via this auction"It truly has a unique sound of it's own and with over 1,000 parameters per patch, possibilities are limitless in terms of sound creation. For those of you who don't already know, the K5000S uses additive synthesis to generate and re-shape sound by adding and modifying individual harmonics. With additive synthesis, a patch can be dissected to the bare bone and re-shaped as well as new sounds created entirely from scratch, thus making it possible to create sounds that would not be possible with subtractive synthesis. There are also "multi" patches in which up to four single patches "can be arranged in layers, key splits, velocity splits, channel splits, or any combination" as the manual states. With the K5000S, you also have a bank of knobs to shape the sound even further in a way very similar to subtractive synthesizers. The knobs (4 of which are user assignable) will give you control over various parameters such as the formant filter, envelope, harmonics high/low, even/odd balance, velocity amount, portamento, and arpeggiator. Even the presets can sound really amazing by simply tweaking them!!! The K5000S could double as a nice MIDI controller as well because the knobs can also transmit MIDI information to an external sequencer or other synthesizers and the keybed has a very nice feel to it. There aren't many hardware additive keyboard synthesizers floating around these days and I have yet to know of any on the current market today. As a result, the Kawai K5000 series (especially the K5000S) is becoming increasing rare and more sought-after these days because of it's ability to create such unique sounds. Oh yeah, one other thing that is nice about the K5000S is the ability to morph sounds within a patch. The K5000S will allow you to create patches in which the sound evolves and changes into something completely different after holding a key down over a period of time. Now try that with an average analog or virtual analog synthesizer!!!!!! In addition to advanced additive synthesis, the K5000S also has PCM waves in which you can use as an oscillator source, allowing you blend the two types of synthesis together by creating patches that use a combination of PCM ROM sample-based waveforms and addditive synthesis."
