New England Digital Synclavier 9600 Polyphonic Sampling System Brochure
via this eBay listing
"RARE! New England Digital Synclavier 9600 Polyphonic Sampling System Brochure
Yes, this is the 9600, and yes, this is in English.
This is THE RAREST and MOST SOUGHT AFTER of the 1989 new system brochures that that fake foreign website scanned the photos from 25+ years ago to show fake systems on the website (instead of real ones like Synclav com has shown for 20+ years). This is the original source of the scan, at least for the Synclavier 9600 model. Those photos show empty boxes. Uhm, what's holding that beige door closed (no locks)? And exactly what software generates that screen image?
This incredibly rare brochure gives all the information, and shows all the specs of the Synclavier 9600. And surprise! The maximum polyphonic sampling memory is not "1.5GB", lulz.
And, lastly, Synhouse has the Synclavier 9600 in stock (two kinds, actually). Nobody else does."
New England Digital Synclavier Brochure VPK Sample-to-Disk VT640
via this eBay listing
"This is an incredibly rare brochure from the summer of 1984 (when NED was working on polyphonic sampling Synclavier to be shown October 1984 and there was no actual system in production, the few shipped were hybrids of the Synclavier V/PK retrofitted to a Synclavier II Control Unit) that shows things that NED didn't exactly make, ever.
This was their first---and last---mention of "The Tapeless Studio" meaning the sequencer (later that meant the Direct-to-Disk system). It describes the SMPTE Reader Option without using that term because it wasn't yet available and they hadn't figured out how it would be done yet (similar to the 1987 discussion of the not-yet-released 3rd party SMPTE reader for the Linn 9000, saying they weren't sure whether or not it would require additional hardware to be added to the Linn 9000....that's the sound of someone who hasn't ever used SMPTE and doesn't know what it is), and it shows a graphical flow chart showing polyphonic sampling and multi-channel outputs (neither available then as building blocks), and is intentionally vague about the "floppy disk system" and "Winchester disks", as they didn't really have the set offering for that (high density Superfloppy, not out until 1985, and 5mb and 10mb IMI MFM Winchester drives being common, neither with SCSI until 9/1985).
It describes the Stereo Option, Sample-to-Disk, SCRIPT/MAX, and different Control Unit enclosures.
Most strangely, it shows a V/PK that never existed, with a back panel that wasn't made, with Synclavier II connectors that were never used and, sadly, an on/off power switch that they never put on this $11,000 machine.
But most notably, they just had INTERMEDIA (their advertising company) do a pre-Photoshop airbrushing out of the "II" on the panels of both of the Synclavier II Control Units shown, as if they were Synclavier. Neither really existed. They were just shipping the older, discontinued Synclavier II Control Units and panels unchanged. On John McLaughlin's Digital Guitar remote button panel with the huge "Synclavier II" on it, they just put a piece of black electrical tape over the "II".
Also, the rendering of the back panel of the V/PK shows "Synclavier Digital Music System", but it's a far pre-release rear panel if it's even real and there at all, and in fact the first V/PKs didn't say "Digital Music System" at all, they merely said "Synclavier" (I know this, I have the George Duke V/PK here, and I think I've seen 1-2 others like that, very, very rare).
This brochure wasn't meant to be deceptive. NED stayed very, very close to the exact details and truth in all advertising (And with that, isn't it strange they never mentioned "Synclaviers in space" or "B-52 bombers use the same switches?!? Both would have been proud achievements, if true. But not true.), and anything in ads or brochures that was wrong was probably a just misunderstanding because of hiring people who didn't know anything (who silkscreened "Multichannel Distributor outputs" on the panels of Direct-to-Disk machines that couldn't possibly use Multichannel Distributor outputs, doubling the number of outputs in the great "Options '85" brochure, etc., just because they didn't understand the machine, the hardware, or the architecture of it). The only thing I can think of that was advertised by NED, or at least mentioned in ads by NED---repeatedly---was the "Z-80 Option", a Zilog Z-80 CPU chip/peripheral chips on a board to emulate the most popular pre-IBM PC personal computer platform, so that you could run all your CP/M (Kaypro, TRASH-80, etc.) programs on your.................Synclavier II Digital Synthesizer. Probably seemed like a good idea to somebody.
It was described as an option board, and I think they did at least experiment with it because the FORMCOPY utility program bizarrely gives you the choice of formatting disks in NED/XPL or...........CP/M?!?!? But I not only never saw that board (10,000+ boards for NED here over these decades), but I never saw any mention of it in any internal company notes, ECOs, HOP device address lists, etc., and it would have been a very, VERY complex matter supporting that for only two years as everyone's programs evolved. So I don't think it ever really existed. Please tell me if you know otherwise. But I mean documentation and photographs of real hardware, not some lame crap 'bout "...someone told me they totally sold a lot of them.". This is in great, great contrast to the future promisings of post-NED companies (excluding this one), and other unrelated companies, like Fairlight, who was getting clowned by the Synclavier on every single point of their system (only 16 voices, only 14 megs of RAM, only plastic keys, this sort of thing), and spontaneously typed "80-voice systems available!" in their brochure.
This interim NED system from mid-1984 was a year and a half after MIDI came out, but NED didn't HAVE MIDI at all in 1984, nor, even, in 1985, the first real Release with MIDI was Release L in May of 1986. This interim type of system was sold to a few people, maybe several, that summer, including composer Craig Safan (known for The Last Starfighter which had the first CGI spaceship, but that soundtrack doesn't likely have an NED on it, he more likely got the money to buy the system from doing that movie which came out summer 1984). But dozens of others got the V/PK retrofit to their older Synclavier IIs, with the Superfloppy drive, the MIDI Option, etc., later on, and Synhouse has fully restored, and built and shipped, dozens of those systems over the last 26 years."
VPK Sample-to-Disk VT640
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: To reduce spam, comments for posts older than 7 days are not displayed until approved (usually same day).