Kawai K3m ROM Mod

Plutoniq9 (Ryan) sent the following to AH. I asked him if I could put up a post and he gave the thumbs up.

"Just a recording demo of a Kawai K3 with a TB-303 waveform (Replaced in ROM).....thanks to a list member for supplying the raw VCO square/sawtooth recordings. Not bad, considering they needed to be converted to 8-bit @ 22khz.

k3m_303_saw.mp3 (3.3M)

Prophecy is providing the arpeggio (via midi) to the K3m. I'm still not sure if I'm gonna bother with bandlimiting yet, maybe in the long run....... but the Prophet-VS I know gets part of it's character from it's aliasing & they only cause real problems in the highest octaves. It was a pain in the ass getting this far :)"

I asked Ryan if he had a web site or page up with more info and he said one would be coming on audiosyn.com.

"I'm actually still working on waveform selection, my plan is to create a ROM bank thats 50% classic analogue waveforms and 50% digital, mainly some good Prophet-VS samples + choir & strings on the digital side (basically, all the things that the K3 sucked at).

The ROM system is very cryptic :) Interleaved waveform data (containing different octaves) + a second ROM containing information necessary for anti-aliasing the waveforms (also interleaved). The service manual does not even brush upon this area, so it's been heaps of trial n' error getting it to work right. I've got some rudimentry code that allows me at this point to encode 512-byte raw waveforms (8-bit @ 22khz), but with no bandlimiting (at the moment).

Hopefully I'll have a ROM available shortly (freeware) for download, though I'm still holding out for some better analog waveform samples. Additive potion of the synth is not touched, and there will be a way to switch back to the original waveform set (or an additional bank of 31 waveforms)."

Thanks Ryan!

Kawai K3m Schematics

Title link takes you to a 5M zip posted on AH by Plutoniq9. Note these are for the K3m, not the K3. Scan by Fredrik Zetterling.