Full Bucket Music FB-7999, free Synthesizer plugin (Korg DW-6000/8000 Emulation)

[muki]

wow cool thanks!

[GaryG]

Maybe i'm getting muddled but weren't the piano sounds of the 8000 revered in its time? Sure no great shakes now in comparison but seemed a go to recommendation back then...?

Whatever, thanks FBM.

[BONES]

I definitely remember the ESQ being feted for its piano, which I never really rated, but I don't recall anyone saying anything about the DW's.

[Watchful]

I definitely remember the ESQ being feted for its piano, which I never really rated, but I don't recall anyone saying anything about the DW's.

Ditto. At the time the DW-8000 was out, you'd have needed a sampler for a plausible piano. Korg's SG1 was reasonable, but I can't imagine anyone thinking the DW-8000 had a convincing piano (although you could do some good things with its piano waveform. Maybe Ensoniq's Mirage was respected, or like BONES suggests, the ESQ-1.

[Erisian]

Just skimming through the presets gives me chills. What a beautiful, beautiful sound it makes!

[Watchful]

You either like it or you don't. It was in a weird world, with analog fading quickly but digital still not fully embraced. It has that wonderful analog filter (which Bjorn did a more-than-reasonable job emulating), but the single-cycle waveforms allowed you access to so much more than just square, saw, triangle and sine shapes. And the result was unique, and I loved the impressive sweeps it could produce, but also the cold, precise leads it could add to it.

I get that a lot of people didn't like it, but it was a solid performer with a lot of expression; its presets were often a little weak, and musicians who bought found they could produce far more impressive sounds after only a few days of experimenting with it.

The DW-8000 also occupies an interesting spot in history, as its sound architecture paved the way for the later DSS-1 sampler (select two waveforms and quickly have fun with the filter and envelopes). This in turn brought us to the M1, which was one of the best-selling keyboards of all time.

The Roland D-50 didn't copy the DW-8000, but it certainly was influenced by it: the on-board effects (lots of keyboards had choruses and delays, but the DW-8000 had the first widely-available functional digital delay that did nearly everything built right in to beef up the sound), the ability to blend traditional waveforms with digital PCM wave shapes, and the reliance on play-ability. The Roland D-50 did pretty much all of that way better than the Korg DW-8000, except in one area: that analog filter.

But that was years later; in 1985 (really, 1986 by the time you could actually buy one) there was nothing like the DW-8000, especially at a non-nauseating price.

So, yes, analog folks didn't like its digital sound, and digital newcomers shrugged at its analog parts, but it definitely should have been more widely embraced than it was. It *should* have knocked the DX7 back a few steps, but for whatever reason, it didn't. Again, thanks to Bjorn for reintroducing so many people to a synth that simply shouldn't have been forgotten.

[raiderpdog]

If anyone is interested, I've converted the original Korg MEX-8000 banks for use with FB-7999 here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/fb-799 ... /downloads

The MEX-8000 was a memory expander for the DW/EX-8000 series, and contained a few duplicates to the original presets, but truthfully I liked a lot of the original sounds in the MEX better than many of the DW-8000's presets. There are some good, funky sounds here.

Please note that the MEX-8000's bank D was *the same* as the "preload side B" sounds from the original cassette tape.

In 1987, a friend of my brother's bought an MEX-8000 thinking he could attach it via MIDI to any other synth and play the sounds off of it. He was wrong, of course, because the MEX was a bulk dumper for the 8000s only. Before he returned it, though, I borrowed it, attached it to my DW-8000, and copied the sounds over, and saved them to a hard drive on an 80286 computer (you younger folks can look that up).

So here they are. Check 'em out.

And thanks, Bjorn. These shipped with the MEX-8000, so there's no limits on their reuse. I presume you can link 'em to your site if you like.

thanks for offering these to us!

[Teksonik]

I know Björn made the conscious decision not to include the DW 8000's Arpeggiator but I wish he had....

"The DW-8000 included a 64-note arpeggiator with an optional latch function and an "assignable" mode which allowed the user to cumulatively add up to 64 notes to the arpeggiator's input. The arpeggiator also includes options to span multiple octaves and an adjustable tempocontrol slider".

Stop typing yes I know we can use a third party or DAW's Arp but I like them to be built in as they become part of the patch.

I know this is a "simulation" and not an emulation but I wish the Arp was not an omission.

[AnX]

Would you like it to play osc1 and osc2 ?

[AnX]

Also, I DL this earlier, will give it a run later, looks interesting.... Will it sound similar to my old Poly61? (That too has weird parameter ranges....)

[Teksonik]

Would you like it to play osc1 and osc2 ?

I trust he wouldn't add an Arp routing feature that doesn't work.

[Watchful]

Stop typing yes I know we can use a third party or DAW's Arp but I like them to be built in as they become part of the patch.

The DW-8000's arpeggiator was not particularly useful. New owners, like myself, tried it for the first couple days and basically gave up on it.

It could go up an octave, two octaves, or the full five octaves.

It could go down an octave, two octaves, or the full five octaves.

It could go up an octave, two octaves, or the full five octaves and then back down.

And there was a slider you could use to make it go slow, fast, or faster.

That's it. The latch feature wasn't anything more than a sustain toggle. You had to play your chord, press latch, and then let off the keys. When you were done hearing it do its thing, you pressed latch and it cut the arpeggio off at that exact instant, regardless of whether it had finished its cycle.

And if you had a long envelope on the sound, you ran out of the 8-note limit pretty fast and could hear it cut out.

Want a three-note, three-octave loop? Nope. Want to get 2 octaves above the highest note? Nope. Want to alternate the pattern of the chord? Nope.

In other words, it was nothing like what we think of today as an arpeggiator.

The only time I ever found it useful was in a banjo patch I made; using the arpeggiator set to one octave up and down, and turning the speed up a bit, it gave a convincing super-fast strum effect that it turned out no one needed and I never used it for anything.

Compared to today's arpeggiators, which are practically 12-step sequencers, the DW-8000 arpeggiator was very much a thing tacked on at the end.

EDITED TO ADD: I could go up the full five octaves IF you played the lowest keys on the board, otherwise it only climbed up as high as the highest note.

[Teksonik]

Compared to today's arpeggiators, which are practically 12-step sequencers, the DW-8000 arpeggiator was very much a thing tacked on at the end.

Compared to today's synths the DW8000 is a very simple and limited synth.

It's full of limitations so adding the Arp would be no different even if it's limited compared with today's Arps.

I had a ton of fun with the Arp on my Juno 60 back in the day and it only had Up,Up Down,and Down with a three octave range.

[Watchful]

Also, on the Korg DW-8000 (like the Juno 60, I believe), the arpeggiator was off by default, so there were no patches totally dependent on it. Or even slightly. As I mentioned, some even failed to arpeggiate well due to long envelopes.

I'm not saying everyone would hate it; but I will say that if I had to get rid of one thing the DW-8000 had in order to get the plugin out to folks, well, that would be it.

[planetearth]

Also, I DL this earlier, will give it a run later, looks interesting.... Will it sound similar to my old Poly61? (That too has weird parameter ranges....)

Wouldn't Björn's Fury-800 (a Poly-800 "simulation") sound more like the Poly-61? The Poly-61 wasn't a digital synth; it simply had DCOs, like the Poly-800.

Steve