Elusive Technics WSA1R Expansion Card Exposed

This shot is of the expansion card for the Technics WSA1R. Sound on sound had this to say about the synth at http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_articles/dec96/technicssxwsa1r.html...........The name for the technology employed by these synths -- Acoustic Modelling Synthesis -- really does promise a lot. Anything with 'modelling' in its name implies some sort of DSP-based physical modelling system, such as is found on Yamaha's VL series. To a certain extent, this is true of the Technics synths, although their physical modelling sections are simplified and more accessible.

The WSA1's architecture works like this: at the start of the chain is a sampled PCM waveform, or Driver, which forms the attack portion of a sound; there are 307 waveform samples available, including raw synth waveforms, real instruments, percussion, and various useful samples of fret and breath noise. The Driver is treated by a Resonator, the modelling section of the synth, with models including string, cylinder, cone, flare, plate, membrane, and others. The Resonators are provided in several different flavours -- bright, mellow and soft, for example -- and can be modified quite drastically, courtesy of a comprehensive range of parameters; Resonators can even interact with each other. The Driver/Resonator combination is further processed by a traditional synth section, offering control over Pitch, Filter (a choice of 12dB low- and high-pass, and 24dB low-, high- and band-pass are provided) and Amplitude. Each of these 'synth' blocks has a full range of envelope and LFO parameters. What Technics term a Sound -- a patch to you or me -- is made up of four of these Driver/Resonator/synth collections (or Tones), plus routing to the three effects processors.

The next stage up is the Combination -- up to eight Sounds that can be split or layered. Here, the workstation and rack diverge slightly: the WSA1 has a 16-part multitimbral section to go with the 16-track sequencer, but both it and the rack have a 32-part multitimbral mode which is accessed via two sets of MIDI sockets, and controlled by a comprehensive mixer section. This is used for assigning Sounds, and controlling volume, pan position, effects and output routing to the main and subsidiary outputs, and so on.

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