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Using poly chain – Dave Smith Instruments MOPHO SE User Manual

Page 45

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Using Poly Chain

Mopho’s Poly Chain output enables it to be connected to other DSI synths for up

to 17-voice polyphony. Products that can be chained include the Tetra, Prophet

'08 (module and keyboard), desktop Mopho, and a second keyboard Mopho. It

will not chain with the Evolvers and Poly Evolvers due to the different voice

structures.

Note data from Mopho’s keyboard is intelligently processed so that, when one

synth’s maximum polyphony is reached, additional notes are passed through the

Poly Chain output and routed to the next synth in the chain. All that is required

is a single MIDI cable for each of the chained synths and a mixer for combining

the audio outputs.

Tetra is the best candidate for poly chaining with the Mopho Keyboard; the

voice architecture and programmable parameters are identical. The desktop

Mopho or Prophet ’08 will also work, but there are some differences between

these synths and the Mopho Keyboard:

The desktop Mopho’s Feedback Gain control is not programmable and may

need to be tweaked manually to match the Mopho Keyboard. Programs that

don’t use feedback sound the same on both models.

The Prophet does not have feedback or sub octave generators.

Both the Prophet and Tetra have two layers for stacked and split programs;

Mopho does not. When Prophet or Tetra programs are loaded into Mopho,

layer B is ignored.

You should have the same programs loaded into all the chained synths. The

easiest way to do that is to use the Dump command in the Global menu to dump

the programs via MIDI from one synth to the other(s).

The Poly Chain parameter is in the global menu. On the Mopho Keyboard, set

Poly Chain to the number of additional voices that will be chained: Out 1 (for

poly chaining a Mopho), Out 4, Out 5, Out 8, Out 12, or Out 16. Refer to the

illustration on page 40 for examples of the Poly Chain settings on the slave

units.

You can now virtually ignore the slave unit or units, since the controls on the

master will control all units as if they were a single synth. This includes saving a

program; if you save an edited program on the master, it will also save the

program on the slave(s).