[sdiy] Understanding 80s Synth Architectures

Mon Feb 7 00:41:32 CET 2022

Given at the last count he owned six Mini-Moogs plus three for spares, it seems surprising he didn't use one of them.  Do you have the link so we can see what he was playing instead.

But if you want to hear a digital Mini-Moog done well, download the app from the Moog website.

-----Original Message-----
From: Synth-diy [mailto:synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org] On Behalf Of David G Dixon via Synth-diy
Sent: 06 February 2022 22:21
To: 'Rainer Buchty'; rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk
Cc: 'Synth-Diy mailing list'
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Understanding 80s Synth Architectures

This is a tad bit off topic, but lastnight I watched a YouTube video of Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe performing Close to the Edge live.  This must have been in 1989.  Wakeman played all of the iconic synthesizer parts on some 80s digital synth, probably a workstation of some kind.

You could almost hear the binary digits straining to sound cool, trying to be a sound that had originally come from a Minimoog, and FAILING UTTERLY.
Digital keyboards destroyed Rick Wakeman's style.  Nothing he played on them ever sounded even 50% as cool as what he played in '71, '72, or '73 on a Minimoog or a Mellotron or a Hammond.  And what he chose to play on them was almost always pretty uninspired, probably because it was difficult to play inspired things using uninspiring sounds.

Video may have killed the radio star, but digital killed the keyboard wizard.

-----Original Message-----
From: Synth-diy [mailto:synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org] On Behalf Of Rainer Buchty
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2022 4:35 PM
To: rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk
Cc: Synth-Diy mailing list
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Understanding 80s Synth Architectures

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

On Sat, 5 Feb 2022, rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk wrote:

> Do you think the original code was written in assembly, or compiled 
> from a higher level language like C?

In the early 1980s? Assembly language.

If you want to see the quality of mid-1980s C compilers, check out the Casio
FZ1 OS. There, even ENTER 0x0,0x0 / LEAVE were left in -- illustrating the back-then mantra "if it needs to be performant, do it in assembly".

And that's the easiest to tackle optimization ...

Rainer

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