When Sequential Circuits finally went belly-up, their research and development into vector synthesis was picked up at Korg. This led to the hugely successful Wavestation Synthesizer which was based on Sequential's ProphetVS. The Wavestation incorporated the 2-dimensional vector joystick of the ProphetVS which allowed the user to alter and animate sounds.

Korg added to this a second break-through form of synthesis: wave sequencing, by which short segments of sampled audio waveforms could be played one after the other and cross-faded into each other for some complex and unusual tones, pads, textures and rhythms. The Wavestation had 2MB of ROM based samples at your disposal. Programming is not exactly easy but this great digital synth is capable of lush ambient sounds and strange effects. It has the obligatory lowpass filter, though it is non-resonant and digital sounding. Also on-board are some multi-effects which are pretty nice. This synth is easily upgraded and expandable with PCM cards too.

In 1991 the Wavestation EX, also called EXK-WS, was released (pictured above). The EX added 150 more waveforms (4MB) including acoustic instruments and drums. The EX also adds 8 multi-effects including: Mod Pitch Shift-Delay, Stereo Compressor-Limiter/Gate, Vocoder, Overdrive and Distortion effects, transposable keyboard and added MIDI implementation and control. Wavestations are used by Orbital, The Future Sound of London, Genesis, Jan Hammer, Depeche Mode, Toto, Vangelis, Legendary Pink Dots, Biosphere and Sin.

Sam

May 27, 2010 @ 5:15 am

Sold mine last year. It was a nice gear but I never used it often. missed resonace filters. you can do a lot of wavesequenzing staff thats all. sound is thin and not to compare with my DSS-1 or DW 6000 stuff.

Exer

March 12, 2010 @ 12:32 pm

[quote]In 1991 the Wavestation EX, also called EXK-WS[/quote]

In fact, 'EXK-WS' is the name of the upgrade kit that original Wavestation owners could by in order to upgrade their synth to the newer Wavestation EX version.

M1man

March 5, 2010 @ 6:08 pm

Fantastic synth, sounds you will not hear anywhere else, true 90s power house, even better with the many sound options (Pc sysex and cards), love it, will never sell.

Christopher Winkels

February 25, 2010 @ 9:19 pm

Part 2: Downsides. The filters are dull and lack crucial resonance. The sound is mid-rangey, without bass beef. It aliases like a typical digital synth in the top octaves. There's no portamento, and use of hard sync imparts some annoying glitchy artifacts. While 32 oscillators was a lot in 1990, that didn't translate into 32 voices wavesequences. Crossfades halve polyphony, and if you also wanted to use 4 oscillator slots for vector synthesis a 4-voice synth was likely. The patch and program architecture is frustrating. Programs must consist of patches and patches must be assigned to programs. The result is that any patch change modifies every performance using it. It had the unfortunate rep too of showing up on a huge number of film and TV soundtracks in the early and mid-90s. Nothing makes one realize how lazy some sound designers are than hearing those same two or three wavesequences over and over again. Still a good synth though.

Christopher Winkels

February 25, 2010 @ 9:07 pm

I have mixed feelings about the Wavestation. I owned two, an early buildl, and a later EX version.

The early one was unreliable and constantly switched itself on and off without warning. That one went back to Korg three times before they gave me a new EX model as replacement.

The good: they were really powerful synths with a quality interface, deep programming, excellent effects and were a breath of fresh air when most people buying new were still stuck with dull ROMplers like the M1. It implemented features like hard sync which were then uncommon in digital synthesizers.

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