Floppy Images

Starting with Translator™ 7.1 and Translator™ 6.2, we have introduced the concept of Floppy Images. Although floppies and floppy images have been support since the beginning, Translator now defines floppy images as a very specific object. The reason for the treatment is the huge explosion of interest in vintage samplers that only work with floppies, and that floppy emulators such as the Gotek have allowed massive access to these samplers.

Floppy Images are now handled completely separately from Virtual Drives. Virtual Drives are now defined as anything greater than 5mb, and are located only via the Images folders and listed under the Virtual Drives section of the Container Pane. Floppy Images are now handled in the general area, under any normal folder or drive.

Floppy Image Background
Floppy Images mostly come from the floppy disks themselves. There's many ways of creating them, over the years, but most of them come from Windows and courtesy of a replacement floppy drive name OmniFlop. Regardless, all you have to know is that every Floppy Image represents a floppy disk. Translator 6 supports reading floppy disks, but only on Windows, and the support for it is mainly creating images and not reading the material. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND making images and strictly avoid dealing with floppy disks directly.

Floppy Image Recognition
Floppy Images are treated as Bank file formats - ones that handle multiple Programs that reference a pool of Samples. However. Floppy Images are not individually recognized by extension, however. This is how Translator identifies floppy images:

Definition: IMG is always a "raw data image", which means it represents one single flopy disk, and it is the actual data - with no extra headers or funny business - that goes into memory of the sampler you are using.

IMPORTANT! Translator's driving philosophy is to ONLY use IMG for ALL floppy image formats. It is then up to Translator to identify what format the IMG is in. This is in contrast to using a unique extension for each sampler's image file. We would prefer the latter, but it's way too late in the game - with the many floppy images already publicly out there - to add 10-20 new extensions. So we thiunk it best to collapse into the already accepted IMG, and put up with a couple common exceptions to the rule.

When Translator sees a floppy image extension, it reads it and determines what sampler it's dealing with. Some of that calculation is on file size (the Mirage is an example), sometimes it's the structure and identifiers of the data. Of course, the Already Established are self-identified, but IMG can be anything. So Translator peeks into these files and finds out what they are. In the Translator interface, you will see what file types they are by the Icons and the Type column in the Object List.

Note about HFE images: HFE images are MFM-encoded image files. MFM is actually the encoding that is on practically all floppy disks for the purpose of error-correction, which is mandatory for the suseptible ferric-oxide floppy disk platter. HFE used to have a purpose when floppy emulators were first produced, but not any longer. The firmwares now do the MFM codec on the fly, and thus support raw data images (IMG). (The one exception at the writing is Emulator II.)

We have made the decision to NOT support HFE in Translator, to encourage people to convert all their HFE into IMG using the HxC Utility from www.hxc2001.com. IMG is far easier, smaller, and faster to work with, and MFM encoding is not needed anymore, since floppy emulators have fully eclipsed mechanical floppy drives.

Floppy Image Formats
Click on the format for more detailed information.

Akai S900/S950 Emu Emulator II Emu Emax I/II Ensoniq Mirage
Roland S5x Korg DSS/DSM Prophet 2000* Yamaha TX16W*
Ensoniq EPS/ASR Akai MPC60 Roland S10* Akai S612*
Akai S1000/3000 Emu E3/ESI Emu E4  

* Not supported yet.

Floppy Image Disk Format Notes / Glossary

OUT: An OUT is simply a IMG file, always Roland S5x/S7x, with a unique extension. These were created by an old DOS app called SDisk, where the OUT extension was simply the default.

EMX/EM1: For old Emu samplers. Both EMX and EM1 are (again) just IMG files, for just about the same reason as OUT files (The EMX DOS program was the culprit.)

EMUFD, EMUIIFD, EM1FD, EM2FD, E3OFD: These are all creations of the EMXP DOS program, and are no more/no less IMG files; that is, raw data image files. We would have rather that the autor of EMXP use IMG, and have asked, but they refused. Note: To make it more confusing, EMXP introduced several Bank-specific extensions (EB1, EB2, EB3, E3X, ESI) even though a Emu floppy image is only a Bank, though plus an OS. We again disagree with this strategy. Translator does support these in reading, but not as floppy disk images, and we do not create them or write to them.

EDE/EDA/GKH: These, despite popular myth, are NOT full IMG files. EDE/EDA was developed by Gary Giebler for use in his DOS-based Ensoniq Disk Manager program. and do not contain blank sectors, thus cutting down on the file size. GKH IS a IMG file but has a 58-byte header to it, making it NOT a IMG file.

DSK: This is more a historical image file format. One person decided it'd be great to take all these Korg DSS-1 images and provide them on the Internet, but he used the CopyQM program to create the images. A DSK file is CopyQM image file, which is the actual image encoded into this compressed thing. It would have been easier to provide them as actual images, but he didn't, and as a result there are tons of DSK files around. So we support it. (We are doing our part by not allowing creation of DSS-1 DSK files.)

QD: These are images representative of a QuickDisk, a strange 2.8 floppy device that is unlike anything. QuickDisks were used by the S612 and the S10. They are created (other than on Translator) like this: Both the samplers came with a solid MIDI transfer spec, so there are many S612/S10 .SYX files that contain the samples to transfer to the S612/S10. So 1) The SYX is transfer to the Gotek-equipped sampler, 2) The data is saved to a formatted QD file on the Gotek. So you have a data-filled QD file for the particular QD-based sampler.

Please note that Akai S1000/3000, Emu E3/ESi, and Emu E4 Floppy Images are... well... useless. All those samplers come with SCSI as standard equipment. Still, some people want EVERYTHING, even if it is useless, so these are supported. (Actually, to be precise, there is one exception: some early Emu ESi-32's did not come with SCSI. But these are rare and most of the affected persons have just gone out and purchased a ESi-32 that has SCSI.)

What Are Floppy Images Used For
Floppy Images are only meant to represent a floppy disk on a floppy emulator. The size is constant - it doesn't shrink or expand. Also, floppy emulators running the two major firmware's (Flash Floppy and HxC) accept only three file types: IMG, HFE, and QD. Below is an explanation what these formats are.

It should be noted, first, that the term for the actual data on the floppy is MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation), a system that strongly enforces a lot of error correction. Magnetic media is highly unstable and inconsistent, especially compared to hard drives and memory-based storage.

Floppy emulator's, at the start, only supported HFE, because HFE is - aside from the headers - exactly what is on the floppy. Further updates included support for IMG, by virtue of on-the-fly conversion of the IMG->MFM while reading, and MFM->IMG while writing. Some sampler formats are HFE-only at this writing, because the firmware has not yet caught up with them. IMG is easier for programs like Translator to deal with, because the data has already been decoded.

So, back to Floppy Images... Translator makes all this MFM-encoding/decoding transparent to you. No matter what the file is, all you see is the contents as the sampler sees it, and allows you to read from it, write to it, and play the samples from it.

Floppy Images Brief Summary Usage
As said earlier, all Floppy Images are just Bank formats - just very small. They can be as small as 440K (Mirage) to 1mb (e.g. Roland S7x). The three limitations of Floppy Images are:

Floppy Image structures often support limited velocity splits (up to 2 usually) and limited layering (again, only 2). Size obviously is the big limitation, but also the amount of sample object intrudes as well.

So, what if you try to convert a 100mb SoundFont that has 128 Presets? Well, obviously that's going to overwhelm the conversion process. What will happen is undefined at the moment, so just don't do it. So be mindful of what you are using as a source format. Still, you don't have to limit your sources to 64K each. Translator does perform some filtering of incoming data, one of which is cutting sample length, which helps make a simpler and shorter Program and Samples to exist within the Floppy Image.

Translator also has a neat feature called Layer Merging. This was developed in conjunction with BT and his Fairlight. The Fairlight Voice only supports one keymap and no layering (unless, of course, you get into the Instruments, but you only have 8 voices to play at one time), and BT had many very cool sounding layered Kontakt instruments. Layer Merging takes separated Samples that play simultaneously and sums them into a single stream of sample data. This is huge for Floppy Images where size and object amount is at a premium. By default, Layer Merging is enabled when converting into Floppy Images. Layer Merging means you can take larger Programs (holding more memory of samples) and get them into the Floppy Image without cutting them beyond recognition.

Also, many of the samplers of the very late 80's/early '90's had memory capabilities beyond what could be stored on a floppy. Though most of these had SCSI options (which we would highly recommend if you can SCSI-ize your vintage sampler), some didn't, or are hard to find. Aside from the SCSI option, an example is the Ensoniq EPS. The limit of the floppy was DS/DD which only held 1585 "blocks" (that is, sectors), which is 0.5mb. But the memory could be expanded to 1mb, so there are many 2-part or even 3-part Floppy Images. Even more radical (and silly) is the Ensoniq ASR-10 - imagine 16mb of memory but DS/HD floppy capability (1mb) - so you could be ridiculous and have a 16-part floppy set. YUUUCH.

Translator supports multi-part Floppy Images, so if you have an incoming Instrument that needs lots more space, it'll make multiple multi-part Floppy Image sets. Again, be careful with this. The point of Floppy Images isn't to put more into your sampler - they still load slow, etc. The point is to allow your cool Retro Lo-Fi Cool-Sounding vintage sampler to have a clear Gateway to take all the sounds you have and stuff it into your vintage sampler, OR take your vintage sampler stuff (usually sampled with your old A/D convertors) and get them into a modern playback situation.

What About Loops?
There are two significant problems with loops when converting them into the smaller and more segmented Floppy Image. The first is that, to a certain degree, Translator will cut off the ends of the samples and usually contain part - or all of - the looping section. The second problem is that some formats (e.g. Mirage) do not loop on sample-boundaries but segment boundaries. Translator then resets the loop points to likely candidates. It'll be up to you to reloop the samples. This is where the new Loop Editor can help. Post-translation, you can go through sample by sample and re-loop them in terms of what is in the Floppy Image. The Loop Editor also allow cross-fade looping. This is a LOT better than looping on your vintage sampler. So you have a lot of options when it comes to looping.

Creating New Floppy Images
When converting a foreign Program (with samples) into a Floppy Image format, it automatically creates a Floppy Image file. You can choose what file format you want to appear in the Format Preferences of your sampler. For example, if you are converting into Roland S5x, you might want a OUT file, or a IMG file, or a HFE file. You can choose which. Same with Ensoniq EPS/ASR - you can choose EDE/EDA, or IMG, or HFE.

You can also, if you want, create one (or as many as you want) blank Floppy Image of a particular format. See File-New to do this.