Waldorf Blofeld

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"The Blofeld has three oscillators per voice, two of which are capable of delivering wavetable synthesis or analogue modelling, while the third is devoted to analogue emulation only. Each oscillator may be routed freely through two filters; these are selected from a diverse collection of filter types and topped off with filter panning and drive options that take sonic mangling to another level. Three fully-featured LFOs, four snappy envelopes and Waldorf's ever-powerful modulation matrix are on hand for when you need controlled complexity in your patches. Further delights include 16-part multitimbrality, a programmable arpeggiator and more than 1000 sounds to use or to overwrite. Polyphony can be up to 25 voices, depending on DSP load. Oh, and did I mention that there are effects too?"

Roland JP-8000

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Kawai SX-240

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"The SX-240 is a programmable polyphonic analog keyboard synthesizer with MIDI from Kawai. It was originally released under the Teisco brand-name. It is a well rounded analog synth with 2 DCOs (pulse, sawtooth and sub-osc), a lowpass filter with ADSR envelope, a flexible LFO, MIDI and 48 memory patches. In terms of patch editing, the SX-240 is very much like a Roland Alpha Juno or Moog Source which resort to using a dedicated data-wheel to edit the values of selected parameters when you edit sounds. It also has a built-in real-time 1500 note sequencer and chord memory. And the sequencer can be split into 8 separate 200 note songs, roughly."

Alesis ION

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Casio CZ-101

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"It's small, it's cheap, and it's good! This is the pea-size version of the CZ-1000 with a mini-keyboard. The CZ-101 is a digital synth and although the programming is somewhat limited there are plenty of analog-like traits and sounds to interest most anybody. It has a good 8-stage envelope design and uses Phase Distortion (PD) synthesis which gives it some pretty great sounds. The sounds are very similar to the Yamaha DX synthesizers, and they're much more affordable. PD is Casio's own take on digital synthesis from the mid-eighties and is found in all of their CZ series. You basically modify digital waveforms (sine waves) to create various sounds. It can create wild new sounds, notably percussive sounds. But it's not too easy to program if you don't know much about waveform theory and design.

Make no mistake, the CZ-101 is no toy although it can be considered very entry level. Three sets of 8-stage envelope sections are used to modulate your sounds extensively. The first is used to modify the DCO pitches over time. Another 8-stage envelope section in the DCW is used to modify the Phase Angle over time (like filtering). Finally the DCA amplifier also has an 8-stage envelope to modify the volume of sounds over time. For further tweaking the CZ-101 employs some surprisingly analog effects. Four types of Vibrato make up a simple LFO-type section with triangle, square, ramp up or down waveforms as well as rate, depth and delay settings. Portamento adds that classic glide effect from one note to the next. Double up on the oscillators with 4-note polyphony. Built-in noise and ring modulation. It's also MIDI equipped with 4 monophonic multitimbral parts. However, with only 32 patches (16 preset, 16 user) storage is a bit slim."