The Apex Unleashed

AVM Apex (produced by AVM Technology) is a top quality sound card for PC computers. It includes one of the most sophisticated synthesis engines ever placed onto PC sound board: the Kurzweil MA-1. This page will help you to unleash your card and use full power of the MA-1. I hope Pinnacle owners will find a lot of interesting stuff here, too.

I'm sorry, this page is terribly outdated.

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MA-1 Controlling Software

Patch Editor is a program that allows to modify and create new MIDI instruments using all MA-1 chip capabilities. There are three programs available now.

Everest Editor
Written by Mark Lakata and available directly from his home page. It's a really sophisticated program and pretty easy to use. I like the multilayer view. In my opinion it is the best available patch editor for MA-1 based soundcards.
Latest version available: 1.47

MAAS Editor
Created by phloobydust. Excellent editor with unusual interface. Includes mixer and visualization plugin. Really nice and easy to use.
Latest version available: 1.00

Apex Sample Studio
Produced by AVM Technology. A lot of features have not beet implemeted yet. The Apex Editor presents alternative way to control MA-1 synth and may be useful. The *.apex format includes embedded samples. Hope it will be finished soon...
Latest version available: Beta 3.5.

Pinnacle Patch Editor
Copyrighted by Turtle Beach Systems. Will not work with Apex! I will no longer distribute a fix for this software due to serious warnings from TBS. Compact and pretty intuitve - I really like it's scratch bank feature.
Latest version available: Beta 8

What is the Apex built of?

Kurzweil MA-1
Analog Devices AD1816A Sound Port Controller
Motorola 68330 Microprocessor
AMD Am29000F Microprocessor
2 megabytes of sample ROM (including 4MB of compressed 16-bit samples)

Places worth visiting

Sound hardware manufacturers	AVM Technology, Inc. is the Apex sound card manufacturer. Lots of stuff!!! Turtle Beach Systems is a manufacturer of the Pinnacle sound card. You may find a couple of utilities and documents for MA-1 synth there (including the original Pinnacle Patch Editor). Kurzweil Music Systems is a manufacturer of famous Kurzweil synthesisers. Info about V.A.S.T. and MA-1 manufacturers, lot of quality patches. Star Multimedia produces sound boards based on the Kurzweil chipsets.
MA-1 soundcards related pages Infos, patches, utilities and links!	Apex HQ is a great site for Apex owners. Includes new discussion board, links, samples and utilities. Everest is a great patch editor for MA-1 based cards. Works with Apex as well as Pinnacle! Written by Mark Lakata. Hununu's home page includes information about Pinnacle and a bunch of custom patches for MA-1. The Early Patches Download Area includes some really interesting patches of the ancient instruments (in PBF format). Pink Noise Pinnacle Patches Page includes patches in the PBF format. Frequently updated, excellent drums! Timo Peltonen's Unofficial Pinnacle Page includes information about Pinnacle but is pretty outdated. Apex Central is an excellent web site for Apex users. You'll find A LOT OF exciting stuff there, including many patches, very good FAQ file and Apex demos! IgorD's Page includes interesting Pinnacle Bank File format patches.
Other samples resources	AWave is a shareware synth patch converter. You should try it definitly! Sweetwater is a distributor of professional quality samples mainly for Kurzweil synthesisers. This site includes a bunch of the semi-pro samples freely available. K2000 Launchpad includes a couple of links to free and commercial samples for the Kurzweil synthesisers. Da Red Ear Page includes various patches for the previous generation of Turtle Beach soundcards (Wavefront WFP format). Many useful links. The Patch Designers Home Page includes patches and software links. Wavefront Home Page is another page related to the Wavefront based soundcards. Good choice of the WFP patches.
General synths and soundcards related sites	Sonic State Synth Site is a really huge site including info on the various models of synthesisers. I really like this page. Synth Zone - another HUGE site related to the sound synthesisers. Great choice of the great links. MAZ Sound is an excellent site for computer musicians and sound card owners. Includes a lot of samples and links! Ventamatic is a Spanish distributor of the MIDI/audio/video stuff. This site includes a copy of the original Apex Editor released by AVM Technology! Thanks to Javier for this information.

How to set the Apex to work as a multiclient

Apex MIDI drivers are single client. It means that single application only can use the Apex. But there is really nice freeware program available elsewhere: the MIDI Loopback written by Hubert Winkler. You can download it from Winsite (pub/win3/sound/mdlpbk25.zip). Using this software you can force Apex to run multiclient. Read included doc file before using this software. It it funny to listen to two MIDI files played simultaneously (try setup 1).
Much more useful is to run sequencing software (like Cakewalk or Cubase) and modify patches on the fly. All changes will be recorded realtime! Try setup 2. However, it works perfect with Apex Sample Studio and may not work with another editors. Try to switch between different options built in your sequencer (it is important to enable sending the sysex messages).

Loopback Setup 1

Loopback Setup 2

You can try to use another freeware program, as well: the MIDI Yoke written by Jammie O'Connel. Another solution is to use MultiMID, shareware program available from Winsite (pub/win95/sound/multimid.zip).

Latest update: October 22, 2000 by Piotr Rotkiewicz

Send comments to: Piotr Rotkiewicz