PAiA Midi to CV - Anyone else with experience?

[dslocum]

Does anyone besides me have experience with the PAiA Midi to CV converter?

I have two of them in my rig and think they're pretty flexible, but then again I'm coming at this with somewhat limited Midi experience.

ALSO - What types of problems would someone expect in a Midi to CV converter? Help me ask more questions, as I'm not sure about those either.

[davebr]

I have one in my modular synth cabinet. I originally started with it for interfacing my ARP Odyssey / Avatar to my MIDI setup. It worked OK for that. Eventually I migrated it to a 5U module dedicated for interfacing my Kurzweil Expressionmate to my modular. It only did fair on that. The CC messages for the ribbon were only 7 bit. I haven't gone through the schematic for a while, but I think many of the commands might be 7 bits. That would be one question to verify. With the ribbon, it just created zipper noise when I used it for glides and modulation.

Eventually, I repackaged it in a general purpose 5U module. Details are on my PAiA MIDI2CV page.

I designed my own module for my Expressionmate since it outputs the full 14 bits. Eventually I designed a ComputerVoltageSource module which I program in Basic. I have good MIDI performance and can chain the MIDI to my PAiA MIDI2CV and use it for an additional 8 outputs. The 7 bits works OK especially if I am using it to generate clocks, triggers, or gates.

For my general purpose MIDI to CV I tend to use my MOTM-650 if I am interfacing a keyboard, or my ComputerVoltageSource with a custom program if it is for some other purpose.

Dave

[zapp550]

I was looking for info on those a few months ago when I was about to buy one and couldn't find anyone with experience

[rico loverde]

I built one last year and spent months trying to get it to work. Eventually sent it back to have them look at it. They said i did it right and it was working, when I got it back I plugged it in and it blew my synth.com power supply. It's been sitting in my closet ever since. Still bitter about it...

[zapp550]

I built one last year and spent months trying to get it to work. Eventually sent it back to have them look at it. They said i did it right and it was working, when I got it back I plugged it in and it blew my synth.com power supply. It's been sitting in my closet ever since. Still bitter about it...

Glad I opted for Silentway

[sduck]

I have one, that I used for quite a long time before replacing it with a Blacet midiverter. Actually I may reinstate the paia, as it has some neat capabilities. I'm curious about trying it in 4 channel mode. The midiverter has some issues too. I was going to get a motm 650 eventually, but now they're hard to find - yuck.

Issues - I never figured out a decent power supply solution. Supposedly you can run it off a regular +-15v supply, but when I tried that according to what seemed like the right connections it didn't work. But the wallwart supplied worked well, so I would just run that out the back of the cabinet.

The octave calibration trimmer supplied with the kit is not good enough for actual in tune calibration, unless you have a lot of patience and are lucky. Mine works pretty well, but I spent nearly an hour messing with it until I got the volts reading at really close to 1 volt per octave. It'd be much easier to just sub a multiturn trimmer there - in fact I have one just waiting for that when I get around to it.

What Dave said about the 7 bit accuracy. It's ok if you add a little lag to it. What I found disconcerting with it was occasional dropped gates - not a lot of them, but just enough to screw up a sequence coming from numerology or whatever. Something like 1 out of every 200 gates just sort of disappear.

There's a paia yahoo group - I've tried getting answers about the power situation there, but it's pretty useless.

[davebr]

Issues - I never figured out a decent power supply solution. Supposedly you can run it off a regular +-15v supply, but when I tried that according to what seemed like the right connections it didn't work. But the wallwart supplied worked well, so I would just run that out the back of the cabinet.

No, you cannot run it off +/-15 volts because of the CD4051B. At least mine had this part. I put notes on my +/-15 volt conversion on my MIDI2CV web page. I run mine off of +5 and +/-15V.

The octave calibration trimmer supplied with the kit is not good enough for actual in tune calibration, unless you have a lot of patience and are lucky.

I had to do the same and add a multi-turn trimmer.

Dave

[sduck]

Thanks Dave - I missed your link before - I'm going to have to study the power implementation of this when I get around to refitting it.

[dougcl]

I made one of these for euro, and it works great. I ran it in four channel mode (four cv, four gate) running the modular using a Korg EMX. The only thing I struggled with was the program change to toggle it in and out of polyphony mode. Once I had that understood no problems.

It's visible here unused on the second row:


I eventually took it out though because I just spent all my time patching the modular and midi got in the way. I still have it on the shelf.

[Synthasonic]

Thought I'd add my $0.02... I started with a Paia MIDI2CV when some caps in my ARP2600 keyboard went bad and I had a recording session looming. I built it, and of course, it didn't work. I too sent it back and I was told that I had been sent several bum parts. They paid for everything but the shipping to Paia, so it's hard to complain, I guess. I spent ages calibrating it, only to achieve mediocre results. (This was before I knew squat about all things EE, and didn't know a multi-turn trimmer from my arse.) I was able to achieve about 2 octaves of usable tuning. I eventually added on and built an entire 9700s system, but began to notice a disturbing similarity amongst all of the modules: low component count, and tons of functions packed into each module, none of which work particularly well. I thought perhaps it was my lack of ability to assemble and calibrate. Not so, says their tech. (I returned it to have it looked over b/c I was so disappointed with its performance.)

Anyhow, as I began to learn more about modular synths, I bought a Kenton Pro-2000, and later an Encore Expressionist. Both the Kenton and Encore track like a dream. With properly calibrated VCOs (i.e. not Paia), I can get 5 octaves of usable playing space (+/- 10 cents). I still have my 9700s. It was relegated first to just EG use, but now that I have 6 EGs, I no longer use it for that. Causing the EGs to loop is occasionally useful, tho, so i sometimes still use it for that.

All this to say.... I understand that Paia fills an important place in the market, and their assembly instructions are second to none. However, the issue I see is that the quality of the finished product is not on an equal level with the modules you find from other manufacturers, and it's difficult to find out where you fall on the spectrum of need for performance until after you've actually tried one. I'm sure that there are hundreds of satisfied Paia owners, it's just that it didn't do the job for what I do...