When the Ensoniq Mirage sampling synth was released, we all felt moved to hail it as a breakthrough representing 'sampling for the masses', etc. At around £1,700, however, there was still really only a fairly elitist contingent of the masses that could easily afford it.

Since then the only competition has come from Sequential with their Prophet 2000, offering similar facilities for a similar price. Whilst that has been the only competition to actually reach the market, there has been no shortage of extravagant rumours flying around regarding the imminent launch of samplers from Casio or Yamaha costing around 2s 6d and offering three hours of 16-bit, full bandwidth sampling. The money appeared to be on Casio to be first to the line, and it seemed sensible that they would probably come out with it at the Frankfurt musical equipment show which, as you are reading this, happened last month (February)... but no. Only weeks before we all trundle off to Zer Fatherland in search of the new and extraordinary, Yamaha unleashed their VSS-100 combining a simple preset FM autoplay keyboard featuring auto bass line and drums, with a sampling synth offering a total of eight seconds of mono sampling time — all for as little as £179 (exact price uncertain). Bearing in mind that they have just released the DX-100 ultra-inexpensive, ultra-good value FM synth, one wonders what they have up their corporate sleeve for Germany.

Perhaps both launches are part of an ingenious plan to pre-empt the impact of Casio's Frankfurt offensive — they too will undoubtedly be showing a low cost sampler there. With this in mind it's hard to make any final judgement of the VSS-100, because at the time of writing, pre-Frankfurt, it stands alone. After Frankfurt, I suspect that there may be considerable competition, although it could be several months before such instruments get in the shops.

With it being the only VSS-100 in England I was required to journey to Yamaha's Milton Keynes headquarters, there to spend a few hours with the item in the comfort of their demo room.

Its appearance is generally one of charcoal grey with light grey voice-percussion selection buttons, black switches and sliders plus a couple of light green and bright orange knobs. White and green lettering complete a typically smart, but slightly conservative, appearance befitting a member of the PortaSound range.

Power can be sourced from either six C size batteries ora mains adaptor.

Obviously, for under £200 one must anticipate the possibility of certain performance limitations: it's only a 49-note mini keyboard but more seriously than that it isn't MIDI and indeed isn't triggerable by any means at all. It's a shame, but then it quite pointedly leaves room above it for a slightly superior, though still relatively inexpensive sampler. These big companies are damn clever when it comes to playing the market, and they never blow all their chips in one go.

Despite cunning devices on Yamaha's part such as placing the speakers a long way from me whilst also placing me next to noisy air conditioning fans (all completely unintentional, I'm sure), the trained ears could not be fooled and it quickly became apparent that both the FM and the sampling parts of the instrument were somewhat noisy — possibly too noisy for many straight music recording applications. As usual with very new products Japan is yet to supply them with any detailed technical spec on it, and it can only be a matter of conjecture as to how many operators are being used — certainly the maximum is four and I wouldn't be altogether surprised if it was two.

For a low cost auto-play keyboard, the sounds are very good, and typically FM-ish:

Jazz organ — good lively sound with a reasonably punchy percussive edge.

Pipe Organ — A very simple pipe sound, slightly lacking in depth and not overly Cathedral-like.

Clarinet — A fine reedy voicing and vastly preferable to the sound that I make with a clarinet.

Flute — A smooth, round sound, fine for easy legato passages, but lacking punch and breathiness for faster, jazzy lines.

Oboe — A generally convincing, haunting thin reedy sound.

Trumpet — Clean and acceptable though obviously something of a compromise with little guts or raunchy edge.

Horn — A little synthy but not at all bad.

Sax — It's unspeakably difficult to make a voice sound truly saxlike without pitch bend and modulation wheels, but the sound itself is reasonably convincing.

Accordion — To my ears this is rather too synthy, nasally, raspy. Though it's not everyday I listen to the real thing.

Music Box — The usual satisfying, sweet, pinging sound.

Piano — Not surprisingly nothing like a piano, with a duly, lifeless plodding sound. It's very difficult with no sustain pedal to play much piano effectively.

Electric Piano — Again, no sustain pedal is a drawback, but not at all bad in upper and middle registers, stodgy in bottom end.

Harpsichord — Fuller than the real thing, but then that's probably what people want.

Koto — Bright, hard percussive sound.

Electric Guitar — Nothing even remotely like one, more like an over-bright piano, in fact more like a piano than the piano preset — with that in mind it would probably actually be a very useful voice.

Vibes — Quite good, though a little bit pingy.

Cosmic — Filter sweep wow — particularly noisy. Like wowing synth brass.

Popsynth — A strong pinging, wowing synth sound like a cross between Vibes and Cosmic.

Funksynth — Again very noisy, with a percussive, brittle synth sound.

Slapsynth — Though still noisy, this could be used as a substitute for a fretless bass, with a nice percussive synth edge to it.

The FM section is eight-note polyphonic unless it's used in conjunction with the autoplay section in which case it's reduced to two-note polyphony, which is definitely limiting. As mentioned there are no pedals available and the only effects are switchable fixed vibrato and fixed length sustain. The sampled sounds can be played via the keyboard together with the FM sounds (although of course they're only monophonic) or they can be used as the voice for the auto-play bass line.

Auto-Play

For this level of instrument the drum sounds aren't at all bad with the 12 available rhythms consisting of Pops, Disco, 16 Beat, Rock'n' Roll, Country, Samba, Bossanova, Reggae, Big Band, Slow Rock, March/Polka and Waltz, and there's a standard fill button for a little light and shade.

The automatic chords and bass line can be triggered by the standard methods: Fingered Chord — where you actually have to hold down the shape of the chord required in the left hand; or Single Finger Chord — which allows major, seventh and minor seventh chords to be simply derived with a maximum of three fingers in the left hand.

The Sampler

Samples can be very simply entered either through a built-in microphone or directly through a line input, with a five-LED meter working with an input control to ensure optimum level matching. The sampler apparently uses an eight-bit system which, in itself, is more than reasonable considering that the original Fairlight used no more (newer models are 16-bit in keeping with the likes of the Synclavier). Although the number of bits in a system is a consideration concerning the amount of noise that is likely to be suffered, on its own it doesn't give a clear indication of the overall quality of the system. No mention is made of sampling rate (ie how many times per second the signal being recorded is sampled) which tends to define maximum frequency response, and thus the fidelity and clarity of the reproduction.

The eight seconds of sampling time can be used in one long sample, or split up into four two-second samples triggered via the four different octaves of the keyboard. This could even mean an approximate form of muti-sampling, or more probably having four different short sound effects available at a time.

A cassette tape of sampled sounds is supplied which is very good although it does show a notable lack of individual musical samples: no piano, no woodwind or brass, etc. although there are complete orchestras. Possibly Yamaha consider the FM instrument sounds good enough, and it is certainly easier for the punter to get such sounds as compared to the likes of those more exotic items on the tape.

Before I tell you that the frequency response was notably limited and that a high level of noise was evident, let me once again remind you of the price... remember? At this price the VSS-100 is a great way to get real sounds onto tape by way of effects, but I wouldn't like to suggest that you could even consider sampling your mate's bassoon then to do a bassoon solo. The quality simply isn't there. But if you want revving cars, gun shots, breaking glass (again) or big crashes from complete orchestras or big bands, this is an inexpensive possibility. You will, though, need sounds with a fairly tight dynamic envelope — fades tend to show up the noise rather seriously.

Conclusion

This is a breakthrough, and for the price it offers a great facility with FM sounds, autoplay and simple sampling. As a serious musical instrument it has many limitations, but as an effects capturer or an introduction to keyboards/sampling, it's very good value.

RRP: £179