1984 Akai AX-80: 17 more great sounds

video upload by Valmont

"I played for hours straight so I had to change my camera's battery 4 times and my SD card, then assembling and sorting all the cuts I realized it moved a bit, sorry for that!
One of the great thing with the AX80 is the stability: it doesn't move of a single cent, which is fundamentally important for live performances! (Also there are 64 presets it's nice). More than being stable, it's also really in tune thanks DCOs drivers. (too much in tune..?)
It's nice to know this synth has a double-mode crossmod section, an ADSR to DCO routing and an additional sub waveform. On 8 voices so it goes big! I especially like the crossmod. It's not as versatile as a Prophet 600, but it does have a sonic difference. The filters are a question of taste, I'm into the 2044 reference and those CEMs don't sound quite the same, they have a more aggressive resonance... They're just different (in a CEM way by definition :p)
And well that look, with astonishing neon LEDs behind opaque plexiglass, and this fantastic keyboard feel! Oyy we don't speak enough about it, but it's amazing, it's perfectly balanced and nice to play with.

As usual with mono sources, I preamped the AX-80 thru a Golden Age Premier PREQ-73, and since the Akai output level is super high it easily went on overdrive. The Akai doesn't drive by itself, it's on the contrary really clean!

0:00 - matt's jupiter
0:22 - bbd like
0:38 - edged era
0:54 - chillaxattitudzer
1:16 - nyx
1:40 - parallels
1:59 - pouet
2:16 - rotterdam
2:37 - shattered skies
2:54 - sparkling cubes
3:21 - trapezoid bridge
3:45 - staircase
4:18 - strewed semolina
4:45 - atmos
5:12 - grasping at straws
5:35 - cubicle
5:58 - cardboard box"