" So  you just bought a Mirage "
                               or
                      Mirage Starters Guide
                           Version 1.1

                          Peter Sansom
                         peter@va.com.au
                 http://sustenance.va.com.au/d/

 1.  Introduction
 2.  Prelims
 3.  Disks
 4.  Formatting Disk
 5.  Basic Loading
 6.  Basic Sampling
 7.  Basic Programs
 8.  Basic Saving
 9.  Sequencer
10.  On-line stuff

1. Introduction

This document is designed as a quick get you up and running guide
to the Ensoniq Mirage Sampler.  It does not replace any of the 
official manuals or documentation.  The available manuals are the
" Musicians Manual " - a little red book that covers the standard 
operation of the Mirage and " The Advanced Sampling Guide " - 
features more information on sampling , sound maniplulation and 
the instructions for MASOS , the Mirage Advanced Operating System.
To obtain copies of these manuals contact Syntaur Productions who 
also have other Mirage products.  You will find details in the
last chapter.

2. Preliminaries 

Incase you are connecting the Mirage into a Midi system or
using a Rack Mirage here are the Midi parameters. Param 81
sets Omni mode On or Off. If it's On then it willreceive Midi
data on all 16 channels. When it is Off the Mirage receives only
on the channel as set in Parameter 82, Channel Select. Param
83 sets the Out to being an Out/Thru. Parameter 84 is concerned
with what control data the Mirage will respond to.  When On
it can send and receive Pitch Bend and Mod wheel.  When Off it
doesn't.

3. Disks

So you have arrived home with your Mirage and are eager to get it
up and running.  Before diving right in there are a few things to
sort out first.  Your Mirage should have come with some disks. One
of these disks will be the operating system. The reason for putting
the OS on disk is that it allows for updates to it to be loaded in.
The Mirage will not work without an OS disk so you better hope it
came with one ! If it didn't then contact either the person/shop
from whom you bought the sampler, another Mirage user, the mirage
net mailing list or Syntaur Productions. When it comes time to buy
blank disks you need to buy Double Sided Double Density ( MF2DD )
3.5 " floppy disks. They are getting a bit rare but a couple of
phone calls should locate some. In the US try Staples and in 
Australia try your local Post Office shop. 

Let us assume , for the moment , that you did receive some disks
with the Mirage.  These disks can have a variety of functions ;

- Operating System disks
- Formatting disks
- Sound disks / Sequence disks

Now, how to figure out what is what.  The easiest way would be
to look at the disks and see if they are labled.  If there are
no obvious signs of what is on the disks then the Mirage can
tell us what they are.  So plug in your Mirage , to the power
and to a mixer or whatever you will use to listen to the Mirage.
Now insert the mystery disk into the disk drive and power up the
Mirage.  You shoukld now be hearing the disk drive churn away as
the mirage figures out whta the disk is.  There are several 
reactions that could occur. 

If the LED shows UD then you have a disk that has not been 
formatted for the Mirage.

If the LED display starts to flash FD then you have a formatting
disk.  Some sound disks may also contain the Formatting program
so it is worth while checking all your disks.  A Formatting disk
is vital as it's one of few ways of formatting disks the Mirage
can read. 

If the LED displays a number then you have an Operating System
disk.  To determine what OS you have you need to check the value
of parameter 97.  To do this first click the button marked Param
under the LED to make sure that you will be changing parameters.
Then type the numbers 9 then 7 on the keypad and 97 should appear
in the LED.  Now click the value button and a number will be 
displayed.  If the number is 3 or higher then you have the 
Standard OS.  If it is 2.0 then you may well have a MASOS disk.
Operating system disks also contain Sounds.  If you have loaded
an OS disk then the first bank of sounds should be loaded too.

Make sure to label disks.  You may only have a few but believe me
they will start to pile up after a while.

There are other codes the Mirage can give you about the disk drive
and these may be useful to know Before you lay down your hard 
earned cash.  

When the Mirage is initially powered up the LED should flash
" nd " meaning No Disk. Put one in the drive and it will stop
flashing.  After placing a disk into the drive there are several
things the Mirage may tell you. " ud " means the disk isnt 
formatted. " Pd " the disk is write protected , will flash if
yo try to save to a protected disk. " nF " is Not Found . 
The really bad news message " dE " disk drive error meaning some
form of mechanical problem with the drive. If the drive doesnt
work it can be replaced.  There are details of a nifty Drive 
conversion/replacment at Don Selepian's www site.

4.  Formatting Disk

If you want to save sounds to disk you will need to format the
disk first. Simply turn the Mirage on with the Formatting disk
in the drive.  When the LED is flashing FD take the formatting
disk Out of the drive and replace it with the blank disk you 
wish to format.  Once this is done then press the " Save Seq "
button and find something else to do as the formatting will take
a few minutes.  When it's finished the LED will flash " FC " 
and you have a disk you can save sounds and sequences onto.  
You will also find that the disk you have formatted will also 
boot up the Mirage in Formatting Mode. However there are two kinds 
of formatting disks .  The first is the standard FMT-01. This is 
the kind I hae described above.  The second is the FMT-02.  
This program is able to format disks and place a copy of the 
Operating system on the disk.  It is most likely that the version 
you have is the 01. The only way to tell is either via a label on
the disk or by the behaviour of the formatting program.  As I only
have version one I can only describe that version.

5. Basic Loading

Hopefully a couple of sound disks were included with the Mirage.
If not, dont despair , keep on reading as I will cover some of
how the Mirage and it's disks and sounds are layed out and treated
here.  You will hae noticed that there are two Sample and Load 
buttons, Upper and Lower.  These refer to both memory banks and
also the layout of the sounds over the keyboard.  Now,  each disk 
can carry three Upper and three Lower sound banks.  Sometimes the
Lower and Upper sounds go together to make up a complete sound like
a piano over the full range.  At other times they could be 
completely independant of each other like drum sounds on the Lower
bank and a bass sound on the Upper.  Each of these halves , Upper
and Lower , can be broken down again into anything up to eight 
sections.  The Mirage refers to these as seperate wavesamples.

     DISK      MIRAGE 

     UP 1      Upper Bank  -------- Wave 1     
     LW 1      Lower Bank           Wave 2
     UP 2                           Wave 3
     LW 2                           Wave 4
     UP 3                           Wave 5
     LW 3                           Wave 6
                                    Wave 7
                                    Wave 8

  Fig 1 - How sound data is organised.

To load a sound from disk, stick the disk into the drive then 
simply click either Lower or Upper , or both for Load All .  
The LED will flash either LU, LL or LA. Using the number keypad 
click in 1, 2 or 3.  The Mirage will now load the sound and you 
should be able to play it from the keyboard.

6.  Basic Sampling

That's the reason for owning a sampler , after all !  First decide
on the noise you want to sample.  Is it pre-recorded material or 
an accoustic sound ?  You see, the Mirage's Input can be set to
either a Line Input or a more sensitive Microphone Input.  To set
this parameter click Param then key in the number 75 and click
Value.  If this displays On then the input is set for Line level.
If it is set to OFF it is set for Microphone level.  One thing 
missing on the Mirage is anyway of attenuating the input signal
so this has to be done from what ever you are sampling from. There
is , however ,  a Level indicator displayed when Sampling is 
selected. Plug in either your microphone or sound source into the
Mirage's Input socket.  

Next we need to tell the Mirage where we want the sample to be, 
upper, lower and what wave number. Lets say we want to sample in 
the Lower bank in wave number 1.  First you need to select the
Lower half.  Click the 0/Prog button. If it flashes U1 then click
it again and it will change to  flashing L1. Once L1 is flashing 
press the 1 button and it will stop flashing.  You have now set 
the Mirage to Lower Program 1.  More about programs later.  Next 
click the Param button and then key in 26. Param 26 value indicates
the Current Wave . This indicates the wave we will be sampling into.  

To check and change the size of the sample area allocated to the 
Current Wave there are 3 parameters. The beggining of the wave is 
accessed from Param 60 Wave Start. The end of the the wave is 
accessed from Param 61 Wave End. The third parmeter is 65 Loop 
Switch.  Obviously you would turn this on to loop from the start 
to the end and back again.  However it has a second function and 
that is to truncate ( cut ) the sample.  You see , no matter how 
much you change Param 61 (Wave End) it will have no effect until
the Loop is turned On then Off again. For now lets just set Param
60 (Wave Start) to 00 and Param 61 (Wave End) to FF.  Dont be 
alarmed by these odd numbers they are Hexadecimal numbers. You
will need to get used to them if you are to do any sampling with 
the Mirage. 

HEX - DEC   HEX - DEC  HEX - DEC         HEX - DEC   HEX - DEC
---------   ---------  ----------        ----------  ----------
 00 -  0     09 -  9    12 - 18           F0 - 240    F9 - 249  
 01 -  1     0A - 10    13 - 19           F1 - 241    FA - 250
 02 -  2     0B - 11    14 - 20           F2 - 242    FB - 251
 03 -  3     0C - 12    15 - 21           F3 - 243    FC - 252
 04 -  4     0D - 13    16 - 22   . . .   F4 - 244    FD - 253
 05 -  5     0E - 14    17 - 23           F5 - 245    FE - 254
 06 -  6     0F - 15    18 - 24           F6 - 246    FF - 255
 07 -  7     10 - 16    19 - 25           F7 - 247
 08 -  8     11 - 17    1A - 26           F8 - 248

  Fig 2 -    Hexadecimal to Decimal number charts

OK Having set up the wave area to sample into it's now time to
set some sampling parameters.  The first parameter to decide on
is Param 73 , Sampling Time.  The values of this parameter are
expressed in microseconds !  To work out the more normally used
Sample Rate you need to use this formula -

                         1,000
 Sample Rate ( kHz ) = -----------
                       Sample Time ( microseconds )

A value of 34 gives the highest Sample Rate of about 29 kHz
and a value of 99 gives around 10 kHz sample rate. The Lower the
Sample Time the Higher the Sample Rate.  A higher Sampling Rate
gives a better high frequency response but uses up sample space
faster so the time allowed will be shorter.

Speaking of high frequecies there is a rule to figuring out
the highest reproducable frequency for a Sample Rate called the
Nyquist freqency.  Simply divide the Sample Rate in half and you 
have the Nyquist freqency.  It is best to filter out any 
frequencies above the nyquist other wise these high frequecies
can " foldover " and create an awful noise.  So to filter out these
frequencies the Mirage has a built in Input Filter.  Parameter 74
sets the cutoff freqency of this filter. Value 99 sets the cutoff
to about 15 kHz and 0 sets it to 50 Hz.  You will probably need to
play around with this parameter to get the setting right for each
particular sound.  Lets say the sampling rate is 10 kHz then the
nyquist would be 5 kHz so the filter would have to be set below 5
kHz.

  50 - 1k     77 -  6k     87 - 11k     94 - 16k     99 - 21k
  58 - 2k     79 -  7k     89 - 12k     95 - 17k
  65 - 3k     82 -  8k     90 - 13k     96 - 18k
  70 - 4k     84 -  9k     92 - 14k     97 - 19k
  74 - 5k     86 - 10k     93 - 15k     98 - 20k

  Fig 3 - Approximate Input filter frequencies...

Now the filter is set , the next parameter to check is Param 76
, Sampling Threshold.  This sets the level where  Auto Sampling
will occur.  After telling the Mirage to sample it will display
a level meter , actually just a series of 3 horizontal bars , in 
the LED.  When the signal exceeds the Sampling threshold then the 
Mirage will begin sampling.  To turn this feature Off just set it
to 00 and sampling will begin as soon as you hit the Enter key.

So this brigns us neatly to pushing the Sample button !
Click the button marked Sample Lower .  Once this is done the LED
will flash SL for a bit then a couple of horizontal lines will
be flickering in the LED.  This is the Level Indicator. You dont 
want it flashing into the top bar to often or you will get evil
distortion. Have it hover around about the middle.  Again you dont
want the signal to be to low either or there will be lots of noise.
When you are ready to sample clickt the Enter button and away you
go. The Mirage will stop sampling when it gets to the end of the
wave space. If you want to cancel from sampling click the Cancel
button.

Once the Mirage has finished sampling then you should be able
to play the sound from the keyboard.

Once you have the sound you want, it's time to set up a Program.

7. Basic Programs.

So the Mirage is divided into Lower and Upper banks and these 
banks can have up to eight wavesamples each. There is also a
Synth section to the Mirage that the samples pass through 
before leaving the output.  There is an LFO , a controllable
analog Low pass filter with resonance and a controllable amp.
Both the filter and the amp are controlled by their own envelope
generators. The parameters for these are stored as a Program.
Each bank can contain 4 programs or four sets of settings.
To change between these Programs click the 0/Prog button and it
will flash either U1 or L1. Click a number from one to four on
the keypad and the Mirage will switch to that program. Here is 
the basic parameters for a program.

LFO Params     Filter Params

31 - Speed     36 - Filter cutoff
32 - Depth     37 - Filter Resonance
               38 - Filter Tracking

Filter Envelope

40 - Attack       45 - Attack VS 
41 - Peak Level   46 - Peak VS
42 - Decay        47 - Decay kyboard scaled
43 - Sustain      48 - Sustain VS
44 - Release      49 - Release VS

Amp Envelope

50 - Attack       55 - Attack VS 
51 - Peak Level   56 - Peak VS
52 - Decay        57 - Decay kyboard scaled
53 - Sustain      58 - Sustain VS
54 - Release      59 - Release VS

Attack  Velocity Sensitive - more velocity faster Attack rate.
Peak    Velocity Sensitive - more velocity higher Peak. 
Decay   Keyboard Scaled    - Longer decay at lower notes. 
Sustain Velocity Sensitive - more velocity higher Sustain value. 
Release Velocity Sensitive - more key-up velocity shorter 
                             Release. 

8. Basic Saving

Having Sampled a sound and set up a program or two it comes time
to save the sound.  Nothing could be simpler.  Just place your
blank formatted disk into the drive.  Click the Param button 
and enter either Param 11 ( Save Lower ) Param 12 ( Save Upper ) 
or Param 13 ( Save Upper and Lower ).  The LED will flash and
indicate the choice you have made and wait for you to push a 
number between 1 and three for the disk location. Once selected
the Mirage will save the sound to disk.  Be aware that it will
write over any pre-existing data without warning you. So write
protect any disks you would like to keep.

9. Basic Sequencer

Now this is something I havent really used much as I use a
computer for sequencing.  But here is a bare bones description
of the Sequencer. To record a sequence click the Rec Seq button
once to set standby and again to create a new sequence. The LED
would have been flashing rS then stoped on the second REC push. 
To start recording simply play the keyboard. To stop press Stop
and to play press Play. Param 87 is the Sequencer Clock rate.
To save your sequence press SEQ SAVE , the LED flashed SS.  
Select between one and eight for the sequence number and then
enter.  The mirage will save the sequence.  To Load press the 
SEQ Load button then press the number of the sequence you wish
to load then Enter.

10. Internet Resources

Mailing List

There is a mailing list that deals exclusivly with discussions
about the Mirage.  To subscribe goto this page. 

http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Mirage-Net

You will also find alot of useful Mirage info at the Mirage-Net site. 

http://www.webcom.com/jawknee/Mirage/

Parameter Card - Mirage info

Richard Wifall has a page that contains alot of good sampling and 
MASOS tutorials from old editions of the Transoiq Hacker
magazine.  There is also a couple of gifs of the original
Mirage Parameter Card.  This chart  lists parameters and
functions, a must have especially if you dont have a manual.

http://www.sundial.net/~wifall/richard/audio/mirage/

Syntaur Productions

Syntaur Productions amazingly still stock Mirage items such as
formatting disks , Musicians Manual , MASOS, Advanced Samplers 
Guide  and the Sound Process OS .

http://www.fatsnake.com/syntaur

Floppy Drive

Kerry Townson's article on replacing the drive  

http://www.webcom.com/jawknee/Mirage/DriveReplacement/drive1.htm

Art Entlich's Double-sided floppy drive conversion article 
 
http://www.webcom.com/jawknee/Mirage/DriveConversion/</a>

PC disk images

If you have an IBM-PC and your after some disks there is a 
program available called EDE - the Ensoniq Disk Extractor
and there may be some sites that contain disk images in
this format.  There is also MREAD and MWRITE that do a 
similar thing. Here are some sites that feature disk images
in these formats.

Gordon Pearce has a page with some disk images that contain
not only sounds but OS 3.2 , the standard Mirage operating system.
There are instructions for using the disk images and where to 
get the correct PC software to create the disks.

http://62.172.104.58/homes/gordonjcp/index.html

Leigh Smith's Page - contains some more DOS software and
some more sound disks.

http://www.leighsmith.com/Music/Mirage/

There is also my Mirage Web page , the original source of this
document , home to the MASOS Midifile format sample dump library
and also  various tips , hints etc.

http://sustenance.va.com.au/d/mirage.html</a>

For even more stuff keep checking back at my  Mirage page as I 
am constantly updating it.

----------------------------------------------------------------
(c) May 1999 - Peter Sansom 
Update .1 - 10 April 2000