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"