Korg PE-1000 deep dive

[@cymbalmonkey8029]

brilliant review, love the horror movie clips overlayed, makes for a great visual context for the synth.

[@OudeisEimi]

Awesome demo ❤. Just a quick correction: key assigning, which is the method for checking how many available voices are still free or how to choose which voice to "steal" for new incoming key presses, was definitely available im 76, and was used by some manufacturers (mostly E-mu, Oberheim and Yamaha). It's just the technique itself is digital, and requires either a dedicated logic board using discrete TTL chips (bulky and too expensive for an instrument like this), a custom integrated circuit chipset (which only a company of the calibre of Yamaha was able to pull off at the time - definitely not 1976's Korg by any stretch), or a microprocessor-based design, but single-chip CPUs were quite new, and nobody at Korg had the know-how at the time. Hence, a divide-down approach (employing the same method used by electronic organs) provided a working, relatively cheap solution. Many many other manufacturers used it for their polyphonic designs, most notably the plethora of string-machines and other "ensemble keyboards" of the time.

[@MyriadOfHoops]

Brilliant demonstration, however I believe divide down technology was meant to avoid the prohibitive cost and calibration nightmare of having one oscillator per key (as would be the case on some earlier 60's organs). Supposedly, instead of 60 individual ones, it would rely on just 12 main oscillators to cover the chromatic scale, then going to an octaver circuit to divide frequencies and get the full range across the whole keyboard. Hence if, say one oscillator fails, it's likely the same note will be failing on every octave.

[@PutItAway101]

The downside of divide-down is that it sounds weak when you're combining the same note in different octaves because it's exactly in tune and in phase so you don't get that "more than the sum of its parts" effect that's so special about analogue synths. Like if you played every C note on the keyboard at once, it sounds like you're really just playing the lowest C note but with more upper harmonics. Whereas if you played every C note on a synth with separate oscillators per note, it sounds like the voice of God!

[@MyriadOfHoops]

​@@PutItAway101 absolutely, yet that divide-down full polyphony, however objectively "weak" in the sense you describe, is nonetheless a desirable sound in itself, that just doesn't sound quite the same when attempted with a more fully fledged evolved synthesizer, if that happens to be what you're after. Incidentally, the PE1000's personality happens to fall somewhat into divide down sonic territory despite having 60 oscillators. However, unlike described in the video, I believe divide-down dates back to 60’s organs so it definitely was an available tech/option at the time, not the same thing as the note distribution process implemented in the late 70's on true poly synth with limited voice count.