Korg 01/w distorted and strange sound

chrisgr · Post by **chrisgr** » Sat Jul 10, 2010 7:01 pm

Hi!
A friend gave me his 01/w to play around and told me that it needed battery replacement.
I turned it on and reloaded factory sounds because all data had been erased.
The problem is that many of the programs(not all) sound funny.Some of them are distorted, others sound like space sounds!The strange thing is that this happens only to some notes of the program (the rest sound ok), always the same for a specific program, but if I change program this happens to other notes!
I tried to edit some programs and when I changed the waveform to an oscillator, same thing happened.According to the waveform, some notes had the above problem.
Any ideas of what could be the problem?

Thanks in advance.

synthjoe · Post by **synthjoe** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:25 am

From what you describe I'd suggest the following. If it is just some notes and some programs, then it would be worthwhile to drive your O1/W from MIDI and see what happens to those notes. In case it is a range of consecutive keys making weird sounds (and in the same program more or less consistently the same keys when flipping back and forth between programs), you might have a corrupt waveform ROM, although it is unlikely. Otherwise, I'd go for the battery replacement and see the results.

There are many more potential steps to troubleshoot the problem (like disabling the effects section, changing the octave of the oscillator, running through the self-test mode, etc.), but I'd suggest to try MIDI and battery replacement first.

Good luck and let us know of the results!

chrisgr · Post by **chrisgr** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 8:59 am

Thank you synthjoe for the reply.
Through MIDI the keyboard is fine and the battery change didn't make any difference, so I suspect it has a corrupt waveform ROM as you said.
The problem exists on specific notes in each waveform.If I change the octave of the oscillator the problem shifts to the corresponding octave.
Do you know how can I run a test mode to see if I can get anything from this?

synthjoe · Post by **synthjoe** » Sun Jul 11, 2010 9:43 pm

chrisgr wrote:Through MIDI the keyboard is fine ... The problem exists on specific notes in each waveform.If I change the octave of the oscillator the problem shifts to the corresponding octave.

Hmmm. To me these two seem to contradict. So the same notes that are problematic and shift with the oscillator octave, work fine when driven from another keyboard via MIDI?

If sample ROM is corrupt, then you should have at least a few consecutive keys (somewhere between 4 and 12, or even more) exhibiting the problem, is that the case? If so, the same problem should persist when driven via MIDI.

However, if it works fine when driven via MIDI, then I'd suspect a keyboard problem, rather than the sample ROM. However, this part is very simple having only 2 contacts per key and some decoding electronics and is rather unlikely that a key would work in one program whereas it doesn't work in another.

You wrote 'specific notes in each WAVEFORM' - this suggests to me that you have tried various waveforms in the same program. If so, and you really have few consecutive keys exhibiting the problem, then you're very likely to have a sample ROM related problem, even though a very rare occurrence I would think.

Anyways, good luck with the fixing - for test mode you can use '3' & 'RESET' while powering on - this will erase all data in memory, so be sure to bakup before starting the test mode.

I'm not sure about testing the wave ROM specifically, but you can download the service manual here: http://elektrotanya.com/?q=showresult&m ... =&kat2=all

chrisgr · Post by **chrisgr** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 9:23 am

synthjoe wrote:Hmmm. To me these two seem to contradict. So the same notes that are problematic and shift with the oscillator octave, work fine when driven from another keyboard via MIDI?

Sorry, I made a mistake(bad english)!
I connected the keyboard to my pc via midi and played it and on the vst all notes of the sounds were ok.That means that the midi commands are ok!
But I didn't do what you said now and thanks for the explanation!
I will do that but I think that the same thing will happen with the strange sounds.I'll keep you informed.I'll run the test and see what I find out.
Thank you again!

synthjoe · Post by **synthjoe** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:27 am

chrisgr wrote:I connected the keyboard to my pc via midi and played it and on the vst all notes of the sounds were ok.That means that the midi commands are ok!

Right, that clears it up. So the keyboard contacts and decoding work fine - which means that indeed the wave ROM might have some problems. I'm afraid it won't be easy to fix - you'll need the help of someone experienced in electronics, access to an EPROM programmer device and a source for the wave ROM data (if you happen to find/donwnload this latter I'd be very interested in it - please share!

)

Let me know if I can be of any further help!

roughmark · Post by **roughmark** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 3:15 am

Hi

I'm also experiencing the same with my korg 01/w fd. When I turn the korg off it always go back to it's strange sound. However if I will reset it the sound would go back as normal. Though I'm seeing error message - "error" init sound" something like that. I was not able to get the exact error coz the display is quite not visible anymore. Please help I'm using my keybod in our church. Thanks and more power!

synthjoe · Post by **synthjoe** » Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:13 pm

Hi roughmark,

Welcome to the forum. The first thing I'd always check in such cases whether the battery is OK. Do you know what state the battery is in?

Synthesizerplayer · Post by **Synthesizerplayer** » Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:53 pm

i had the same issue with my microarranger. it was a motherboard issue

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Korg 01/w distorted and strange sound

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