The First Digital Synthesizers

A friend of mine asked me what the first digital synth was. To my surprise I wasn't sure. We all know it was the Yamaha DX7 (1983) that changed the landscape from analog to digital, but it clearly wasn't the first. The NED Synclavier (1975) and the Crumar/DKI GDS (197x?) and Synergy (1982) predate it. If anyone out there knows for sure, feel free to comment. Image of the Crumar/DKI GDS via synthony.

Snip on the GDS via Synthmuseum.com:
"'The GDS came out of some early research at Bell Laboratories in the early '70s,' explains Mercer 'Stoney' Stockell, who himself shared in developing the GDS and Synergy. 'Hal Alles, a researcher there, designed the high-speed additive engine that was put into the GDS and later systems. He was a very bright man. The work originally came out of some stuff he was supposed to be doing for echo-cancellation on telephone lines.'"

BTW, regarding the DX7, be sure to check out this post on the Yamaha FX1.

Update via adam s in the comments:
"The Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer is the Synclavier's ancestor. This is recognized as the first digital synthesizer existing as a self-contained instrument, closed system or whathaveyou. Of course, the first digital synthesizer (that is, first digital device to synthesize sound for the sake of music), is the IBM 704 Mainframe computer, on which Max Matthews created Music I in 1957. It's amazing how far computer synthesis predates 'digital synthesizers'. I'm sure that in that almost 20 year span, plently of people had developed (successfully or not) digital synthesizers, especially during the early 70's microprocessor boom."

Synergy for sale - Craigslist Seattle

Title link takes you there. You don't see these for sale too often. I once played one at a local music shop. It's all digital, but it had a certain organic quality to it. It sounded beuatiful for what is was.



From the post:
"Digital Keyboards came out with this instrument called the Synergy. The Synergy is a push-button machine and it doesn't offer any programming like the GDS, but it has some interesting aspects to it. One is that it has a sequencer. It was the first keyboard that had a sequencer anything like this. The sequencer allows you to overdub and play on top of the sequence. It is real easy to use. The Synergy provides the ability to be able to control multiple sounds [up to four] simultaneously from the keyboard - also a first. You can do that with some analog synths, but you wouldn't actually know which key was going to play what sound, and have absolute control over that kind of thing, with the synergy. It can track your hands up and down the keyboard. You can get six floating split zones, and there are all kinds of different modes for assigning sounds to keys. There are various other features of the synergy that make it a useable peice of music history "