Fixing the Z1 Editor 2004 for Korg Z1

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Pigswill
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Fixing the Z1 Editor 2004 for Korg Z1

Post by Pigswill »

I figured I'd throw a post up about this here since I have seen other people on various sites having trouble with this program, but I had to figure out the solution on my own:

I got a Korg Z1 a couple of years ago. It's a really nice synth with a ton of capability, but it's a pain to program. Luckily, a developer under the name IAX Software made a program called Z1 Editor 2004 that can edit patches and send them to the synth via MIDI to make the editing slightly more bearable. It doesn't have a great interface itself, but it's much better than trying to use all of the right knobs and buttons on the Z1 to navigate its archaic menu system.
z1-editor-splash-screen.PNG
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z1-editor-parameters.png
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One really nice thing about this program is that once you make a change to a patch, you can hit F3 to send the patch to the Z1, then hit F4 to command it to play a test tone. So if your keyboard is physically far from your computer like mine is, you can still preview the patch before jamming on the board itself.

However, this program is trialware and will remove the option to run the program after a certain amount of time. The developer's site no longer exists so it can't be registered. Also, there's a registration key floating around for the user "Team BEAT" with the serial number "507339", but I never got that to work. Uninstalling and reinstalling would still leave it inaccessible. There were no obvious config files that were flagging the program as being unregistered, so I figured that something was going on in the Windows Registry that was stopping it from working.

Using the Process Monitor from Microsoft's website, I found out that yes, the program was writing to the registry, and managed to find out where:

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\Z1 Editor 2004
The Z1 Editor is written in Visual Basic. Certainly no surprise there.

Editing the values within this key didn't do much, but deleting it entirely would reset the program. The registration portion of the Z1 Editor would think that I was running it for the first time while the rest of the application would still have my MIDI settings and recent files still saved. Perfect.

Deleting this key whenever I needed to reset the program was going to be a pain in the ass, so I just made a VBScript to handle this for me:

Code: Select all

Dim oShell
Set oShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WScript.Shell")
oShell.run "cmd.exe /C reg delete ""HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\Z1 Editor 2004"" /f", 0, True
oShell.run "cmd.exe /C ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Z1 Editor 2004\Z1Edit04.exe"" ", 0, True
Set oShell = Nothing
I have this saved as "Z1 Editor.vbs" on my desktop. Now, I just use that to run the program and I never have to even think about resetting it.

The Z1 Editor 2004 allowed me to make some droning dark ambient patches. It was a pleasant surprise being able to get those sounds out of that synth without having to manipulate the recording. I put them into a track:

:floppy: Pigswill - Qxc3xacguxc7x90 City Station (xe8x92xb8xe6xb1xbdxe9xacxbcxe5x9fx8exe7xabx99)

And there you go. Hopefully this will help someone in the future

:rave:
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