single input notes or sequenced notes. I like using it with external midi controller so I can play the 3 different melodic part separately (when playing from the keyboard notes always trigger the 3 part together).

Though the drum samples are actually quite good if you like 80s sounds (especialy percussion and cymbal sounds), I decided to replace some of them with some I favor more, using sounds from LinnDrum, Oberheim DX, Roland TR808, CR8000 and TR707. I also adjusted level by using compression on some other stock sounds.

The audio format used in the OMB5 (and the Drumstar 80 which drum part is derived) is the same as in those classic 80s PCM drum machines, ie 8 bit µ-Law unsigned sample. Sample rate is 25000 hz (or so) in that one.

Replacing sound is not as straightforward as in those drum machines because instead of using 1x eprom per sound there are several samples per eprom (7x 256 kbyte eproms are used in the OMB5 to accomode for 32 sounds) so you need to edit the audio file and replace the existing sample with your own but it needs to start at the exact same adress as the original one and it should have the same length or be shorter.

So basically what you do is:
read the eprom bin
convert to uncompressed audio
edit that file and edit/replace the sound you want making sure you dont change file size nor start adress of the sound
convert the uncompressed audio to µ-law 8 bit
burn the new bin file

if you're interested in getting those sound I can sell you a full 7x eproms kit ready to use. I can be fitted in the DrumStar 80 too.

here is a list of the 32 sounds, with original and replacement when there is:
01 KICK 01 / -
02 KICK 02 / LINNDRUM KICK
03 SNARE 01 / LINNDRUM SNARE
04 SNARE 01 / -
05 ELECTRO SNARE 1 / ROLAND TR808 COWBELL
06 ELECTRO SNARE 2 / ROLAND TR808 SNARE
07 RIMSHOT / -
08 HI TOM / ROLAND TR707 HI TOM
09 MID TOM / ROLAND TR707 MID TOM
10 LO TOM / ROLAND TR707 LO TOM
11 CLOSED HAT 1 / -
12 CLOSED HAT 2 / -
13 OPEN HAT / -
14 PEDAL HAT / ROLAND TR808 RIMSHOT
15 RIDE / -
16 CRASH / -
17 CONGA ACC / -
18 CONGA HI / -
19 CONGA LO / -
20 BONGO ACC / -
21 BONGO HI / -
22 BONGO LO / -
23 AGOGO HI / -
24 AGOGO LO / -
25 TRIANGLE SHORT / -
26 TRIANGLE LONG / -
27 CABASA / -
28 TAMBOURINE / -
29 WOODBLOCK / -
30 COWBELL / -
31 GUIRO / ROLAND CR8000 CLAP
32 CLAP / OBERHEIM DX CLAP"

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