We commonly get questions about compatibility between things like CD-ROM and CDR drives and various samplers. Amazingly there are still CD drives and instruments that are not compatible with one another. This is a frustrating phenomenon, and also a great reason to get your drive from us (instead of your computer store) because we do test them to verify performance. Many people understandably request a list of compatible drives, but again this isn’t always available. Dan Fisher, our Chief Soundware Engineer sheds some light on this (no doubt provided by his behind the scene contacts at Kurzweil).
“The only reliable way to verify performance of individual drives is to test each one, and testing for all possible variables can be an exhausting exercise. Even when Kurzweil did try to do some major compatibility testing, the data quickly became useless as all-new drives and drive types soon replaced those on the list. Each Kurzweil OS update tries to include more variations on what will work, but it’s done on a SCSI Spec level, not on a brandname/model number basis. So even though each OS adds more SCSI drives that are compatible, Kurzweil is often not ‘specifically’ aware of what all those drives are. (For example: Each new OS usually makes some more CRR drives compatible but no one knows which ones unless they actually buy & try them.)”
This is what we do at Sweetwater: buy and try drives to find out what works best with the instruments we sell. About the best anyone can do is make a few recommendations for what they know works. Such lists will never be complete nor fully up to date. It is a moving target.
