The Eighty

Several decades ago, I had the privilege of playing a little on Yamaha's flagship, the CS-80. The price made it impossible to buy, but in connection with a recording session, I was given access to a copy for a few days. My experience was the CS-80's musical softness, an almost magical shimmer while at the same time it could be somewhat brutal, especially certain bass sounds.

There are several nice software emulations of the CS-80 - but there is some harshness in some bread and butter sounds in most of them. When XILS-Labs' version came out, I downloaded the trial version and fell in love with it immediately. Almost perfect!

In short - this is IMHO currently probably the best emulation of a CS-80, especially when it comes to the typical shimmering sound. Unfortunately, it's not that cheap (but significantly more affordable than the original!), but if you're looking for the typical CS 80 sound, you should definitely lend it an ear.

So some final thoughts - very nice GUI, crystal clear, five stars.

But the positive also comes with a price in terms of computing power. I have a pretty sharp Mac Pro, but if you don't have plenty of RAM and a good processor you should definitely test before buying.