Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

What a surprise - more gearfreaks all looking for that special and
unique feel and sound.

I used to have a DW8000. This synth has bucket loads of character. I
tried that editor, but never got it to work, though I found the DW8000
pretty easy to program - very well designed and almost as easy to
program as a Juno 60. You won't need to look at the manual if you've
programmed an analogue before. The DW8000 does not have bucket loads
of modulation options, but the inbuilt delay is a great feature
(especially for the time - it was the first ever synth with built-in
digital delay effects). Anyway - if you want that distinctive DW8000
sound, it's a truly great synth. I didn't , and my wife didn't like
the space it took up, so it had to go. Korgs are notorious for battery
leakage, so you might want to replace the backup battery straight off.

Late last year, I found a bargain DSS1 and couldn't resist. It has the
same good instinctive interface design as the DW8000, but it's twice
the weight (this thing is a tank) and twice the complexity. And about
1/2 the price! This beast was quite difficult to get working. It does
not retain sounds, so you have to load them from disk each time you
switch it on. So the floppy is vital. You can get replacement disk
drives ($70?), and you'll need a good supply of DS/DD floppies. It
took me best part of 4 hours to create a suitable disk with some
sounds on. Fortunately, there are a lot of disk images available on
the net, from some very good sources. This thing is absolutely AWSOME.
It out-pads everything else I've ever laid my hands on with the
exception of a prophet VS, is hugly versatile and can be fatter than a
minimoog on steroids. Not bad for something that cost me as much as
(let's try to keep this on-topic) my CZ101.

IMHO, Try to get to know your DW8000 without a patch editor, and learn
to use the modulation on the delay to get a decent chorus or flange.
It's easy enough to program that you'll be able to fill half the
patches within a few days, and limited enough that you'll get the full
range of sounds out of it without needing to find 3rd party patches
for it.


On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:04:23 -0500, Scott Nordlund <gsn10@...> wrote:
> 
> >I'm getting a Korg DW 8000.  Anyone know of a good patch editor
> >for Windows for this?
> >
> >I realize this is unrelated to the CZ group.  Sorry if it bugs some of
> >you that I'm asking here.
> 
> Off-topic certainly, but it seems like we're all synth nerds here.
> 
> Anyway the DW-8000 is very nice sounding, though fairly limited.  Though you
> don't really need an editor, there's an old (windows 3.1) editor here:
> http://www.netaxs.com/~aruggeri/dw8000.htm or you could use a general
> purpose midi-editor program.  I have to ask, though, have you considered the
> DSS-1?  It's very cheap now, and essentially a DW-8000 (same basic voice
> structure, same lovely filters) with user-definable waveforms and some other
> added features (dual delays, oscillator sync, waveform creation via additive
> synthesis and drawing, it's a sampler too but I don't think it's
> particularly useful in that regard).  If you don't mind the size/weight
> (it's absolutely massive and there's no rack model) and you get one with a
> working disk drive, it would probably be a better alternative, for probably
> about the same price.
> 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
> 
>