M.U.G. (MIDI Users Group, formerly the Mirage Users Group)
- Defunct, as far as I can tell -
The M.U.G. has lots of Mirage Users, as well as others. They are a
source for stuff Mirage users are often looking for: samples,
SoundProcess and the ISF. They still carry a huge collection of sounds
available individually or in groups - you can buy a set of 700 if you
want - however you might pay more than you did for you Mirage. So what.
M.U.G. has a web page at http://www.nowopen.com/mug.
You can get back issues of the Transoniq Hacker, sound disks, and (when
available) hard to find items like the Input Sampling Filter, Sequence
Expander Cartridge and Sound Process.
One year membership is $20, a lifetime membership is $65 - last I checked.
You can contact them at:
M.U.G.
c/o G-4 Productions
P.O. Box 615TH
Yonkers, NY 10703-0615
email: G4Prod@aol.com
Fax: (914) 961-0785
Human: (914) 961-1797
BBS: (914) 683-3665
voicemail: (212) 465-3430 / (800) 569-5232
SoundProcess OS (available through Syntaur and M.U.G.)
SoundProcess turned the Mirage into a multitimbral synth. It could
receive on more than one channel at a time with different sounds
produced on each channel. There is a fair amount of "fourth party"
software available for SoundProcess, though with SoundProcess no longer
available, this doesn't exactly look like a growing market.
8. What web pages are available?
There are a few, and more every day. You should be able to find answer
to lots of questions at one of these sites:
9. How can I upgrade my Mirage?
There are a couple of different upgrades available. In almost every
case, you're on your own.
The first upgrade for the Mirage was to reduce noise, as well as a
couple of other changes. This change required a boot ROM change and also
required version 3.2 of the MirageOS. If your Mirage boots 3.2 you have
the upgrade. The upgrade also came with updated OS disks. Before the ROM
upgrade, the revision of MirageOS was 2.1 (near as I can tell), MASOS was
1.2. After, and since MirageOS is 3.2, MASOS is 2.0.
Double-Sided Drive Conversion
In early 1997, Art Entlich graciously agreed to allow the Mirage
community web access to his Transoniq Hacker article on the Mirage
Double-Sided Drive Conversion - instructions on how to install said
drive in your trusty old beast.
The Stereo Mirage
The Mirage DSK model introduced a stereo Mirage. That upgrade is
possible for older Mirages if you're willing to open it up and make
some changes. (I guess none of us have to worry about voiding our
warranties, eh?)
There are two do-it-yourself articles in old issues of Electronic
Musician. The first, by Don Slepian is in the January 1987 issue. A
second article written by Ensoniq engineers Bob Yannes and Tom Metcalf,
is a bit safer to implement and provides a fuller stereo field. This
article is in the June 1987 issue - I highly recommend this one. If
you're going to get back issues, it wouldn't hurt to get both. Back
issues of Electronic Musician are available from:
ACT III Publishing
6400 Hollis St #12
Emeryville, CA 94608
(510) 653-3307
Don Slepian's modification is also available on his web page:
http://www.DonSlepian.com/Mirage.html
At one point (when the "Ensoniq" article appeared) Alan Gary Campbell's
company Musitech, had a board and full kit available. You should check
with him first at:
Musitech
P.O. Box 3717
Chatanooga, TN 37404-0717
Both modifications involve taking the eight voices of the Mirage, which
are actually eight separate signals inside the Mirage, and arranging
them in a stereo field. The Slepian article describes a rather brute
force method of wiring four of the voices to the left, and the other
four to the right. The Yannes/Metcalf article uses active electronics
for better signal matching and a resistor network that pans each of the
eight voices to a different location in the stereo field. This second
method can produce some beautifully full pads and can give motion to
other types of sounds (a piano tends to bounce around too much, but
panning the channels towards each other compensates nicely).
Note the following correction to the Yannes/Metcalf article on page 38:
in figure 2, make the following corrections:
Voice 5-C131 should be C117
Voice 6-C118 should be C130
I have no address for Musitech, though Alan Gary Campbell does still
write regularly for Electronic Musician. If anyone has an address -
please send it to me or post it to the list.
10. What's the deal with formatting?
The Mirage stores sounds on Single-Sided, Double Density (SSDD), 3-1/2"
floppy disks, though DSDD are much more common and work just fine - it's
just that the Mirage only uses one side. High Density (HD or if your
soul is reversed like mine: CH) floppies are not recommended. They
appear to work sometimes, but failures are common and that sort of
defeats the purpose.
The format is specific to the Mirage and is documented somewhere in a
Transoniq Hacker article - though I do not know which one.
A Bit of History
When the Mirage was first introduced, blank floppies had to be purchased
from Ensoniq at about ten bucks a pop for a "pre-formatted" (but
otherwise blank) floppy, in a blister pack. Outrageous even then, when
blank floppies were quite a bit more than they are now. To their
credit, Ensoniq saw the error of their ways and solved the problem by
sending out the FMT-1 floppy. This floppy had a new Mirage OS that
would format any floppy AND (this is the key) it would put the FMT-1 OS
on the new floppy. This way you could take a regular floppy down to the
store or to a Mirage-owning friend's house and come away with your own
floppy that would let you do your own formatting with your own Mirage.
One slightly odd thing about the formatting OS is how you start it.
You first boot from the floppy and the display shows "Fd". To format a
disk, insert a blank disk and press, no, not Enter, but Seq Save.
Pressing Enter tells FMT-1 to reboot. The way you'll know you messed
this up is if you get "ud" on the display. You just tried to reboot
from an unformatted disk.
One problem with the FMT-1 method is that you can't make a bootable
floppy - handy for gigs where you want a particular setup. For this
you need a third party formatter. For that you'll need one of the
other, commercial available formatters:
I can recommend MIDICaster. It will let you format a floppy and copy
a non-protected OS onto it (like MASOS or MirageOS). It also has many other
handy features. (See above)
Ensoniq also produced the FMT-2 OS. It adds the capability of putting
MirageOS 3.2 on the newly formatted floppy, in addition to the FMT-2 OS.
It is available from Syntaur - $12.95 US, last I checked.
There are also programs that run on computers that can format a Mirage
floppy in the computer's drive. At this point I do not have a lot of
information on this. Help is appreciated.