Magazine Archive

Home -> Magazines -> Issues -> Articles in this issue -> View

Casio CZ3000 Synth

Article from One Two Testing, April 1986

Phase Distortion comes clean



"Casio have now broken into the professional synthesizer market".

OK, that phrase has become something of a cliche. Casio were supposed to have broken into the professional synthesizer market with the CT-202 (just because it had the tone selector on the right end of the keyboard); with the CT-1000P (just because it had a do-it-yourself sound creation section); and with the CZ-101 (just because it used a totally new method of sound synthesis).

Of course, it's the CZ-101 that has the greatest claim to professionalism of the trio, simply because the Phase Distortion system it shares with the CZ-1000, CZ-5000 and new CZ-3000 really is a quantum leap in sound creation. At last Casio keyboards have escaped from the home organ associations which kept them out of the eyes of professional players, and now the company are in serious competition with the Rolands and Yamahas of this world.

So it's fair to subject the CZ-3000 to a fairly searching critical gaze and see what it can offer the beginner or the established player. Basically the sounds offered are similar to those on the miniature CZ-101, but it's possible to play two sounds at once from the keyboard in either split or layered modes. There are also more memories and more complex MIDI possibilities, but we'll come to them later.

First a quick look at Phase Distortion, the sound creation system used on the CZ-series synths. In a way it's similar to Yamaha's FM method, but has the simplicity of approach common to analog synths. Basically, PD (as we hip people know it) takes a simple sine wave and distorts it in various ways to create complex sounds. On Yamaha synths you have to approach the sine waves yourself and stack them up to make them more interesting — that's why editing a DX-7 can be so daunting. But on the Casios you never have to go down to that level — the sine waves have already been distorted for you into eight complex waveforms which can be combined in many ways.

There's no filter on a PD synth, but apart from that it's reasonably straightforward for anyone who's used an analog machine. The editing system on the 3000 is halfway between the analog and the DX-7 approach. To edit a sound you hit a parameter button such as "DCO1 Envelope" and look at the LCD display in the centre of the panel. This shows patch names (or numbers for the programmable memories) and parameter levels when editing.

For the envelope stages various rates and levels are shown, and you can use the Envelope Stage Up/Down buttons to look at the next stage of an envelope. Envelopes can be applied to pitch, waveform and volume during the course of a note, and in fact the envelope is on the complex side, having up to eight stages.

The eight stages shown on the envelope chart correspond to Attack, Decay, Attack 2, Decay 2, Decay 3, Sustain, After-Attack, Release 1, and Release 2. Lots of strange envelope effects — such as an Attack stage AFTER you release the keys — can be created, so the sounds can respond to the way you play them despite the fact that the 3000 doesn't have velocity or pressure sensitivity. Envelope End and Sustain Point switches allow you to simplify the envelopes to three or four stages if you want to make life easier for yourself.

In the case of the envelope editing displays, more than one parameter at a time is on view in the LCD window, in which case you use a pair of cursor keys to make a flashing line appear beneath the parameter you're interested in. You can quite quickly get used to moving the cursor to underline the parameter you want, then altering it with the Value Up/Down keys. Sometimes there's only one parameters deal with, such as when you select "Octave" for instance. This simply gives you a choice of +1, 0 or -1. Other simple parameters include Portamento (time only) and Glide (starting note value and time only). To get back to normal patch mode after editing a parameter, just hit the parameter button again.

A Compare/Recall button lets you check the original sound to make sure that you are actually heading in the right direction rather than making the sound increasingly unbearable. When you're happy with your new sound you can switch off the rear panel Memory Protect and record the sound in any programmable memory. It's also possible to dump sets of sounds to a cartridge, although this is a rather expensive (although fast and reliable) way to work compared to tape dump.

Interestingly enough, the CZ-3000's larger brother, the CZ-5000, did have tape dump as well as a powerful multitimbral sequencer. However, the 3000 is a much more approachable instrument, even though it still doesn't have multiple outputs for multitimbral playing via MIDI and loses the tape dump facility. The 3000 does have MIDI Thru and the styling has been slightly improved, but the control buttons still look as old-fashioned as on the 5000. The 5000's sequencer section has been replaced by a parameter chart which could help occasionally if the manual's not to hand.

The 3000's memories are arranged in four banks of four pushbuttons — Presets A-D and Memories A-D, multiplied by sound numbers 1-4 and 5-8. New sounds load up instantly, although as we'll see, the Split and Tone Mix modes do take a while to operate.

If you aren't happy with a sound, the easiest approach is to call up the DOO Wave Display and choose a new start and/or end wave for the sound. This corresponds to choosing a waveform on an analog synth and selecting some kind of filtering for it. There are eight waveforms available — Wave 1 is a Sawtooth, 2 is a Square, 3 a thin spike, 4 is a spike followed by a sine wave ("double sine"), 5 is a section of a sine wave with a sharp cutoff ("saw-pulse"), and 6 to 8 are "resonant" sawtooth, triangle and trapezoid waves. You can combine waves in up to 33 ways, although you can't use two resonant waves together.

Then you could get into the Wave Envelope, or even the Pitch Envelope to put some glide or bend effects on the sound (good for brass effects). Remember you can choose how many stages of the envelope you want in operation, so it needn't become too complex.

You can detune the oscillator banks to produce thicker effects, and there's also a non-programmable stereo chorus with depth control on the front panel. This is very handy and can be split into stereo from rear panel outputs, but inevitably it adds some hiss to the sounds.

Other effects include Ring Modulation and Noise Modulation, which can be brought in using various combinations through the Line Select function. You can listen to DCO 1 or 2, or DCO 1 with DCO 2 modulated, or DCO1 with 1 modulated. The effects sections can help you produce resonant metallic effects, wind, waves, percussion and other sound effects.


The 3000's preset and factory programmed sounds should fulfil most of your (musical) desires; there's a selection of brass and string sounds from very smooth to brassy, harsh, DX-7 like effects; a lot of pianos and tuned percussion effects, again reminiscent of some of the most popular DX7 presets; and some decent lead sounds which can be used in Solo mode for melody playing.

You'll also find Jazz Organ, Accordion, Whistle, Blues Harmonica and so on, which you may or may not use as was intended. There's a very ordinary Flute, excellent bass sounds, and a few special effects such as Typhoon.

The Casio's quite capable of Prophet-like twangy synth effects despite the fact that it hasn't got a filter, and you'll find that the pitch envelope can be used for all sorts of bends and glides within a note, in addition to the Portamento and Glide functions between notes. There are some decent percussion sounds which could be used in the multi-timbral mode we'll discuss shortly, and a few pretty ordinary organ and reed noises.

In short, the Casio sound offers the best selection from favourite Roland, Yamaha and PPG effects you'll get without spending £6,000. In addition there's a fully professional pitch bend wheel and a modulation wheel with on/off switch to the left of the keyboard — although the depth of these controls can 't be programmed. Portamento and Glide functions can be switched in or out, as can Key Transpose (adjusted on the LCD display) and Solo mode. More importantly, the Tone Mix and Key Split modes can also be selected at any time.

The CZ-3000 is sixteen-note polyphonic for single-oscillator sounds such as flute and violin, but most of the sounds use both banks of oscillators and so are eight-note polyphonic. In Tone Mix mode you can play two sounds simultaneously with four-note polyphony, and in Split mode you can play four notes either side of an adjustable split point.

For Tone Mix you just call up one sound, hit Tone Mix, then call up another, and you'll produce a layered effect. Split mode is more complex though — you have to select Split mode, look at the LCD display, set the upper-lower volume balance, and use the cursor to underline Upper or Lower before selecting the second sound.

Layering two Roland synths together can be impressive; layering two DX7's together can be impressive; but with a Casio in Tone Mix mode you can get the effect of a Roland layered with a Yamaha, which can be quite wonderful. Percussive digital effects over smooth analog-type strings are a favourite.

Using MIDI, your 3000 can perform even more complex tricks. Although you can play it normally from another MIDI synth, it's also possible to make every voice of the 3000 respond independently to a different MIDI channel. You could set up a bass sound corresponding to MIDI Channel 1, three-note string sounds responding to channels 2-4, a couple of percussion noises on 5 and 6, effects on 7, and leave 8 to play a melody "live" from the keyboard.

So the Casio can be immensely powerful in conjunction with a MIDI sequencer (performing in a similar manner to Sequential's Six-Trax but with more impressive sounds), although you'll still have all the sounds coming out of one stereo pair of outputs. The only problem is that these multitimbral patches are a pain to setup — you have to connect a MIDI lead between MIDI In and Out before calling up each channel and patch, so that the 3000 can "tell itself" what voices and sounds are wanted on each MIDI channel.

But anyway, the 3000 has a powerful MIDI implementation, responding to most external transmissions and having independent transmit and receive channels. To finish off the facilities, we have on the rear panel a Headphone output, Right-Mono and Left jack audio outputs, Foot Volume jack, Sustain pedal jack, MIDI In/Out/Thru, Memory protect On/Off switch, cartridge port and Euro mains socket.

Summing up, the Casio is a very worthwhile keyboard, but probably won't be as popular as it deserves to be for a few silly reasons. The styling still needs more work, particularly on the control knobs which are hideous. This sort of point genuinely does put people off trying out synths in a shop.

The basic sounds are great; it's a pity you can't name your own sounds though, and a really professional synth wouldn't have any preset sounds at all. The chorus is handy, and not too hissy.

The Tone Mix mode is wonderful, but the Split Mode needs a memory bank of its own holding pairs of sounds with a balance level and a split point to be really useful. Similarly the multitimbral MIDI mode would benefit from a memory, but most of all needs a multiple output facility on the rear panel, even if it's a cheap nine-pin DIN socket which you have to wire to jacks yourself.

However, there's one point you can't avoid whether you're thinking about the CZ-101, the CZ-1000, the CZ-5000 or the new CZ-3000. This is undoubtedly the most versatile sound, and will also create some amazingly complex effects for you if you want them. If you're torn between analog and digital, you'd do better to get into Casio and go for a little Phase Distortion.

CZ-3000: £675


Also featuring gear in this article


Featuring related gear



Previous Article in this issue

Classical Gas

Next article in this issue

Playback


Publisher: One Two Testing - IPC Magazines Ltd, Northern & Shell Ltd.

The current copyright owner/s of this content may differ from the originally published copyright notice.
More details on copyright ownership...

 

One Two Testing - Apr 1986

Gear in this article:

Synthesizer > Casio > CZ-3000


Gear Tags:

Digital Synth
Phase Distortion
Polysynth

Review by Matt Black

Previous article in this issue:

> Classical Gas

Next article in this issue:

> Playback


Help Support The Things You Love

mu:zines is the result of thousands of hours of effort, and will require many thousands more going forward to reach our goals of getting all this content online.

If you value this resource, you can support this project - it really helps!

Donations for February 2025
Issues donated this month: 13

New issues that have been donated or scanned for us this month.

Funds donated this month: £14.00

All donations and support are gratefully appreciated - thank you.


Magazines Needed - Can You Help?

Do you have any of these magazine issues?

> See all issues we need

If so, and you can donate, lend or scan them to help complete our archive, please get in touch via the Contribute page - thanks!

If you're enjoying the site, please consider supporting me to help build this archive...

...with a one time Donation, or a recurring Donation of just £2 a month. It really helps - thank you!
muzines_logo_02

Small Print

Terms of usePrivacy