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RE: Casio CT-6000: has it phase distortion? (main ICs?)

2013-10-01 by <analogmonster@...>

Thanks, forgot about wayback. here's the link http://web.archive.org/web/20090416101456/http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/html/ht6000a.html


and to quote him "SD seems to use what I call additive pulse wave synthesis, which combines several pulse waves in different widths, with various amp envelopes"


and this is listed elsewhere on the site:


What is actually meant by Spectrum Dynamic
My hypothesis is:
The 'DCO' consists of several pulse waves at different octaves.

This is what I call Additive pulse wave synthesis. It is most notably employed by KORG Poly-800. Unlike Poly-800, HT seems to be able to control the amp envelope and the pulse-width of each harmonic wave individually.

Hence Spectrum, Dynamic. Spectrum means additive harmonics, and dynamic means the volume control.
Unfortunately, each spectrum is always a square/pulse wave.

Then, what is meant by its alleged 'characteristically clear sound' ?
It still remains a mystery. CZ synths are fully digital, and their bit-resolution is much higher. Most people would think CZ (or most digital synths) sounds clearer than HZ/HT.
Because:
There are too many pulse-sounding waves.
There are many octave-unison-like waves.
The saw wave is stepwise shaped, which is characteristic of additive pulse wave synths. They generate a saw wave by adding square waves at 4 (or so) different octaves.

SD seems to be more advanced than Poly-800, as it can control the amp envelopes of several harmonic waves, as some decay sounds above suggest.

Some waves has wierd metallic effect. This may be created by an internal ring modulator.

Noise generator
SD oscillator can generate white noise and 'metallic noise.
They may be generated by an analog noise generator.
Another possibility is CASIO's Noise Modulation, but it's not certain if HZ/HT uses it.
CASIO CZ is the only digital synth that uses Noise Modulation, which produces noise with different character by modulating the oscillator's pitch very fast at random.



---In czsynth@yahoogroups.com, <jammie.emma@...> wrote:


yes he did stuff with don solaris when mac closed down there yahoo groups type forums
they all got shut down and many good resources got lost he did lots of sound diver adaptions and his sy99 va one was excellent it turned the sy99 into a vitual analog synth
now he also talked about the kawai spectra maybe you are confusing the 2 as it refers to them as dc waves and the spectra was pcm but they are additive waves created by additive synthesis and then sampled digitally for 1 single cycle contininous wave
they first used it in the kawai k3 then k1 k11 k4
and all that information used to be on there have you tried wayback machine to see if its on there
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, October 01, 2013 2:04 PM
Subject: Re: [CZsynth] RE: Casio CT-6000: has it phase distortion? (main ICs?)

Yeah Daniel is right, PCM is just digital sampling and not what I was referring to.

I remember where I first heard the idea, but the site no longer exists. It was a guy known as synth seal, and he had a page called sealed's deep synthesis page.

He described the Casio spectrum dynamics engine as essentially additive synthesis using several pulse waves of different widths. I've seen this explanation else where, but I don't know if they all got the idea from him and he is wrong-his site existed at least 10 years ago. This is why I want to take a scope to the raw waveforms.

He was certainly a guy who knew his stuff though - I believe he was who discovered through sysex programming you can access previously unknown waveforms and modulation modes in the cz1/1000.






On 1 Oct 2013, at 13:24, Daniel Forró <dan.for@...> wrote:

But PCM means just sampling, not some type of digital synthesis in real time. When <analogmonster> talks about thin pulse waves, he means something different.

If only I understood well.

Daniel Forro


On 1 Oct, 2013, at 9:16 PM, 350ypvs@... wrote:



I just pulled off the cover of my (working) HT6000 and there written on the keyboard, staring at me, is 'Pulse Code Modulation'. I should've remembered that rather than Casio's fancy 'Spectrum Dynamics' label! Therefore you are most probably very right about the raw sounds being pulse code generated, effectively digital waveforms! This kind of makes sense as many of the later Casios (mid to late 1980's onwards) used PCM generated sounds. Add the HT model's chorus, analogue filter and the ability to adjust the amplifier and filter envelopes (plus ring mod, detune and velocity on the HT6000) to give you some quite unique sounds.

Like you, I love my HT6000 so much that when my first model died suddenly, I snapped up the next one I found on Ebay. It probably cost less than having my original repaired, though I do hope to get that one working again sooner or later.It is quite unique sounding, part way between digital and analogue. For some reason the 'single oscillator' 700/ 3000 and HZ600 models sound more analogue, though the 6000 is more versatile. And if you use the ring mod waveforms and detune the 4th 'line' to 73, you get a sub-oscillator effect to generate lower bass frequencies. Not quite in the Roland Juno 60 or Moog league, but certainly enough to be usable for bass lines.

Thanks also for the compliment on my Casio collection! The best thing about it is that most the boards didn't cost much at all. The most expensive were the CZ101 (90GBP back in 1990) and the CZ-1 (125GBP). Most cost between 10 - 20 GBP. Even the VZ-1 I picked up for only 70GBP! There are bargains still to be had, though some models are now more sought after, especially the CZ101 and HT6000 with prices rising accordingly. None are 'big' money compared with similar aged Roland/ Korgs/ Yamahas. Even the new XW-P1 is a bargain for what it offers at the price, compared with the competition, with many magazine reviews placing it in a class of its own.

Long live Casio!


On 1 October 2013 12:39, <analogmonster@...> wrote:

I completely agree generror is wrong about the ht/hz range. I LOVE my ht6000, nothing else sounds like it. Some day I will open it up and take a scope to the filter input as I want to see what the raw waveforms look like. If you have the filter open as much as possible it definitely sounds very digital and unique, certainly nothing like my cz1000 and vz10m and theoretically the ht6000 should be between the two if it were a pd synth.

The most talked about theory for the makeup of the ht6000 voice is that it is entirely based on thin pulse waves combined using the built in envelopes, ring mod, tremolo etc. this makes a lot of sense to me when I listen to it. Still it would be nice to know for sure.


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