Korg DW-8000

Over the years I've had many email exchanges with people trying to get their DW-8000s to work again, many of whom used my DW-8000 Battery Replacement HOWTO to replace their memory backup battery. Since I have a ton of experience and knowledge about this particular synth, I decided to create a page that collects all the knowledge and resources I've got related to this great synthesizer.

Unless noted, everything here is stuff I created myself (as in, not ripped off from some other web site). Exceptions are annotated with a source URL. Contributions are welcomed, and will be attributed (email me).

NOTE: Almost everything here also applies to the Korg EX-8000, which is just a keyboard-less DW-8000 as a 2U rackmount sound module.

COMMERCIAL AFFILIAITONS: I DO NOT work for or have any other commercial affiliations with any of the companies mentioned on this page. Long ago, Korg bought and re-sold my patch editor software through their dealer channel, but I no longer have any business ties with Korg (only nostalgic ties).

Contents

• Picture
• Specifications
• Manuals
• Patches
• Battery Replacement
• FAQ
• Tape Dumps
• Little-Known Facts
• Kenton Control Freak Patch

Picture

Click for larger image. Source: Passagen.

Specifications

Manuals

Owners Manual

Service Manual

Patches

Battery Replacement

The DW-8000 has a CR-2032 coin-sized battery to maintain its patch memory when it is powered off. The failure of this battery is the most common failure mode for the DW-8000—the battery was meant to be replaced after five years. In reality, many of these batteries survived much longer than that.

In order to save 4¢ or something in the manufacturing costs, and to ensure a continued revenue stream for Korg Service Centers, Korg chose to actually solder in the backup battery, rather than put it in a socket. For this reason, replacement of this battery is a bigger deal than it should be. If you're handy, however, you can replace the battery yourself, and put the battery socket in there that Korg should have provided in the first place. For the full procedure, see my DW-8000 Battery Replacement HOWTO.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Over the years I've answered hundreds of emails related to the DW-8000 - usually when people are having problems. I've collected a lot of the most common questions and answers here. If the wording seem a little awkward here and there, it's because I'm using word combinations that will maximize people's ability to find these answers using an internet search.

Q: Is the DW-8000 manual available online?
A: You've come to the right place (see above).

Q: Where can I get a replacement DW-8000 power cord?
A: The DW-8000 uses a vestigial two-conductor, rectangular-block power cord, rather than the (now standard) IEC three-prong power plugs that computers and more modern gear use. The simple solution: Korg sells them for $16 on this page (it is item number 60002100), or Sam Ash part PWC178. They are also widely available online and on eBay. A better solution (in my opinion) is to retrofit the DW-8000 with an IEC power receptacle. There is a great HOWTO on dw8000.com that descibes how to replace the two-prong jack with a standard three-prong.

Q: How long does a DW-8000's battery live?
A: It depends. The official line is that the batteries live for five years, but many, many users report batteries that live ten to twelve years or sometimes even longer. One factor is how much the DW-8000 was turned on during its life, since when the unit is powered up, the battery doesn't have to keep the memory alive.

Q: How do I know if my DW-8000 needs a new battery?
A: The primary symptom is that the DW-8000 forgets all its patches if you power it off. Also, it may make no sound or...bad sound because of memory corruption. You might see strange symbols on the LEDs (again a result of memory corruption). If you are able to successfully tape-load patches into the DW-8000, then power it off for a few minutes, power it back on, and the patches are gone, that's a sure sign of a bad battery.

Q: What about EX-8000 battery replacement?
A: The procedure is the same, at least in spirit. There is some board inside the EX-8000's case that has a soldered-on CR2032 battery. You find that, and replace it with a socket, being especially careful about between-board clearance.

Q: Can't I just replace my DW-8000's battery with an exact solder-in replacement instead of adding a socket?
A: Of course you can! The part you want is Interstate Batteries LIT1875. BUT: you are being shortsighted. You'll have to do this whole crazy thing again in five or ten years, and if you follow my directions and put a socket in there, you'll just be able to slip a new battery in instead of warming up the soldering iron. Your call.

Q: Is there a procedure for erasing the memory on the DW-8000?
A: There is, but you should only do this if you've replaced the battery and still can't get the synth to accept a tape load. This procedure will ERASE ALL 64 PATCHES from the DW-8000s memory and reset its MIDI channel to 1.

1. Turn off the DW-8000
2. Press and hold the "5" and "6" buttons in the Programmer section
3. Turn on the DW-8000
4. The DW-8000's patch memory has been erased

1. Set the "From Tape" level to "High" with the swich next to the rear-panel "From Tape" jack.
2. Set the rear-panel "Write" switch to "Enable."
3. Set the rear-panel "Tape" switch to "Enable." The DW-8000's display will show "7APE" (7-segment for "TAPE").
4. Load the .WAV file up in some .WAV player, such as Windows Media Player, WinAmp, etc.
5. Press the LOAD key on the front panel.
6. Play the .WAV file in your sound player application.
7. The front panel Value LEDs should show the bank number being written (1 through 8) as the tape load proceeds.
8. If the load is successful, the DW-8000's display will say "Good," or "Err" if not. If you get "Err," press the front-panel Cancel button, try changing your computer's sound volume, and try again.

1. Get a USB MIDI interface for your computer. A very simple, inexpensive one that I use on my laptop is the M-Audio USB Uno.
2. Once you’ve got a MIDI interface, use two MIDI cables (DIN-5 male-to-male, available at any music store) to hook the computer MIDI Out to the DW-8000 MIDI In and the computer MDI In to the DW-8000 MIDI Out. (The USB Uno described above has the cables built-in).
3. Get MIDI Ox www.midiox.com) or some other SysEx dumping program.
4. Follow the directions on my page to do the SysEx loads.

Tape Dumps

If you need to get patches into your DW-8000, by far the easiest and most reliable way to do that is by sending SysEx dumps to the synthesizer from a computer. My patches page has lots to choose from and a brief description of how to download patchblocks.

If you don't have a working computer-MIDI setup from which to download SysEx data, you're stuck using the old-skool tape dump mechanism. Here are 44.1 KHz 16-bit recordings of the Preload A and Preload B tape dumps, directly off my original factory preset cassette.

To use these, you'll need to connect the line out from your soundcard to the tape in on the DW-8000. Start the tape load on the DW-8000 and play the .WAV file on your computer. This is logically equivalent to a tape load from an actual cassette tape.

SPEAKER DAMAGE ALERT! These WAV files are recorded HOT so watch those speakers!

Little-Known Facts

Here's some little-known facts about the Korg DW-8000. If you have any little bits to contribute to this list, please email me.

• Autoparameter—There is one "invisible" parameter for each patch in the DW-8000, which I called the "autoparameter" in my ancient ProEdit Patch Editor. The autoparameter is the parameter number that is preset in the parameter field when a given patch is dialed in. It can be useful to set a parameter like 31 (filter cutoff) as the autoparameter, so you can easily change the cutoff in realtime with the data slider. To set the autoparameter for a patch, dial in a parameter, then write the patch. The next time that patch is retrieved, the same parameter will be preset in the parameter field.

Kenton Control Freak Patch

One annoying thing about the DW-8000 (and many synths in the industry's first wave of digital synths) was the lack of knobs. You can really only control one parameter at a time in realtime with the Data slider. Of course, you want to do things like change both Cutoff and Resonance at the same time.

In my studio I have a Kenton Control Freak Studio Edition which has 16 programmable sliders on it. The Control Freak is really programmable -- you can make it do pretty much anything.

In the case of the DW-8000, it's so old that it doesn't respond to the now common controllers for things like Cutoff, Color (Resonance), Decay, etc. It is, however, possible to control these parameters with MIDI, but via an ugly SysEx parameter change message.

Once again the Control Freak pulls it off. Here is a Control Freak SE patch I created that allows you to control a ton of the DW-8000's most important parameters all in real time. You won't believe how much life this breathes into your DW-8000 until you try it. Here's the list:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Because SysEx messages are channel-specific, this Control Freak Studio Edition patch will only work if your DW-8000 is set to MIDI channel 2. If you want to modify the patch for whatever MIDI channel you usually keep your DW-8000 set to, email me and I'll tell you how to rechannelize the patch.