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.

Essiemme

May 2, 2013 @ 11:36 am

I think Tangerine Dream uses this one in Logos Velvet. The solo is definetly the wavestation.

Best regards.
sm

dennis ristow

March 11, 2013 @ 12:45 pm

Anyone looking for info on the entire line of Korg Wavestations should check out this site. It has links to editing software, and many downloadable sound banks including the original SYSEX files for banks Ram 1, 2 and 3

http://www.danphillips.com/wavestation/index.htm

Haza

March 4, 2013 @ 1:23 am

If you are looking at buying a wavestation - the Wavestation A/D rack is the one to go for! It's the best of the lot thanks to the input section and the best rack version due to the joystick and nice large screen!

CLASSIC!

Daniel Fletcher of Dazz-Synth

January 19, 2013 @ 2:03 pm

Does anyone know if where is a good tutorial on how to program sounds with the
Korg Wavestion EX?


///Daniel Fletcher of D a z z - S y n t h

Connor

December 19, 2012 @ 5:42 pm

I know Mark Snow used it with X-Files. When I first used one of these and put on a strings patch, it ended up being the exact one used in X-Files and no matter what I did I kept going, "it's like I'm making the soundtrack to an X-Files episode."

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