List of Hardware Synthesizers
- Korg OASYS and Korg Kronos - STR-1 Plucked string
- Korg OASYS PCI
- Korg Prophecy
- Korg SOLO-TRI (an expansion board for the Trinity with the synth engine of the Prophecy)
- Korg Z1
- Korg MOSS-TRI (a expansion board for the Trinity with the synth engine of the Z1) and EXB-MOSS (a multi timbral expansion board for the Triton and the KARMA workstation with the synth engine of the Z1)
- Yamaha VL1, VP1 and VL7
- Yamaha VL70m, PLG-100VL and 150VL (VL70m in the form of a plug-in card that can be installed into any of several Yamaha keyboards, tone modules, and the SW1000XG high-end PC midi sound card)
- Yamaha EX5, EX5R
- Technics WSA1/WSA1R
- Clavia Nord Modular G2
- Alesis Fusion
- Pianoid
- Physis Unico
- Hartmann Neuron and Neuron VS
While not purely a hardware synth, the DS-XG sound cards based on the Yamaha YMF-7#4 family of audio chipsets (including 724, 744, 754, and 764), including the Yamaha WaveForce 192 (SW192XG) as well as many from other manufacturers and even some PC motherboards with such an audio chipset, included hardware-assisted software VL physical modelling (like a VL70m or PLG-VL, and compatible with same) along with the Yamaha XG, wave audio, and 3D gaming sound capabilities of the chipset. Unfortunately, only the VxD (Virtual Device Drivers) drivers for pre-NT kernel versions of Windows (3.x, 9#, and ME) support the physical modelling feature. Neither the .WDM (Windows Device Model) drivers for Windows 98, 98SE, nor ME, nor any driver for any NT-kernel version of Windows (NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 2003 Server, Windows 7, Windows 2008 Server, nor likely any future OSes) support this, nor can they for technical reasons. Those OSes do support the other features of the card, though.
In their prime, the DS-XG sound cards were easily the most affordable way of obtaining genuine VL technology for anyone who already had a Windows 3.x, 9#, or ME PC. Such cards could be had brand new for as low as $12 USD (YMF-724 versions). But since they were not fully compatible with the AC-97 and later AC-98 standards, these chipsets faded from the market and have not been manufactured by Yamaha in nearly a decade.
Technics WSA1 and its rackmounted counterpart WSA1R was Technics' first and only try at high-end synthesizers. It featured 64 voices of polyphony with a combination of sample playback (for inititial transitents) and DSP acoustic modelling. Technics WSA1 was launched in 1995, but the musical community did not have enough confidence in Technics to buy a $5000 hardware synth. Only about 600 keyboards and 300 rack models were ever made, and most were sold at highly discounted prices.
Read more about this topic: Physical Modelling Synthesis
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