WERSI MK1 SII Stage Performer Videos

Published on Apr 9, 2012 by tubical71

Playlist:
WERSI MK1 SII Stage Performer - fully expanded
MK1 Soundengine Showcase Part One: Factory VS. Self-Made Sounds
WERSI MK1 Soundengine Programming Part One
MK1 Soundengine Showcase Part Two: Self-Made Motion Sounds
Wersi MK1 S2 Soundengine Showcase Part Three HQ-Audio
Wersi MK1 S2 Soundengine Showcase Part Four HQ-Audio

"My Wersi MK1 SII need some repairs, and I now have a DigiCam with a video funktion so let´s do a litle video, since I did not find any MK1 videos here in YT.
And sorry for my bad spoken english. This vid is only quick&dirty try to present the MK1.
The cams´ sound quality is not as good as I imagined, therefore i´ll do another one which covers the soundengine of the Synth in a seperate soundfile.

Brief overview of the MK1:
Full programmable Fourier sound synthesis with max. 32nd harmonics using the little sliders underneath the display
20 Voices max. polyphony. Each MK1 voice consist of a independent Preprogrammed Z80-style CPU - Back in the mid 1980 very expensive....
The price of a MK1 started at around 1500DM these days. What you get was only the MK1 and 4 voices - no extras. The "WersiVoice" and the VCF "Sounderweiterung" are only options and costs aux money..;)
A fully expanded version was around 8000DM, one voiceboard costs 249DM and the "effectsboard" was around 800DM back than, equals to $4000...in the mid/end 80th a huge amount of cash.
Ok Back to the MK1: the main strength was the complex VCA envelope. It has 8 "slots", 6 for "attack" modules and one for the sustain and the last for the release phase of the sound.
Each slot can load a module out of 18(!) types, like ramp,linear,expo all with or without dynamic control via the keyboard, wheels or external control. Additional a loop and some step funktions, a vibrato and noise(=random at low rates) module is available.
-pretty neat-
But simple ASDR is also here - but who´ll use this....? ;)
And futhermore all the same is possible for the pitch envelope - way cool -

Doing your own sounds isn´t very easy. In fact it´s -by far- more complicated than DX7 sound programming. Without the manual nothing is possible since the display just reads numbers, numbers and numbers -- for example programming the VCA:

Type Complex
1 NEW = 2048
2 NEW = 1024
....
15 NEW = 4095 (this is the sustain level)
16 NEW = 512 (release)

Ah...ok...no manual no idea...And you´ll need the overlays for the "funktion-matrix" on the most right of the machine only to get to the right place otherwhise you´ll may format the internal RAM instead of programming the VCA envelope...uups... happend to me some times...great to have them back´pd in a cardridge...:D"

Wersi MK1 S2 Stage Performer - Factory and User Presets Demo

Published on Jan 10, 2014 wolfgangSvukan·48 videos

"This is very rare and strange synth from 1986. It has 16 voice of polyphony (20 with extra cards), 8 part multitimbral, VCF and complex programming. Recorded without any external FX.

00:00 - factory presets
04:46 - user presets

Enjoy!

www.vukan.net"