Korg • DSS-1
A wonderful early digital synthesizer. With eight notes of polyphony, two oscillators per voice, a noise source, two multi-stage envelopes, a resonant filter and auto-bend, the DSS-1 has much in common with Korg's previous flagship DW-8000. But it went much further, boasting twin digital delays, oscillator sync, an improved unison mode, a lush analog VCF switchable between 12 and 24dB, and more. Whereas the DW-8000 got its raw material from 16 stored digital waves, the DSS1's oscillators take their source from sampling, additive synthesis, or even hand-drawn waveforms!
It actually had a warm sound and was great for creating pads and textures, as well as deep basses and drones. The synthesis method is based on altering various waveform samples via 2 data sliders. It can sample and then treat the samples as its waveforms - that includes all filtering and envelopes. The DSM-1 was the expanded rackmount version. It was used by Jean Michel Jarre, Joe Zawinul, Michael Cretu of Enigma, Mark Jenkins, Hiro Kawahara, Paul Nagle, Shriekback, and Steve Winwood.
Some of the new features include:
-16M X 12-bit (24MB) of memory (64 banks)
-USB file storage with subdirectories (FAT file system for easy PC transfer)
-more comprehensive diagnostics
-ability to assign sliders to program parameters
-ability to have all 4 systems from floppy (A-D) in memory at once
-up to 64 multisounds at once (instead of 16)
-128 programs at once (instead of 32)
-samples stored on USB drive are in .WAV format
Never attempt to lift one, they weigh a ton and are huge.
found that almost everything I 'drew' with the waveform thingy sounded the same
http://glenstegner.com/dss1/home.html