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(More customer reviews)Imagine the Hollywood star that for years has been your vision of a perfect mate. One day, decades later, you wake up, and she (or he if the shoe fits) is in bed right next to you, snoring with morning breath - still cute though. That's my assessment of the CS-80V.
I was a teenager in 1976 when I first heard about the Yamaha CS-80. In 1977, I started hearing it on records and seeing it on stage. I was in instant techno-lust. Unfortunately, the CS-80 cost as much as a Chrysler Cordoba with "rich Corinthian leather." I didn't have the money for a used car, much less a new top-of-the-line synthesizer.
About 25 years later, Arturia came out with their software version, the CS-80V. I don't remember what the initial price was, maybe $299.00 or so. Much more reasonable, but I'm just a noodler, not a musician, so I couldn't justify that. Fall 2009 Arturia started blowing out the last of the 1.x inventory at $99 or so. I pulled the trigger. Now here's my assessment. (Right now, the current version is 2.0. Read further for some discussion on the differences in versions.)
There's no question that the CS-80 was the ultimate synthesizer of its day in 1977. It's not just an 8-voice polyphonic synthesizer, it's set up like two 8-voice synths in parallel. It has a lot of filter and modulation options. It has polyphonic portamento and glissando (a stepped glide). It has sample and hold, and an arpeggiator. The original keyboard had velocity sensitivity (which is standard today) and polyphonic aftertouch (which is rare today). It had a pitch-bend ribbon which is cool but which takes skill to use musically.
Enough history, what does the CS-80V sound like? It sounds good, but then again, in 2011, good-sounding soft-synths are a dime a dozen, or less, since there are actually hundreds of freeware VSTi softsynths. The on-screen sliders of the CS-80V beg you to point your mouse at them, click and drag them to see what they do. One of the great things about CS-80V is that it is cross-platform, Windows and Mac. Most of my time has been spent with CS-80V in stand-alone mode on a G5 iMac running OS-X 10.4. It runs great with no noticeable latency. I've also used it as a AU plug-in running in Apple Logic. It runs fine, but it's a little piggish hen it comes to processor cycles, more of a piglet than an pig. I ran it briefly on an 2.0 Ghz Intel iMac and a 1st generation Intel Macbook. It runs fine on those machines as well. On the Windows side, I installed it in my newish Dell XPS-16 laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium. It runs in Windows XP compatibility mode. It has a little latency using DirectX drivers. Getting it to run with ASIO under ASIO4ALL has been hit or miss. (If you don't understand all this driver gibberish, don't worry.)
While some of the CS-80s features have aged well, and some haven't been duplicated. In some areas the CS-80v is stuck with the baggage of its 1970s-era origin. First, 8 voices is nothing these days and can be somewhat limiting. You can install a 10-voice VST version under windows. Secondly, the CS-80's patch-selection was based upon two rows of buttons, with only one button being user-programmable. The CS-80V keeps this basic structure and supplements it with drag-down menus for patch (program) selection. This can be a hassle. The front panel graphics of CS-80v were good for their day, but they were designed fro a monitor size of WVGA or so. Now that monitors are twice the size as they were 5 years ago, it would be good to have more detailed front panel graphics. The original CS-80 uses nonstandard nomenclature. What we now know as the VCF or filter, the CS-80 calls "brilliance". Some of the controls are the reverse of current convention. Not a big deal, but something that requires adjustment.
Since the CS-80's claim to fame was its polyphonic aftertouch, I couldn't wait to try out this feature. I found a rare midi-controller with polyphonic aftertouch, a General Music S3. Sure enough, the CS-80 played with poly-aftertouch really shows off its unique character. It's too bad that more of the factory patches don't use this feature. ATTENTION MIDI CONTROLLER MANUFACTURERS, BRING BACK POLY-AT!
In CS-80V v 1.6, the version I have, the patches (instrument sounds) that have already been programmed are ok, but they are fewer in number than I expected. They don't cover most of the "famous" CS-80 sounds. The newer version 2.0, supposedly corrects this problem by coming with 400 sounds. I haven't tested version 2.0, though I supposedly get a free upgrade based upon when I bought my synth. Arturia also claims to have improved the basic sound of the instrument. I didn't see anything wrong with the sound of the earlier version. The biggest change with Version 2.0 is the change to Syncrosoft-dongle based copy protection. I can understand Arturia's desire to protect its intellectual property, and I want the freedome to load CS-80 on multiple computers even if I can only use it on one at a time, so I don't have any problem with the disc-based copy protection in verion 1.6 or the Syncrosoft copy protection in verion 2.0.
The CS-80V has a few tricks up its sleeve. The most interesting of which is a random voice assignment mode. In essence, in this mode every note you play can have play a different instrument sound. The randomness that this creates is unusual but musical.
Alternatives: The most direct competitor to the CS-80V is another CS-80 emulator, a shareware softsynth for Windows only called the ME80. The ME80 is by a small European outfit called Memorymoon, and you can only buy it from the Memorymoon site for about $40.00 or bundled with the Mixcraft Pro Studio 5 - a DAW (digital audio studio) application that costs $149-199 and is worth considering if you are looking for an easy-to-use but powerful DAW, especially because this version comes not only with a software version of the Yamaha CS-80 (the ME80) but also the Prophet V (Messiah) and the Moog MemoryMoog (Memorymoon). (Mixcraft Pro Studio 5 is available from several Amazon.com merchants.) I tried the demo of ME80. It's graphics are at least as good as CS80V, and ME80 has a more varied range of aftertouch-enabled sounds. On the other hand, ME80 is NOT cross-platform like CS80V. ME80 uses somewhat greater processor HP, and is embellished in different ways than CS80V. I don't know which CS-80 emulator is more like the real CS-80, but I suspect that individual CS-80s varied enough in sound to make the comparison impossible. Another alternative to CS80V is Arturia's own Analog Factory software which costs the same as CS-80V and is an alternative in "The One" packaging. This software is available in different versions with and without extra hardware, and with different numbers of preprogrammed sounds. All of the versions have several thousand sounds coming from all of Arturia's vintage analog softsynths, including the Minimoog, the modular Moog, the Roland Jupiter-8, the Sequential Circuits Prophet V in addition to the CS-80. Another alternative is Korg's Legacy Collection which is available for $99 as a download if you buy the Korg Nanokey or Microkey. I posted review of the Korg Microkey which I'm planning to update with more info on the Legacy Collection. I'll link it when I get the chance.
In summary, I'm giving the CS-80V five stars even though it's not perfect simply because I'm glad Arturia had the gumption to undertake the task of putting together a virtual CS-80. It's great that you can buy this software for less than it would cost to pay a professional to TUNE a real CS-80. Most of the imperfections actually come from the original 35 year old instrument and not the recreation. If you ever lusted after a CS-80, or if you simply read about the machine and wondered what it was like, check out the CS-80V. If you can't afford the CS-80V, or even if you can but want another perspective on the CS-80 sound, check out Memorymoon's ME-80.
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Arturia CS-80 V 2.0 Virtual Instrument SoftwareThe Arturia CS-80 V 2.0 virtual synth is the reproduction of the legendary Yamaha CS-80, which was considered by many as the "ultimate polyphonic synthesizer," back in the late 70s. It was made popular by artists and groups like Toto, Jean-Michel Jarre, Keith Emerson, Stevie Wonder, Vangelis, Ultravox, and Peter Gabriel, just to name a few. More than twenty five years after its release, the time has come to rediscover a sound that has extensively contributed to the history of music.Sound MAP:Explore hundreds of sounds in this virtual instrument software using Arturia's revolutionary Sound MAP. Locate areas you like and pick a sound that will stimulate your creativity. Morph sounds on the MAP by clicking anywhere you like. Add filters to make your search easier, or get back to the traditional list of presets, by sound-designer or by type. Be creative, be funky, be a sound-traveler.The Arturia CS-80 V 2.0 virtual instrument offers all the features of the original, plus a new generation of innovative features, taking the original design to a new elevated level:• A modulation matrix to rebuild all circuits gives you a choice of 12 sources and 38 destinations for 10 additional modulations• A Multi Mode allows you to assign a different sound to each polyphonic voice. 4 different keyboard sections for "multitimbrality," with the possibility to direct each voice (4 polyphonic modes, and 3 unison modes from 2 to 8 voices)• An arpeggiator and a stereo delay The Arturia CS-80 V 2.0 virtual instrument comes loaded with more than 400 presets made by a selection of talented sound designers.A little history lessonIn 1976, Yamaha introduced the CS-80, a synthesizer based on the same circuits as the GX1. The price tag ($6900) put it out of the reach of most musicians, and the weight (83kgs with stand) made it sometimes hard to use on stage. But the qualities of this Yamaha synthesizer, considered Japan's first great synth, made it immediately famous in the music indus
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