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 (1987) 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.

Sanhedralite

August 20, 2009 @ 2:09 pm

Crummy sound, but looks absolutely beautiful.
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

Pepe

August 5, 2009 @ 12:28 pm

I'd really like to know how the procedure described by "Shawn" should work, since the M1 for example has got ROM based PCM sounds and can only be upgraded via the PCM card slot with special PCM ROM cards. Then how should I get my M1 equipped with the sounds or samples of a DSS-1? I'm rather confused.

Shawn

July 31, 2009 @ 2:51 pm

One of the best features these offer is the ability to create new sounds or samples and then load them into your M, T, or 01/W series synths.

Pepe

July 9, 2009 @ 1:57 pm

Okay, I found it myself, was pretty easy. But for all that are interested, too:
http://glenstegner.com/dss1/home.html

sealion

June 20, 2009 @ 1:59 am

It is a fat mother. I use mine with a mo-fx to crunk the stereo out of it, and it sits nicely on the large real estate of the top. I would be comfortable doing a noise gig with just those two. The entire library is available online free and I copied it all. Plus it is one of the very rare few synths that let you draw a waveform (frankly an over-rated option) but it does that. And it samples in mulitple lo-fi modes under and more than 8-bit. Stereo outs, great great analog filters, internal efx. Personally I find the korg joystick modulator approach not my style compared with moog wheels, but that is minor. Great synth, played regularly in my arsenal. Very very underrated. Huge though.

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