Date   : Fri, 16 Aug 1996 10:22:12 +0100
From   : angus@...
Subject: Music 5000

Julian Regel writes:
>A few questions re:Music 5000:
>What are the specs of the Music 5000 (How many channels, what kind of 
>synthesis etc)?

Basic unit: 16 channels, paired into 8 stereo voices, wavetable synthesis.
ISTR that FM modulation can be added on top, at the expense of an extra 2
channels per voice. An expander can be bought to double the number of
channels/voices. There are also keyboard expansions, MIDI expansion, and a
stand-alone amplifier expansion. Normally it can be run through a hi-fi
amplifier. The wavetable is quite coarse resolution in terms of amplitude and
period resolution. If I remember correctly, harmonics above the 14th cannot be
represented at all, which means that harmonics near to it will be very poorly
represented too. Re-loading the wavetables takes a little time, so you can't
change instruments on the fly, without scheduling a pause somewhere.

>What's the difference between the 500, 5000 and 87?

Software and price for the first two, I don't know what the last one is. The
500 came with a disc-based implementation of the AMPLE language, which does
not have anything like the ability of the 5000's ROM based implementation.
Significant changes to the language were made between the 500 and 5000, which
makes the 5000 far more flexible. The 5000 has a nifty module system, which
allows it to load relocatable modules to upgrade the system, or add new
facilities. I've written a couple of these modules, and was quite impressed
with the capability of the system.

a.