"A hobby of mine..."

These are some of the synthesizers I own, or have owned.

Ever since I heard the music of Jean-Michel Jarre, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, I wanted to make electronic music myself.

Below you can read some mini-reviews of these synthesizers, based upon my experience with them.




My first synthesizer was the Kawai K4.
(sold)

This synthesizer appeared on the market during the late 1980's.

Basically the K4 is a sample player with an additional additive engine also found in the Kawai K5000 series (although in the 5000 series this additive engine is much much more advanced).

The K4 is capable of producing 16 voices and has 4 oscillator's.
It had 192 traditional samples and 64 'DC waves'.

The DC waves were the best feature of the K4.

Nowadays the K4 has no real use anymore, unless you drive it through an advanced FX unit or something, but nevertheless I regret the fact that I sold my Kawai K4 and traded it for a Yamaha CS1X.

Strenghts: great masterkeyboard, nice stereo delay and DC waves.

Weaknesses: a lot of unusable samples, very bad drum samples.

The Kawai K4 can now be bought second-hand for about 350-400 Euro.





My second synthesizer was the Roland Juno 60.

This synthesizer appeared on the market during the early 1980's.

The Juno 60 is an analog/digital hybrid. The oscillator is digital (DCO) and it's filters are analog (VCF). This combination gives the Juno it's warm sound.

It has a nice 'chorus' feature which thickens the sound produced by the simple single oscillator.

The Juno 60 is capable of producing 6 voices and has 1 osc (+ sub osc).

Strengths: self oscillating filter, the pink noise, the smooth filter, the arpeggiator and the nice lay-out.

Weaknesses: only one oscillator, no MIDI.

I still have my Juno 60 and probably will never do it away. It's cool to have something which is getting rarer and rarer by the day.





My third synthesizer was the Yamaha CS1X.
(sold)

This synthesizer appeared on the market in 1996.

This is a typical example of a XG/GM cheap digital sample player. For the price this synthesizer is best suited as a 'beginners' synthesizer.

The CS1X is capable of producing 32 voices and is 16 multitimbral
(1 multimbral in performance mode).

Strenghts: nice thick sounds in performance mode.

Weaknesses: you can get bored with the onboard samples quite soon.

I traded the CS1X in for cash and later got a Roland JX-305 instead.




My fourth synthesizer, the Yamaha AN1X.

Released in 1997, the AN1X looks almost the same as it's little brother - the CS1X (apart from the slightly darker color, extra knobs and a ribbon controller). At the time the AN1X was released the only available alternatives were the Roland JP8000 and the Clavia Nordlead 1 synthesizers. But those were more expensive and - in my opinion - even lacked the warm and distinctive sound the AN1X was able to produce.

Specifications of the Yamaha AN1X :

10 voices of polyphony,  Bi-timbral, a fairly extensive effects unit, 2 oscillators capable of generating SAW & PULSE waveforms, FM and PWM possible, Unison, dual and mono modes available & capable of morphing between 2 different sound scenes.

Strenghts: price, versality of the sound, quality of the sound.

Weaknesses: no real weaknesses apart from the small LCD screen, somewhat cheap lay-out and the simple waveforms. But for the price you can't get a better buy than this (if you want an analog-ish synthesizer).

This is a really good synthesizer. Probably one of the most underrated synthesizers of all time. It can emulate all sorts of old synthesizers
(Prophets, Moogs, Juno's, DX7's, you name it...)

I will probably never get rid of this one.





The Roland JX-305. My fifth synthesizer.
(sold)

This one appeared on the market in 1998 as the keyboard version of Roland's dance machine the MC-505.

Just like the Yamaha CS1X this is a digital synthesizer based upon playing samples. In this machine Roland uses the sample engine also found in the Roland JV-series.

The JX-305 is capable of producing 64 voices and is 4 multitimbral.
It also features an internal sequencer.

Strengths: lots of effects, good sequencer and nice drumsounds.

Weaknesses: drastic price drop in the USA making it a bad 'investment' for now. Also the sounds are a bit on the poor quality side. Lot's of unnecesary samples and the filter sounds not quite right.

On one day I had a really bad experience with the JX-305. Upon booting the machine I came to the conclusion that all my modifications on the sounds and all my sequences were gone.

When I heard of the price drop in the USA I decided to sell my JX-305 quickly and get a Korg Z1 which was recently dropped in price.





The Korg Z1. My sixth synthesizer.

This one appeared on the market in 1997, but this one was rather expensive back then (sometimes synthesizers are just like computers, today they are expensive must-have thingies, tomorrow we're complaining about them).

Back to the story, nowadays it's possible to find a Z1 for about 1000 Euro.

The Z1 is a virtual analog, but goes much further than that, than for example a Yamaha AN1X.

Instead offering only the tradional waveforms (SAW/PULSE/TRIANGLE/SINE) based on analog modelling, it offers some other models as well (Brass, Plucked strings, Bowed strings, VPM (FM), Organ and a few others).

The models other than the tradional models offer a _much_ greater depth and higher quality sound for certain types of instrument emulation.

For example, the Brass model let's you emulate the behaviour of a real trumpet through complex mathematical models, so it sounds 'different' when you press a key harder.

The Z1 is capable of producing 12 voices and is 6 multitimbral. It has 2 OSC's and a sub-osc.

Strenghts: very high sound quality, good realism, very versatile and complex engine.

Weaknesses: difficult to control, some delays while walking through the menu's on the LCD screen, not really suitable for techno and 'messing around'.





The Korg ER-1. My first dedicated drumcomputer.

This little box appeared in 1999 as Korg's answer to Roland's 'groove' boxes.

Like the Roland TR series it produces sound by combining analogue oscillators with samples. In this machine the same engine as found in the Z1 is used to produce sound (with some minor drumsound specific changes).

It has 4 analogue 'parts' and 4 sampled sounds.

The analogue parts can be either of the SAW or the SINE type and has some LFO types for producing noise like sound (for snares) or random sweeps.

The 4 sampled sounds are:

Open hihat
Closed hihat
Cymbal
Clap

It's internal sequencer can hold up to 256 patterns.

Strenghts: easy to use, nice overall sound, sounds very electric, not too expensive, nice design, reliable.

Weaknesses: doesn't sound as 'deep' as a Roland TR-909 or as 'slick' as a TR-808, bassdrum sounds flat, the hihats don't sound aggresive.





The Access Virus Indigo 2.

Well... Access has done it. The Germany based synthesizer specialists created one of the best virtual analog synthesizers ever made.

It can replicate almost any type of analog synthesizer of the past, from lush Juno's to fat MiniMoog's.

Strenghts: very high sound quality, sounds very fat, blue LED's, looks beautiful.

Weaknesses: high price, sounds sometimes a bit digital.





The Roland Jupiter-6.

This is one of my latest buys. I bought it in a rush, because I knew it would not stay in the music shop very long (strangely these old synthesizers are being sold like bread).

Well, to be short. It's a real analog synthesizer. The means that it can sound very eighties. This also means that it has limitations. I don't really care about it's limitations, I always wanted to have a Jupiter-6.

It has six voices and two oscillators.

This is one of the last analog poly-synthesizers of the eighties.

Strenghts: real analog, looks very nice.

Weaknesses: real analog, the filter is a bit thin.