DW-8000

Take Korg's first digitally controlled analog synth hybrid (DW-6000) two steps higher and you get the more popular DW-8000. Sound is digitally generated from the DWGS (Digital Waveform Generator System) and has been doubled from 8 sampled digital waveforms to 16 simple analog to complex digital waveforms. The DW-8000 has 8 voice polyphony in two modes, or one monophonic mode with all eight voices stacked. The analog VCF resonant filter and VCA both have independent ADBSSR envelopes. Parameters can be altered in real time via a single programmable slider. There are 64 presets that can be reprogrammed by the user.

EX-8000

When the DW-8000 succeeded the DW-6000, it expanded it to 8 notes polyphony, 16 sampled waveforms, a velocity sensitive keyboard with programmable aftertouch, auto-bend, a simple arpeggiator and a digital delay unit. The Digital Delay was an astonishing goody for the time, offering up to 512ms delay, phasing, flanging, chorusing and other time effects. Both the Arpeggiator, Auto-Bend and Digital Delay make this synth an inspiring and great sounding machine to use for great 303 basslines, techno and house bass and synth sounds and more! The EX-8000 (pictured above) is a rackmount version of the DW-8000. Several 3rd-party developers offered expansion boards for the DW-8000 providing up to 1024 presets, layered sounds, keyboard splits and Sample+Hold for the LFO. Though later overshadowed by the M1, the DW-8000 has been used by Divine Masquerade, Juno Reactor, Depeche Mode, Dream Theater, Joe Zawinul, and Keith Emerson.

79 VISITOR COMMENTS

Don Ayers

January 18, 2012 @ 7:25 pm

Help. Trying to find power adapter (or the specs for one) for my old MEX-8000 memory expander module. Manual only says 9 volt (no specs for milliamper/etc. output. If anyone has the expander, I would GREATLY appreciate getting an email of the exact specs taken from the adapter itself. I see "beastrichards" in the may 18 2010 post indicated he/she had one. Thanks much for any help! My email is dayersd@comcast.net.

Sealionman

January 9, 2012 @ 1:15 am

My first hardware polysynth and man do I love it. At first it was a little daunting to program. May not be the best choice if you're new to programming. But once you're used to working with synths I think you'll find the DW-8000 to be quite a gem. I appreciate these one-paramater-at-a-tiime synths because it forces you to be direct and purposeful in your work instead of just twisting knobs to see what happens. You gotta know what you want.

And yeah, the filter sounds amazing! I'll never sell it.

Thomas Faurby

January 8, 2012 @ 9:59 am

A demo of this great synth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5WCV5f28Pg

Numanoid

January 1, 2012 @ 12:19 pm

Alex Juno kindly provides 16 multisampled free patches to be used in Kontakt/Kontakt Player: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=321307

Sounds decent to my ears :-)

MasterCProgram

December 19, 2011 @ 8:40 pm

I also think the band Yes used the DW-8000 during a late 80s tour they did, according to this page: http://www.pallium.com/bryan/dwpatches.php . Might be a worthy addition to the 'has been used by...' section.

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