Opcode Vision Tips - Keyboard Magazine

I'm a big fan of Opcode gear, especially their Vision DAW. I still use it today as it's a fantastic product and in my opinion better than most DAWS available now. Well, I dug out my old Keyboard Magazine's again and found this great article by Andy Widders-Ellis covering useful tips for using Vision and thought I'd might share it with all the other keen Opcode fans out there. The feature comes from Keyboard's November 1990 issue ( It still has the Tower Records price tag on it! ). Hope you enjoy it.

Vintage Ads Pt 1

From Keyboard Magazine: 1980-1990

Having Visions

Here's some of my Opcode books.

Still works great

I love Opcode. Great software - Vision, OMS and great hardware - Studio 4's and 5's. I use it to run my MIDI rig on the other side of my studio via my trusty G3 Powermac (500Mhz processor and 6gb HD - WOWZA!).

Here are some photo's. The top is Opcode's Studio Vision DAW, the other's are some of my MIDI gear - spot the Studio 4's and Studio 5LX. My other Studio 5 is dead at the moment - need to fix the circuit board (don't spose anyone has any tech leaflets or pix of insode a Studio 5? I'd use my other as ref, but it's got a slightly different wiring system for some reason?).

Opcode Vision 4

S700, S1100, D-550, JV-1080, S750
K5m, K1r, Wavestation SR
M3r, Matrix1000, 2x Studio 5LX's

Jason guarding my EX-800, Digi-001, A-Station
Micro-Modular and ESI's 32 and 2000

Studio Cleanup

Well, I spent Sunday re-arranging my racks, deciding that I didn't like the position of my Roland S-750 being stuck at the top (now at a more useable middle location). But what a nightmare! It's not as simple as when I only had a Akai X7000, Roland MKS-70 and TR-505 Drum machine, Kawai K1r and a Korg SQD-8 Sequencer. What's that? 7 audio and 4 midi cables! I now have 25+ midi devices going through two Opcode Studio 5LX's, so that's over 50 midi leads.

One patch bay and two 12 channel mixers full of audio leads - roughly 35 of. IT's a major challenge unplugging, moving and re-connecting them, keeping a track sheet, then building a fresh OMS studio set-up and Patchbay list.
Completely knackering and rewarding in equal measures though.

I still need to fix a bug in my G3 (os 9.2, 500 mhz) where the midi seems to freeze every now and then. More than likely a extension that needs to be removed. I also need to make a useable library of patches, I've got Opcode's Galaxy and also MidiQuest. That should keep me busy for a week or two....