In the early 1990's most synth manufacturer's quest to use digital forms of synthesis to re-create acoustic sounds (as well as analog sounds) led to an onslaught of rather boring instruments. Among the mob of digital synths some stood out such as Korg's M1, Roland's D-50, and Yamaha's SY85. Fading away were the days of Yamaha's FM-synthesis, replaced by Advanced Wave Memory (AWM2). Throughout the 1990's Yamaha used AWM2 in many of their successful products because of its high sonic quality and advanced synth-like editing features. The SY85 was a powerful workstation keyboard capable of some great sounds and full arrangements.

It's a 16-part multitimbral MIDI synth with a nice 61-note keyboard designed to be the main keyboard in your MIDI studio, with tons of sounds and sequencing features built-in. It has a long but narrow 40 character x 2 line LCD display and a 5x5 mode selection matrix which enhances operation by allowing fast easy access to any of the SY85's modes. In addition to pitch & modulation wheels and dual output level controls, the SY85 has eight slide controls that can be used to control a range of parameters while performing for expressive real-time power. Best of all it's got multi-mode filters and a dual-effects processor with chorus, flange, reverb, delay, exciter, parametric EQ, echo, ring modulation, leslie, distortion, etc. The effects can be used in series or parallel, and there are 4 busses to route sounds through them. Other features include a 3.5" floppy disk drive, external memory card slots and two assignable stereo outputs.

Ph

July 26, 2012 @ 10:22 pm

I have an SY85 that has barely been used at all. Any clue what I might be ble to get for it?

bari

June 12, 2012 @ 6:52 pm

Nobody has mentioned this machine makes a great controller. The PC table feature in midi settings allows one to retain MSB and LSB settings in memory then assign that setting to the A thru H buttons on the right. Playing live with a midi module, this gives you instant no-nonsense pushbutton access to patches and performances. The downside is, you can only assign 1 midi channel at a time to the settings, therefore only one module can be controlled. Otherwise, a great controller.

looneytoonmusic

June 8, 2012 @ 8:33 pm

rubenat2001, "Warning memory configuration changed" means you have sample memory that is not assigned.
(1) Go to the wave utility mode (Shift + Utility)
(2) Go to the Wave Initialize page (the Seq Setup button)
(3) Select Volatile Memory (probably selected by default)
(4) Press Enter
(5) Press the Shift button to check the total free volatile memory

kyle

May 23, 2012 @ 5:37 pm

please contact me for floppy drive help rush74@gmail.com

pajacke

May 4, 2012 @ 7:10 pm

@Ulli: Is it switched to "Local OFF"?

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