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AKAI |
Synth ReviewsPlease send your synth and software reviews to : Synthman Thank you.
Kawai K5000Wby Francis de BeusTen years after the K5, Kawai return with the technology that brought them the biggest succes ever. And they added a little of everything else they have learned sofar !! PRO'S
CONS
Creative Addition VS Destructive SubtractionMost forms of synthesis, from early analogue to PCM-based, take as their starting point a waveform, and this contains all the frequencies that final sound can ever have. The only way to control the harmonic contents is the filter, which just removes frequencies in a very unsubtle manner. Most of the time it removes the life and character from a sound. This is especially true for samples. With additive synthesis you add together the harmonics you want to create the required sound. If you think of subtractive synthesis as sculpturing (removing the unwanted bits to leave the required shape) and sample-based synthesis as photography (capturing exactly what isin front of the camera) then additive synthesis is more like oilpainting, building up the layers of paint until you have the aquired effect. You can choose to work with 64 harmonics or combine two voices (known as sources) to double it to 128. You can have six sources in a program. This means that you can have six different sets of harmonics, all reacting in a different way under the various means of realtimecontrol. Alternatively, you can replace any of the harmonic sets with a PCM sample.
PCM: No ProblemoThere are some sounds you cannot create with additive synthesis. Especially the beginning of natural percussive sounds (mostly noise like breathe noise, plucking etc.). By using PCM-attacks you can get round this problem. It's a technique Kawai borrowed from the good old D-50. The K5000W has 266 PCM-samples for this purpase which covers everything you wil probably ever need. Getting back to additive side of things. The K5000W lets you control the harmonics in many different ways. You can choose from Modulation wheel, velocity, keyboard scaling and envelopes. Every harmonic has its own envelope, so you can tweak a lot ! The abbility to loop these envelopes means that the harmonic contents of the sound can be continuously varied. Unfortunatly not many of the presets make use of this feature. You can recreate the same effect when you move back and forth the modulation wheel when you play. Do try this when you check out the K5000W at your local store, or else you will mis a lot of its potential !.
Morfing made easyIf you dont want to tweak all those envelopes, Kawai came up with what they call the Morfing Display (?!?!?!?). You can take up to 64 "snapshots" from the envelopes of preset sounds. When you hit the exec. button the K5000W starts to interpolate between the snapshots and so gives you a ompletely new sound. Pretty neat right ? When you pick the snapshots at random, sometimes you end up with a sound you probably could never have imagined, although most of the time you end up with something horrible ! It's a great and quick way to experiment with additive synthesis and gives you sounds that are totally unique
ConclusionIn terms of sound quality its as least as good as the old K5. But it has so much more flexabillity ! The real key to exciting sounds is the abbility to modulate the harmonic contents in realtime. Don't forget to give the modulation wheel a real good workout when you try this machine at your local store
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