Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

--- In CZsynth@yahoogroups.com, "cliffe123" <cliffe123@...> wrote:
>
> Well I guess maybe the law suit was indeed exaggerated. Anyone, feel free to correct me if im wrong.
> 
> > > The PPG Wavecomputer 360 was pure digital (no filters), built 1978...
> >

What you seem to be failing to realize is that FM is just a particular method of digital synthesis that Yamaha bought the patent to from MIT.  An FM synth must be a digital synth, but a digital synth does not have to be an FM synth.  Prior to Yamaha buying the FM patent from MIT, MIT had been liscensing it to several manufacturs, including Synclavier.  But PCM digital synthesis (sampling/rompling) existed long before MIT came up with FM.  I'm sure labs were crudely recording and playing back sound digitally since before the transistor was invented.  By the 1960s there was sampling software for the PDP-1 minicomputer and there are albums made with the PDP-1 by experimental musicians in the 60s.  But because both ROM and RAM was cost-prohibitive until the 1980s, Yamaha developed FM rather than PCM synthesis. Think of FM as being a way to do digital synthesis without the memory required for sampling.  The DX-7 was "the first commercially successful digital synthesizer", appearing in 1983, but it was not Yamaha's first FM synthesizer.  That was the GS-1, released in 1981.  It was a preset machine with no programming capabilities.