mjn@teddy.UUCP (Mark J. Norton) (04/11/85)
I was invited to attend a private demonstration of Korg products at Daddy's Junky Music in Manchester, NH last night. The demo was quite good and I thougth I'd share some of my impressions here. The Set Up: Equipment demonstrated last night included two DW-6000 polyphonic synthesizers, a Super Pecussion digital drum machine (MIDI), and a Poly-800 controled via MIDI with input from a custom array of floor pedals (they look just like a full bank of wooden organ pedals). Other pedals included volume, muting, sustain, and program. These were all fed to an 8 channel mixer board and then to Marshall speakers (8 concert-sized). The synthesizer: Star of the show as the DW-6000, Korg's latest digital synth. In many ways, the 6000 is simpler than the 800. It is designed for performance settings, with several features designed for live play. It has 64 programmable sounds, which can be loaded via tape, or modified from the presets. A program can be called up quickly using a numerical keypad. Any of the parameters associated with a particular program can also be indicate from keypad. Value can then be assigned numerically. Values can also be assigned by keying in parameter number, and using a slider near the keypad. This slider is a very nice feature of an otherwise digital instrument. It allows some of the freedom of altering parameters while performing which was a trademark of earlier analog machines. Thus, the cutoff frequency of the VCF can be dynamically altered during play for effects. Pitch bending is controled by a joystick on the left of the keyboard. The amount of bend is programable in steps from a fifth up to a full octave. This is really nice, since you can program full bend to be exactly a fifth, third, full note, octave, etc. No fumbling to get just the right bend. The keyboard is 5 octave, and has a reasonable feel. It is not velocity sensitive, however. Korg indicated that effects achieved by special keyboard can be gotten throught other means on the 6000. Personally, I disagree. Perhaps the most exciting part of the DW-6000 are the waveforms and shaping characteristics. Rather than the stock square, triangle, pulse and sine waves found in most synthesizers, the 6000 contains 8 digitally encoded waveforms. These include: Brass/Strings, Violin, Acoustic Piano, Electric Piano, Synth-Bass, Saxophone, Clavi, and Bell/Gong. The idea here is to start with a natural sound which was sampled from the original sources, and build on them. Of these, saxophone was good, full and throaty. Piano was a little dissapointing. That it was not a real piano was obvious, even to my untrained ear. Still, it tough to compete in this area with gadgets like Kurzweil's around. What truely inpressed me was the bells. Full, rich, opulent with overtones and ringing. It was like being right there in the bell tower. At full volume, the ceiling rattled (not to mention every drum and cymbal in the store). These were demoed from chinese gongs to Big Ben Bells to Hand Bells to tiny chimes. A selection from the Nutcracker (Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries) showed how suble and integrated these sound could be in a composition. The DW-6000 is polyphonic. It has 6 voices, with two oscillators per voice. These can be played in 3 modes. The first is full, overlapping polyphony. Each note decays out past the next. If this is not desired, decay can be interrupted by the next note. Finally, there is a unison mode. Here, one note at a time can be played with all six voices being sounded at once, automatically detuned to provide a rich, fat sound (impressive). The DW-6000 has two ADBSSR envelope generators. One for DCO's and one for DCF. For those of your who are unfamiliar with envelopes of this resolution, Break point and Slope are added after Decay. Attack grows to the attack setting, at which point the evelope Decays at the decay rate until the Break Point is reached. It then slopes up until the sustain level is reached, and held while the key is down. Release then follows. These envelope generators were used to produce some impressive cresendo effects. Naturally, being digitally based, the 6000 has MIDI. Chanenel may be selected as a program parameter. It supports a 'note' mode, where it recognizes only note data, and a 'full' mode where it will play anything it can (Prog Select, Pitch Bend, Filer Mod, Sustain, Portamento, etc.). Evaluation: In general I thougth the 6000 was a very impressive instrument, worthy of consideration if you want to buy a polyphonic, MIDI synth. The sound was quite good, and very versatile. Its waveforms allow full, rich sounds to be produced (without 8 DX7's in a rack). The design is clean, well laid out, and geared to performance enviroments. It is fully programmable, and yet allows dynamic alteration of parameters. I couldn't stay for the full demo, which included the Poly-800, and several other products and as such did not get prices. If your are intrested in this product, I would suggest you contact your local music store. Mark J. Norton decvax!genrad!panda!mjn