Title link takes you to shots via this auctionAdvanced Additive Synth
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
6 comments:
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
MATRIXSYNTH is supported by affiliate links that use cookies to track clickthroughs and sales. See the privacy policy for details.
MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
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I wish I had the K5000s (have the K5000w version instead).
ReplyDeletebest key action on any synth ive ever played.. editing from the panel is nightmare stuff tho
ReplyDeleteYeah, the keys are nice. The knobs are deceiving in that you do have to dig into the menu based system to really edit. The knob are more performance oriented for adjusting harmonics, envelopes, filter and the like. Much like the Z1s knobs. Also, be careful with the resonance. I haven't heard anything shred quite like it, and in this case it's not necessarily a good thing. Although it might be interesting to run it through a Moogerfooger MF-101 filter or the like and see what that resonance is like wide open but tamed by the MF.
ReplyDeleteThe literal feeling of the key material is fantastic and the action is fine. I do think they made a big mistake by rounding the edges of the black keys. I find playing fast I slip and hit neighboring white keys all the time. While the aftertouch works it's not really outstanding either, but still the feeling of playing the keys is incredibly distinctive. As for the knobs, yes the unit has a huge number of parameters so you get only some select parameters which ae well chosen for the kinds of sound shaping you do in performance, but that's kind of all you could realistically ask for anyway aside from freely assignable knobs which you don't get. I mean you'd need hundreds of knobs for the harmonics alone. I think they did a great job in selecting knobs that let you change the sound in useful ways on the fly.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a hard form of synthesis to edit (other than the knobs) but it's laid out pretty well on a pretty big LCD.
The arpeggiator is one of the best ever. So it is a top unweighted 5 octave controller.
I think the main flaw in their additive synthesis approach is it's only harmonics. For a while I imagined if Kawai were to try another synthesizer, which by the missed sales expectations of this one is doubtful, they would put pitch envelopes on the individual harmonics and or some kind of noise generator. The waves it makes are just clean and clear ones (I guess you can feed it into a distortion effect, but the actual generated sound starts very clean and in tune, you can't directly make sounds with enharmonic content. Many of the sounds FM is known for just can't be approached.
Another useful resource is that their emagic sounddiver software editor can load in waves and transform them into harmonics as best as possible (which can be close or not close depending on the sound).
its too bad this didnt come out in recent times, a board like this would benefit immeasurably from a large touch-screen LCD
ReplyDeleteIt's Kawai, though...they always had some of the right ideas, but the wrong interfaces to use those ideas with. The K5000s is perhaps one of the best synths made...except for that menu-based UI issue that also made the predecessor K5 so annoying to program. It's very true...if it'd had a touchscreen, it would've been as groundshaking as the DX7 had been some 12 or so years previously.
ReplyDelete