Vintage Synth Explorer

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.

VISITOR COMMENTS

Comments page 4 of 5

Click here to add a comment

Your Name:

Email Address:

Image verification:

Message:

Posting Rules: Please keep your comments relevant! Do not post requests for help, do not use for sales, do not post unless you have something interesting to say about this instrument, or we may delete your post.

 

Pepe

Posted 151 days ago

Hi, sealion! Could you please tell us where we can find the "entire library" you wrote about?

sealion

Posted 154 days ago

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.

sealion

Posted 154 days ago

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.

adam

Posted 162 days ago

Does it have a sequencer or an arpeggiator?
and is it definitely better than the dw800?

Douglas Cain

Posted 178 days ago

The first time I ever played this wonderful instrument, I immediately laid down a song. The filters sound like velvet and the tones can go from glassy to villainous. Also, this is my favorite keyboard to play. The after-touch and velocity sensitivity are quite expressive. The unison mode rules.

<54321>