[sdiy] The extreme low cost of audio gear... my little comment somehow got out of hand :P

[Rainer Buchty]

>Commercial synthesis stopped being interesting after the Kurzweil K2500
>and the Kawai K5000.

Ah, don't forget the Yamaha FS1R. And the Hartmann Neuron.

And having read that Roland VariOS users can now buy a (literally)  
program card to load a D50 into their machines makes that also quite
appealing.

But then, the question remains. What is the "next generation" synthesis 
method? Subtractive synthesis was what could be done easily with analog 
hardware which got refined on the wave-generation side by wavetable 
sequencing or plain sample playback and multiple filter characteristics 
on the processing side.

Yamaha-FM and Casio-PD was what could be done easily with that day's
digital hardware, same goes for the Kawai K5.

We had a bit of physical modeling (Yamaha, Korg) going on where the 
focus of "modeling" then got moved to "emulating old machines".

And then we have the Hartmann Neuron which is something entirely new.

So what's to come next, especially if the constraints are

- expressive, formerly "unknown" sound
- ease of use
- alternatively to ease of use: a sound everyone wants so that 
  noone cares that only god-like programmers grok it, thus everyone is 
  using the same sound libraries over and over again

Would a specialized synth, e.g. a "vocal synthesizer" or a
Karplus-Strong-based machine, really hit the market?

Rainer