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So What's New?Article from Sound On Sound, April 1993 |
Wandering around the halls of the Frankfurt Musik Messe last week, I was struck by the lack of any really cool new toys. New mixers, hard disk systems, and slick software were all in evidence, but it's synths that really flip my switches, and sad to say there wasn't much sign of progress on that front.
Don't get me wrong: the Roland JD990 sounded great (it's good to see oscillator sync back), and Emu's Vintage Keys is highly desirable, as is the wildly expensive Waldorf Wave keyboard. However, by and large the current generation of synthesizers sound pretty similar; there's not enough to distinguish one from another sonically, and it's sometimes hard to find enthusiasm for new keyboard products.
Whilst the three instruments I mentioned are the cream of the current crop, they still serve as a reminder that it's been a while since we saw a significant innovation in synthesis: though the JD990 is an altogether more powerful beast, it's nevertheless based on JD800 architecture; the Waldorf Wave is a contemporary incarnation of the old PPG Wave; and of course the whole point of Vintage Keys is that is sounds like instruments of yore. The Korg Wavestation SR (reviewed in this issue) is another example of an instrument that stands head and shoulders above the crowd, but it only serves as a reminder that the Wavestation keyboard from which it was derived was the last really innovative synth to make it from R&D into music stores.
We shouldn't expect innovations in synth technology to come thick and fast, but it does seem time for something new. Though you may think that we journalists have access to lots of highly confidential information about products that are months from production, this is sadly not the case — much new gear arrives quite out of the blue, with little or no advance information, and people tend to be very cagey about revealing details of forthcoming products. So, I'm almost as much in the dark as you are — but it's about time we saw something new and exciting in synthesis, and I for one will be very disappointed if we don't get it before the end of the year. Here's hoping.
Editorial by Paul Ireson
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