R-Explore: A disk browswer for Roland 12-bit samplers
Format Support
Currently, R-Explore supports S-550, S-50, and S-330 disks. W-30 images may be read but are not officially supported.
Features
- Play back wave samples
- Export single wave sample, or export all samples to a zip archive
- Export a text report containing parameter information
- Browse parameters
What It Doesn't Do
- Edit disk data
- Read in disk images; a sample disk must first be imaged with another program such as SDISKW or dd.
Future Planned Features
- Support for .HFE file format for use with floppy drive emulators
Platform Support
R-Explore is still in development; it was developed on Linux Mint 20 with Python 3.8.
Primary supported platforms are Windows, macOS, and Linux, but it should be possible to install with source dist on any platform with a recent version of Python.
R-Explore should require at least Windows Vista due to the Python version used; it's only been tested on Windows 10 so far, so
if you have tested it on any other versions please let me know.
During development, I made a map of the S-550 disk format. This is in the repository under docs as diskfmt.txt, but I'll include a more expanded and well formatted document for anyone curious later.
It has also come to my attention that the Windows binary may set off Bitdefender's Advanced Threat Defense detection. This is based on heuristics for determining "suspicious behavior" and does not indicate a specific known threat. I'm looking into this, but in the meantime if you don't wish to circumvent Bitdefender's detection, I recommend attempting to use the source distribution which does not rely on a precompiled binary.
Current Stable - 0.7
This is the current version. If you experience any issues, please let me know, but also try the previous version below.
New features in this version:
- Full support for viewing S-50 parameters
- Improved macOS integration
- Revamped interfaced
- Visual waveform view
- Option to use start and end loop points for playback and export
- Remembers previous directories used, or set default directory options
- Displays system software version on disk
DOWNLOADS
Installation Notes
- macOS: there is now an App bundle available as a .dmg disk image. However, due to toolkit bundling difficulties, you will need to first install the Python 3.7 runtime from the
offical Python website.
- Linux: the binary distribution has been pulled for this version because it didn't really work outside of Debian anyway.
Use the source distribution for now, and .deb and .rpm packages are in the works.
- Windows: Build has been switched to 64-bit for this version. If you would like a 32-bit version and don't want to use the source distribution, let me know.
Old Stable (0.5 RC1)
DOWNLOADS
Notes
- Note: S-50 disks will display a limited interface; see 'Format Support' section.
- macOS: This version has less macOS support and an App bundle is not available for this version. You will need to use the source distribution.
- Linux: A binary tarball is provided for this version, but doesn't really work outside of Debian. It may work on Debian as long as you install python3-tk first.
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Last updated October 26th, 2020
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