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With the successful Phat Boy being one of the most popular and affordable desktop hardware MIDI controllers, Keyfax have announced a Version 2 software upgrade for it, which became standard on all models from November 1999, with older units being upgradeable by the low cost replacement of the CPU chip. They have the same outward appearance, including the glowing red eye logo for the power on indicator! The Phat Boy operates under a simple premise. It has fourteen knobs, one of which is a 16 wayMIDI channel selector, leaving you with 13 multi function rotary control knobs that are used to transmit MIDI controller data. The Mode switch has six modes or an off position. Each mode is a preset which assigns specific controller numbers to each knob, and in manycases these are templates for popular instruments, and software platforms such as Steinberg Rebirth. eg. Mode 1 is for Yamaha XG or Roland GS modules and assigns Knob 1 to filter cutoff, Knob 2 to resonance, Knob 3 to vibrato rate and so on, through allthe Phat Boy's controls. Switching through the modes lets you choose different combinations of controllers. In many cases your module or effects unit will let you assign modulation parameters to any MIDI controller so you could useany of the Keyfax presetswith it, but the GM, XG and GS standards tend to use standardised numbers for commonly occurring commands. eg. Volume is always CC 7, Pan is always CC 10, Modulation is always CC 1 and Reverb is always CC 91 etc. The PhatBoy has a "snapshot" button which will transmit the current status of all its controllers so you can easily save a particular setup into your sequencer. The rear panel has MIDI In, Out and Thru sockets. Any MIDI input is merged with the PhatBoy's own output data, but is alwayspresent unchanged, at the MIDI Thru of course. Keyfax also include a free floppy disk of MIDI files highlighting their "Twiddly Bits" collections.
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