Performance Considerations
The Poly-800 was designed and manufactured using an OKI 80C85 8 bit microprocessor. This microprocessor operates at a
6MHz clock speed which is significantly slower than modern microprocessor designs. In order to get the best possible
results from a Poly-800 that is fitted with the HAWK-800 kit certain considerations should be given to CPU performance.
1. Unlike the original Poly-800, the HAWK-800 software is designed to buffer all incoming and outgoing MIDI data.
This improves the synth's performance in some ways but it also means that there can be noticeable delay of the
onset of notes if a large amount of MIDI data is sent to the HAWK-800 in a short period of time. Wherever
possible, a HAWK-800 should be provided with a dedicated MIDI IN connection (port) so that only MIDI
information that is intended to be received by the HAWK-800 is actually sent to the HAWK-800. It is preferable
that the MIDI IN connection should be set up on the upstream device so that it only sends channel data that is on
the channel that the HAWK-800 is set to receive on. Try to avoid sending other channel data to the HAWK-800 as
this only makes the HAWK-800 spend additional CPU time processing MIDI information that it is ultimately going
to ignore.
2. A special “fast” mode has been implemented in the HAWK-800. This allows the HAWK-800 to react to note ON
events as fast as possible even though the HAWK-800 is actually handling many more parameters than the
original Poly-800. Nevertheless, even in “fast” mode, the HAWK-800 experiences up to 15mS of additional lag
time before note ON events (either sourced via MIDI or the keyboard) result in a sounding note. To ensure that
the lag is kept to a minimum, you should try to ensure that MIDI controller messages (or any other control
messages) are sent to the HAWK-800 long before any note ON event is sent. Also, try not to intersperse MIDI
controller messages with MIDI note chords. In other words, take advantage of “fast” mode by sending note ON
events without any other interspersed MIDI messages.
3. The velocity operators OP1 and OP2 (set by parameters P1 81-86) and VCF velocity operator (set by parameters
P1 87-88) add additional delay between when a MIDI note on event is received by the Poly-800 and the actual
onset of those notes. Thus, if you do not wish to use velocity sensitive data incoming on the MIDI in port then
disable all three velocity operators by setting parameters P1 81, 84 and 87 to zero (0).
4. Avoid using soft thru if at all possible. If you are cascading an EX-800 and a Poly-800 and you wish to use cascade
mode then using soft thru can be useful but other than this particular configuration try to avoid using soft thru. If
you do use soft thru understand that there can be noticeable delays between receiving MIDI data and then the
HAWK-800 resending the MIDI data.
5. When playing chords it is recommended that EG3 trigger mode (parameter 45) be set to single trigger (1). This
will improve both the speed of note onset as well as the attack gradient of envelope generator three (EG3). This is
particularly noticeable when using the on board sequencer to play sequences of chords.
6. If you are not using the LFO's to modulate any sound then set the LFO free running mode to ON for all LFO's. This
slightly improves the speed of note onset (by avoiding resetting all of the LFO's waveforms each time a note on
event occurs).
Sequencer Advanced Mode
The original Poly-800 sequencer is probably close to one of the worst (if not the worse) step edit sequencers ever created
for a synthesizer. The HAWK-800 upgrade provides improvements to both sequence editing as well as sequence playback.
The original Poly-800 sequence editing and playback features remain available in the HAWK-800. Setting global parameter
43 to a value of one (1) will set the HAWK-800 to work just as the original Poly-800 sequencer did. However, we think that
you will quickly find that the new “advanced sequencer mode” provides so many new features that you will never go back
to the old sequencer operation.
Here are the main features and operations of advanced sequencer mode:
1. To set the HAWK-800 to operate in “Advanced Sequence Mode) set global parameter 43 to any value from 2 to
64. The value you choose should be the number of quarter notes per bar that you desire. The most common
selections would be 16 (4/4 time) and 12 (3/4 time). If you wish to use eight notes then you can use 32 and 24
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