WarpToken.com said:
report back on how it is/ what you can do.
reporting. first things first, though - comparison of the versions:
both versions, jp and na, are absolutely compatible, and similar to the point of being almost identical. the synth engines are surely identical AFAICT (checked all my tracks transferred over), even a small glitch in the original engine that shows as few minor pops in one of my tracks is still there untouched (to clarify, all my tracks were made with a jp copy).
the only differences i managed to notice are purely 'localisational':
* 'master' and 'slave' in the jp are 'host' and 'client' in the na, respectively,
* boot-up screen sequences are slightly different - the na version includes a new xseed + 'licensed by nintendo' first screen, whereas the jp version has no license screen whatsoever.
here i should mention i did experience a tiny glitch in the song transfer process, which i'm not sure whether to attribute to the different versions or to the transfer process alone: one of the patterns of one of the songs ended up altered after transfer, when played back in song mode. when i switched to pattern mode it all of a sudden was fine, though, and it stayed fine ever after, including during the subsequent return to song mode. an odd 'pattern needs revisiting' sort of a bug, i must say.
ok, versions out of the way, onto the meat.
i've never had a real synth in my life, so i don't actually know the real feeling, but a multi-ds10 pretty much gave me a taste of that, i'd imagine. all of a sudden the number of available patterns doubled, the polyphony doubled, the save banks doubled. for a second there i forgot i had just two little ds'es before me, and felt like i had a dual 900MHz dsp korg heavy hitter.. almost : )
the beautiful thing is, all that is achieved with utter minimalism, by just providing:
* a master clock - one ds10 unit is a designated master, broadcasting a 'master clock' over the wifi. up to seven other ds10s are slaves, playing to the beat.
* play/stop control is in the master. slaves can neither start nor stop the play - only the master can, giving the user a 'master console' of sorts. everything else in the controls is independent.
the above, coupled with the full data transfer freedom, does make the bunch of ds10s feel if not like a single station, then like a coherent instrument setup.
for me, personally, the doubling of patterns is a big deal - i've always felt constrained by the number of patters a single ds10 provides (and i blame all my song's spastic transitions to that ; )
the bottomline being, i'll be ordering a mixer board one of the next days.
ps: before somebody goes 'wait a minute.. how did he play his dual ds setup without a mixer?!', i had one ds10 hooked to my desktop 2.0 speakers (creative gigaworks t40), and the other going over my koss porta pro headphones, which, among their other excellencies, are not ambiance-canceling. the rest was some careful volumes leveling : )
