_______________________________________________________________________________ Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.marketplace,rec.music.makers.synth,comp.music From: michaelk@pacifier.rain.com (Michael Kelsey) Subject: Synthesizers for sale Organization: Pacifier BBS Distribution: na Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 20:17:37 GMT Casio VZ8M rack-mount *8-voice multitimbral *Layer/split/or assign to different midi channels any of the 8 voices *Keyboard, guitar and wind controller modes - global or programmable for each patch *Dynamic & programmable voice panning (you assign the mod-wheel, or any controller, to control panning in real-time *6-point keyboard scaling, 8 velocity response curves *Velocity splits and positional crossfading *128 preset patches, 64 programmable; 128 preset combination/multichannel setups, 64 programmable *Ram/Rom slot *Extra patches available *Phase Distortion Synthesis, similar to FM in the Yamaha TX-81Z only Casio takes a modular approach: (for each patch) 8 independent modules each with DCO and DCA and the wave generated by each pair of modules can be used in one of two ways -- 1) to produce audible sounds or 2) to modify waves generated by other modules... *Midi in/out/thru.....Manual...mint condition *Single rack space * $130 OBO Kawai K-5 Additive Synthesis Keyboard *61 keys - 5 octaves *16 voices *Program Memory: Internal = 96 (48 single/48 multi), same on ram card *Ram card included *Large LCD w/contrast control *A few of the midi support items are: in,out,thru, program change at either patch or multi level, velocity layering, cross-fading, switching, release velocity, aftertouch, keyboard zoning, recieve up to 15 channels at once *Portamento *Pitch bend, mod-wheeels *Editing/selecting wheel *Four polyphonic audio out jacks as well as mix-out *Can layer up to 15 different voices! *Expression and switch pedal jacks *Some of the patch parameters are: being additive, the amplitude value of up to 128 harmonics can be set individually; two oscillators per voice; each harmonic can be assigned to one of six programmable DHG envelopes, which have 6 segments each and 12 parameters -- the same is true for the DFG and DDF envelopes, the DDA envelope gas 7 segments and 13 parameters -- this is for each oscillator; various modulation routings; oscillators can be in series or parallel mode; cut-off filter, resonance; each patch has a 11-band equalizer *LFO control includes delay and fade-in *Local control on/off switch *Voices can be allocated dynamically or dedicated to various patches or a combination of both in Performance Mode *Manual included ....excellent condition...all factory sounds available * $400 OBO Oberheim Matrix-6R table-top or rack mount synth *Near mint condition *Includes data cassette w/ 1000 factory sounds ( the same as is included with the Matrix 1000 I believe) *Manual * $325 OBO Casio CZ-101 mini keyboard *Includes ram cartridge, manual, dustcover *Excellent Condition * $100 I can also be reached at: Michael.Kelsey@pods.rain.com _______________________________________________________________________________ From: gacki@gacki.sax.de (Malte Rogacki) Date: 2 May 1994 17:15:43 +0100 Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth Subject: Re: Additive Synths Distribution: world Organization: In article <2piet1$lf4@search01.news.aol.com> wiredmanta@aol.com (WiReDManta) writes: >Does any one know much about the hyped yet unexplained field of additive >synthsis? Forgoing the 3000.00$ + synths on the market today, Where is additive >synthsis used? Were there any (analog) cirica 1970's additive synths that were >inexpensive? And is "Re-Synthsis" the only technique for additive synthsis? Additive synthesis is a rather exotic form not much used in todays instruments. This has something to do with the amount of raw horsepower nessecary for this. You need a large number of oscillators (all VERY stable) which drives up the price. Of course, you can also add sinewaves one-by-one until you have the final sound and convert this to a sample, but I don't think that this is very progressive since it disables real-time interaction with the overtones. I don't think that there were many additive synths around in the 70's, the most projects date from the early to late 80's. The number of synths that used additive synthesis is quite small. To mind come the following: -A machine from Kawai (was it the K-3?) -the Fairlight II -the Synclavier (not completely sure) -the Acxel Resynthesizer -the Kurzweil K--150 FS. Let me talk a little about the Kurzweil: This unit has 256 sine-wave oscillators that can be grouped together and distributed across the keyboard in various ways. The instrument itself is 16-voice. All programming that extends simple channel assignments and so must be done with an Apple // or Mac computer. Believe me: it is unbelievable time-consuming. The insteresting thing is that you can have the overtones (partials) react different to velocity, envelope scaling and all this, this making it easy to get very deep into the sound itself (different than sampling). Another topic is the small amount of RAM each model needs. As an example, an additive model for a piano sound would require about 5 kByte RAM. The technique used in the Kurzweil is the so-called "fourier-synthesis" which means that the final waveforms are created out of sinewaves. There are other techniques that use more complex waves as a basic. Re-synthesis means additive synthesis of an analyzed (and possibly modified) sound. It implies that there was something before that was tried to be "re-created" as opposite to be created "from scratch". I'm sure someone else can fill this out even more. Malte Rogacki gacki@sax.sax.de 100116.154@compuserve.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Don't forget to TURN ON THE SYNTHESIZER. Often this is the reason why you get no sound out of it." (ARP 2600 Owner's Manual) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________________ Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth From: gustavo@arcana.uchicago.edu (Gustavo Comezana) Subject: Re: Which synths use additive synthesis? Organization: Dept. of Mathematics Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1993 02:54:12 GMT In article d.j.e.nunn@durham.ac.uk (Douglas Nunn) writes: >Are there any synthesisers (current or past) that use additive synthesis, >either with sinusoids or other waveforms? > >(Yes, I know the pros and cons of the technique. We don't need a >discussion on that...) All of them are beasts from the past (in order of appearance and extinction): Synergy GDS, Kurzweil 150 and Kawai K5. The first one offers very fine control over each of the first 32 harmonics, with individual envelopes for each and independent detuning. No MIDI (incidentally, not long ago someone was offering one of these for sale on the net, and it wasn't too expensive). I know no details about the Kurzweil. The K5 I know better (I have one). With this one, in the so-called "twin mode" you can set the relative amplitudes of the first 64 harmonics, and assign each of them to one of four amplitude envelopes. It also has a digital filter which simulates the frequency response of an analog VCF (but it doesn't really sound like one). Finally, there is a global DCA. The DCA and the filter have their own envelopes. The unit is 16 voice polyphonic, each voice consisting (in twin mode) of two parallel sound generating lines as described above, which can be detuned with respect to each other. There is another operation mode, but I don't want to go into details. The modulation routings are reasonably flexible. The unit is 15-patch polytimbral, with dynamic voice allocation, and ability to respond to MIDI data on up to 15 channels simultaneously. One can set up various configurations, such as layering, zoning and velocity switching among several patches. As for programming, make no mistake: it is HARD, making editing software virtually a necessity. There are zillions of parameters, each making an infinitesimal difference in the overall sound; besides, the display is hard to see (at least in the rack-mount version, which is the one I have). So, my evaluation of the K5 is: the potential is there; realizing it is another matter altogether. I have owned the beast for some 2.5 months and haven't even begun to scratch the surface. A word of advice: get a used one and see whether you like it. The price on the net seems to be between $270 and $350 (USA) for a rack-mount, and they are not terribly hard to find. It did not sell well when it was in production because if what you are looking for is a box with a lot of presets, just to plug in and play,... well, this is not it at all. If the original poster has more questions, I'll be glad to give whatever info I can. There was some discussion of this synth a while ago; perhaps you'll find the articles in some ftp archive. _______________________________________________________________________________ Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth From: Bob.Weigel@launchpad.unc.edu (Bob Weigel) Subject: K5 Architecture note, Quadrasynth Nntp-Posting-Host: lambada.oit.unc.edu Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1993 00:29:32 GMT The K5 can be operated in either "Full" or "Twin" mode. In full, there are 126 harmonics which can have their harmonic levels set, and be each routed to 1 of 8 busses,...not four. It's just that the upper 63 have 4 and the lower 63 have 4, and you can't cross assign them. In twin mode, (which is always used, except for very broad spectrum sounds, to be played on low notes), there are two sets of the first 63 harmonics to edit. The editor I wrote for IBM has various utilities to make this job easier. The K5 has some internal utilities, but on board editing is very tiresome, due largely to the fact that the cursor gets lost easily, and the editing pages often contain a grid of...lets see ...4 envelopes, each having 6 levels and 6 "rates" (which themselves, are very 'qualitative' entities). Anyway, there are over 50 things to edit on some of those pages! Values are adjusted with the data entry wheel. Ok, so the point is, A MACHINE WHICH IS CALLED AN ADDITIVE SYNTH MUST HAVE AN ARCHITECTURE WHICH IS SPECIFICALLY GEARED TOWARD THIS KIND OF SYNTHESIS. Otherewise, our language will break down! A machine which offers sine waves as part of its wave selection, and has more than one wave per patch, and offers a pitch shift on one of those waves IS NOT engineered to be an additive synth. It is rather a byproduct of what it was engineered for....eg. a sample mixing playback synth. The K3 had the ability to add harmonics, but there was no added control feature over any other static waveform that resided on that synth. Therefore, it was called a "subtractive" synth, since all the control features were in the amp and resonant filter sections. There was simply nothing else "worthy of mention"....anything that would give the user the ability to create a sound that would "fingerprint" it as having been created by that type of synth. -bob -- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service. internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80 _______________________________________________________________________________ Newsgroups: rec.music.marketplace,rec.music.makers.synth,rec.music.synth,rec.music.makers From: rost@tecrus.dec.com (My name is Brian Rost) Subject: FOR SALE Kawai K5m Additive Synth Module Nntp-Posting-Host: tisknu Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Distribution: usa Date: 3 MAY 93 12:11:26 ***** Kawai K5m Additive Synthesizer Module ***** Rack version of the K5 synthesizer: 16 voice polyphonic, 15 timbre multitimbral, four individual output channels, MIDI implementation supports velocity, release velocity, aftertouch, sysex, etc. 96 patch memory plus 96 more on RAM card (included). The K5 is the only affordable additive synthesizer ever made. Additive synthesis lets you build your own waveforms from up to 128 frequency components. You then get the usual filtering and enveloping features to tweak further. In addition, if you use an Atari ST computer I have a patch librarian and the *complete* Kawai factory patch library on disk (this is over 1000 patches) that I'll throw in for free. Dealers get $400 and up for these used. Make an offer. You can pick up in Worcester, MA area or I will ship UPS to your door for $10. Brian Rost @tecrus.enet.dec.com 508-568-6115 **************************************************** * * * The above does not reflect the opinions of * * my employer. * * * * If music is outlawed, only outlaws will be * * musicians. * * * **************************************************** _______________________________________________________________________________ Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth From: ras@controls.ccd.harris.com (Russell Soule) Subject: Re: Kawai K5 Opinions Sought Organization: Harris Controls X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8] Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1993 14:36:11 GMT Adam Soudure (Student Support) (support@tartarus.uwa.edu.au) wrote: : I have recently come across a Kawai K5 synth for sale cheap...what do : you net guru's think of this particular device?? : I am looking for something that has puncy digital sounds, and a fair : degree of synthesis power...a nice user interface would be nice too :) The K5 was Kawai's flagship synth at one time. It was made to go with the K1. Unfortunately I don't think it ever found it's niche in the market because at that time sample based synths were coming out. It has since been replaced by Kawai's K4 (and it's companion the K1 II). The K5 has no sampled sounds whatsoever. All of it's sounds are internally generated by what I believe they call additive synthesis. There are two sound generators which can be run in serial or parallel. This is nice because what you can do is make one generator generate a piano sound and the other a string sound and run them in parallel. One "voice" is created by both of these generators together so basically you can get a layered sound without loosing notes. Each generator has 48 harmonics with which to create a sound. When run in serial that essentially becomes one generator with 96 harmonics. The theory behind the K5 is by increasing or decreasing the various sound harmonics (which are the basic physical buildings blocks of sound) you can duplicate any sound there is. Unforunately it's very tedious. The K5 comes with 48 internal single patches and 48 internal multi patches. It also has a card slot which doubles sound capacity. The multi patches are pretty versatile. Each is made up of up to 15 single patches. You can also split the keyboard several times, transpose/detune any part in the multi patch, assign a unique midi channel to each part, assign how many voices each part gets (or let the K5 assign voices for you), and filter out a number of midi messages for each part. The user interface is the one best I've seen. This is no 2x16 character display. You can page through all 15 parts of a multi patch in only 3 pages. In other words, it displays 5 lines of part data plus column headers. I don't remember the exact dimensions but it displays at least 6 or 7 rows by 30+ columns of text. It also displays graphical information within the single patch editor. I own one but I haven't read the manual in over a year, so all the above is from memory. I currently use mine as a controller for a Peavey DPM V2 module. If the K5 had sampled sounds it would be an excellent keyboard. But unless you are a physics whiz with sound harmonics, you may find it's sounds unsatisfactory and hard to edit. The interface is much better than that of the K4's, if only it had the K4's sounds. : I appears to be pretty good to me...what do you think? For the price it's a good keyboard. They no longer make them so support may be hard to come by. Kawai has 10 sound libraries available that they gave me for free (I told them I was using a Kawai Q80 as my librarian). >From those libraries you can probably create 2 pretty decent libraries. Oh, it doesn't have any drum kits. Or any internal effects processors for that matter. I believe that at the time it was built Kawai had a whole Kawai setup in mind including the K5, K1, Kawai's drum machine and various Kawai effects processors. In other words, it was built to complement a whole family of Kawai equipment. On the plus side it does have 5 audio outputs, one of which is a mix of the other 4. The 4 seperate outputs are used by multipatches. You can assign each part of a multi patch to a different output which in turn can be run to an external effects processor. You can also create 8 chains of 8 patches (single or multi) for use in a concert setting. You can move forward through a chain either by button press or by foot switch. One of the bigger drawbacks to it is that each single patch takes up a rather large amount of memory. My Q80 doesn't have enough memory to store both the single and multi patches at one time (which is silly since the Q80 came out when the K5 was Kawai's flagship keyboard). Well, that's about all I can remember for now. If you want more info, email me and I'll bring in my docs tomorrow. -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Russell Soule |"Can the liberties of a nation be secure, | | Harris Corp. Controls Div. | when we have removed the conviction | | Melbourne FL | that these liberties are the gift of God?"| | Phone: (407)242-4361 | Thomas Jefferson | | ras@controls.ccd.harris.com | ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> + <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ _______________________________________________________________________________ From: Bob.Weigel@launchpad.unc.edu (Bob Weigel) Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.synth Subject: Re: Kawai K5 Opinions Saught Date: 12 Jun 1993 00:11:26 GMT Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service Distribution: world NNTP-Posting-Host: lambada.oit.unc.edu K5's seem to be going real cheap these days. Like the K3, don't expect to get great acoustic emulations, though it is near an order of magnitude better than the K3, if you couple it with an FX processor. (There are no internal stereo FX, though there are 4 audio outs, which individual patches can be assigned to in Multi arrangements.) To really give the kind of overview I just gave for the K3 would take more pages than I am willing to type today. Lets just say that, in many respects, the K5 is an AWESOME MACHINE! If you want to make complex dynamic timbral and resonant filter varying sounds, THIS IS THE BUDGET BEAST FOR YOU! If you plan to really program it, I know no better way than the software I wrote. (If there had been, I wouldn't have written it :-) ) The envelopes are quite unpredictable without it, so plan on spending hours tweaking and hitting a key to see if you are "there yet", then getting distracted by a "neat" sound that you stumble across, as you NEVER get what you originally set out for! The software also allows you to save the otherwise difficult to manage pages of information as macros, which you may library under your chosen name. It is, in my experience, a MUST if you ever plan on getting work done with this machine. K5 has no preset timre's to draw from. You either construct them from the raw using slow manual entry and the crude sloping utilities on board, or copy them from another patch. 12- 6 segment envelopes (two pitch, two filter, and 8 amplitude) and 2- 7 segment per patch. (Patches are split into two sources which finally mix at the "dft" page, which is somewhat of a graphic EQ). There ye be. Toss in one main LFO which can be routed into various places, and some other LFO's in the harmonic generator, plus the fact that the frequency generator envelopes' last segment can be looped to the previous one for a programable slope frequency LFO, and you have the most condensed explaination of the K5 I have ever given! -bob -- The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service. internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80 _______________________________________________________________________________ From dacc@yiffy.tigerden.com Sun May 8 02:05:51 1994 Date: Sat, 7 May 1994 15:15:36 +0100 From: "D.A.C. Crowell" To: "Janis L. Hinman" Cc: Fil Ter Subject: Re: Additive synthesizers & synthesis On Thu, 5 May 1994, Janis L. Hinman wrote: > I'm curious as to whether anyone here has experience with additive > synthesizers? Yup! > Who made them? There were only a few additive synths that made into production...besides a few big modulars that had VCO banks-from-hell, the only ones I can think of are the Synclavier, the Crumar GDS and it's progeny, the Synergy and Slave 32, the Kawai K5, and the Kurzweil K150-FS. All of these save the K5 required some form of computer support for patch programmability, and the GDS and Synclavier were in a sense computers in of themselves. The K5 really _should_ have computer support via a patch editor/librarian to be programmable without driving a user insane, also, due to a rather inadequate user interface. > Are any still around? Kawai K5s and K5ms (the rackmount version, one of which I own) can be found used, as can Synclaviers. Very rarely do the various Synergy incarnations show up on the used market, same for the Kurzweil. There are no additive synthesizers in current production, to my knowledge. > How much might such a beast cost. The K5 is cheap...you can find the rackmount version for as little as $200, although between $250 and $400 is more typical. Stick on another $75-100 for the keyboard version. Synclaviers nowadays can go for as low as $2500 in their basic 16-voice version, stripped-down, with increases in value as you add voice memory, Winchester drives, sampling options, stereo and MIDI options, and so on. The Synergy tends to fall in the middle ground between these two, and I have no idea about the Kurzweil. As for the GDS, forget it; there were less than 10 made, and their owners aren't giving them up anytime soon, most likely. > I do know that Kurzweil built a box called a K150 that Bob Moog had > designed and is a devil to program without computer assistance. Yep...it requires an Apple ][ as a "brain". Like I said, the only one that doesn't need this sort of interfacing is the Kawai. The Synergy II was interfaceable with a Kaypro for patch programming, the Crumar GDS had its own Z-80 micro for a supporting brain, and the Synclavier was based on a hotwired variant on the DEC PDP-11. Why? Well, consider that you're working with a digital instrument that is trying to emulate the behavior of as many as 96 analog oscillators (in the case of the Synclavier) operating in varying harmonic order relationships to create what's also called Fourier synthesis - the synthesis of raw spectra from the combinatoriality of a fundamental and a series of specific harmonics. This is how normal acoustic instruments create _their_ spectra, thru resonance patterns known as "formants". The varying amplitude harmonic ordered oscillators emulate the resonances that the body of an instrument or its air column would create. By adding modulation patterns to these and the harmonics, you can do a very realistic job of emulating just about anything...in theory! In practice, however, the whole process turns into the most chaotic parameter and numerical juggling act known to music if you delve that deeply into additive _emulative_ synthesis. So, most people with these devices don't go that overboard in by-hand programming, instead using a process called "resynthesis", in which the synth's CPU juggles a sampled sound into the varying numerical fodder for the oscillator and modulation banks. Even the K5 can do this via an attending program which runs on the Macintosh and which mashes Ensoniq Mirage samples into patch data to be sent via SYSEX to the K5. However, if you have the patience and the knowledge of the physics behind juggling harmonic data yourself, you can still produce some _awesome_ non-emulative timbres using additive techniques. It's really kind of unfortunate that additive deadended after the K5 yet again. It's sort of something that pops up every once in a while, tantalizes us with a glimpse into a close compromise between analog and digital techniques, then resubmerges yet again. Many of the platforms that were under development in the late 1970s and early 1980s were slated to use additive, but that was not a kind period to a lot of the early digital synth developers, and most of those platforms never emerged into production. The Synclavier and the children of the Crumar GDS were about the only ones from that period of time to see the light of day. And since then, only the K150-FS and K5 have emerged into some level of usage. It's worth waiting another decade to see if some company can finally make it happen, though; in a sense, the "Physical Modelling" technique owes a little debt to additive resynthesis for its spectral synthesis, although _that_ technique has much more to it in terms of complexity than additive ever has...it's its _own_ Pandora's Box! Sorry about wasting so much bandwidth on what's essentially a digital technique, btw, gang...but since most additive devices are essentially vintage units now, I figured it wasn't _too_ much of a deviation off the norm here. D.A.C. Crowell Audio Design and Programming KnowledgeMedia/The Aerodyne Works Champaign, IL, USA. (dacc@tigerden.com) _______________________________________________________________________________ From catfood@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sun May 8 12:20:05 1994 Date: Sun, 8 May 94 12:38:37 CDT From: catfood@merle.acns.nwu.edu To: "D.A.C. Crowell" Cc: Analogue Heaven Mailing List Subject: Re: Additive synthesizers & synthesis D.A.C. Crowell writes: > > There were only a few additive synths that made into production...besides > a few big modulars that had VCO banks-from-hell, the only ones I can > think of are the Synclavier, the Crumar GDS and it's progeny, the Synergy > and Slave 32, the Kawai K5, and the Kurzweil K150-FS. All of these save > the K5 required some form of computer support for patch programmability, > and the GDS and Synclavier were in a sense computers in of themselves. > The K5 really _should_ have computer support via a patch editor/librarian > to be programmable without driving a user insane, also, due to a rather > inadequate user interface. [mucho insightful stuff deleted] Wow--great response D.A.C.! A few other additive things I have heard of: It is technically possible to do additive on a Prophet VS. Since you can take existing waveforms and combine them into new waves, you could theoretically take sine waves tuned to different harmonics and combine them a couple at a time until you finally came up with a decent wave. This method, however, is _by far_ a bigger PITA than it's worth, IMHO. The capability is there, however. The SE retro on the Emax allows you to do a crude form of additive, as well. It has this method of synthesizing 'time slices'. One time slice is defined pretty much the same way you define a wave on the K5--by specifying the volume and relative tuning of the various harmonics. You then string together a bunch of time slices and input the total length (in seconds) of the desired sample. It will then morph one wave to the next across the total number of slices. It's kind of like a cross between K5 additive and PPG wavetable. It's biggest downfall is that you can't hear your changes in realtime. You tweek a slice, you have to recalculate the entire table to play it. A couple of outboard software programs will allow you to do additive synthesis and resynthesis, then fly it into a sampler. Several that come to mind are Digidesign's Softsynth [Atari], a resynthesis program called Lyre [PC], and Steinberg's Avalon [Atari]--which is probably the most full-featured commercial sample-editing/synthesis program I have ever seen. I don't know about Digidesign's Turbosynth, since I have only played with it a coupla times. Also, anybody else remember a high-end additive deck out of Canada called something like the 'Access'? I always wondered how they sounded but could never find one. -c- _____________________________________________________________________________ =] catfood@mindvox.phantom.com "With the guts of the last Priest, =] catfood@well.sf.ca.us let us strangle the last King." =] catfood@merle.acns.nwu.edu -Diderot ------------------ ---- --- ---- - --- -- - - - _______________________________________________________________________________