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https://github.com/giulioz/s550util

Tools for the Roland S-Series sampler disks
https://github.com/giulioz/s550util

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Tools for the Roland S-Series sampler disks

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README 

        
Documentation for s550util

==========================



Introduction:



S550util is a utility that is able to list the contents of disks for the

Roland S-50, S-330 and S-550 series. Also extraction of tones as .wav files

is possible. S550util works on disk images. When run on linux systems it is

possible to directly address the disks in the floppy drive using the 

appropriate device name.



Package list:



The archive 's550util.tar' should contain the following files:

Makefile

	Makefile needed to build the source

README

	The file you read

rs12.h

s50dir.h

	Header files 

s550util.c

	Main source file

s2img.sh

	Sample shell script that uses s550util



Compiling the source:



Compiling is straight forward if you have the GNU gcc compiler and GNU 

binutils installed. This should be the case if you are working under linux.

On Windows systems gcc is part of the mingw environment.

After extracting the source just do a 'make'.

Compile and run was tested under:

SunOS on sparc,

MS Windows on x86,

Mac OS X (Darwin) on powerpc,

Linux on x86.



Usage:



Without parameters or '-h' the following help is shown.



s550util v. 1.01 (Nov  3 2006) (c) 2004-2006 Peter Heitzer

Usage: s550util  -h|-l |[-r] -{x|X}  [s1 .. sn]

  -h: show help

  -r: raw mode, ignore tone start and end points

  -l :  show info for image 

  -x   ..  extract samples s1 .. sn

  -X  : as -x but overwrite files

Sample numbers are in Roland notation, e.g. 11 for first sample.

A range of sample numbers can be given as -, e.g. 14-16. Only

original tones can be extracted.



The options in detail:



-h: show short help



-r: raw mode

Normally the extracted samples contain only the samples between start and end

point of the tone. If you wish to extract the whole sample you have to use

this parameter. 



-l: list directory of disk

Before you extract samples of a disk it is useful to look whats on the disk.

Here is an example of a listing.



S-50 disk 'Wild Kingdom'

11: 'Seal    ' subtone,  30kHz, bank: A, S:014336, E:022016, L:018689 (13,2)

12: 'Doggie 1' subtone,  30kHz, bank: A, S:000000, E:014592, L:000002 (13,2)

13: 'Doggie 2' origtone, 30kHz, bank: B, S:000000, E:014080, L:009473 (16,2)

...



The first line shows that the disk is for a S-50 sampler and was named

'Wild Kingdom'. The following lines show the data for each used tone in the

order tone number, tone name, type, sample rate, bank, start point, end point,

loop point. The start and length in wave segments are shown in parenthesis.



-{x|X}  [ samples ]

This are the options for sample extraction. Sample extraction only works for

original tones. All samples are extracted to the current working directory.

Each sample gets the name of the tone with the extension .wav. Leading

blanks from tone names are removed and blanks in tone names replaced with

underscores. With option '-x' no files will be overwritten.

If a file with the same name is already in the current working directory it

is prefixed with the tone number. If this file name also exists no file is 

written. If option '-X' is used files get overwritten unless they are non

writable by their permissions.

The extract option is followed by the image file or device name and the numbers

of the samples. 



Examples:



s550util -x test.img 11 27 41-48

Extract samples 11 (the 1st), 27 and 41..48 from image test.img.



s550util -x /dev/fd0 11-48

Linux only, extracts all original tones from disk in floppy drive. /dev/fd0

is the device name for the 1st floppy in the most linux distributions.



Some hints for archiving your valuable sample disks



A sample disk on the Roland S-50, S-330 or S-550 has only a capacity of 720 KiB.

Therefore you need a lot of disks (and space) for a suitable sample library.

CD-R media on the other hand are compact (about 1000 disks fit on a single CD-R)

and not as prune to read errors as floppy disks. If you own a library of valuable

samples it is a good idea to make backups before the disks get unreadable.

Using s550util you can combine the process of backup and documentation.

The archiv contains s2img.sh, an example of a shell script that prompts for a sample 

disk and makes a disk image and a text file with the directory of each disk.



Have fun!



Peter Heitzer 2006-11-03