6 The analog revival, 1980s–2000s
As we saw in Chapter 4, by the late 1980s the production of analog synthesizers had almost come to a halt: Moog, ARP, and Sequential had closed down; Oberheim, EMS, and PAiA were almost inactive; Yamaha had gone over to FM digital synthesis, Korg and Roland to sample-based synthesis, E-Mu and Akai to sound sampling; and all the smaller players, such as EDP, Crumar, Multivox, and Jen (amongst many others) had disappeared.
The sound of popular music in the mid to late 1980s was dominated by digital sampling; sampled drums, such as those from the Linn Drum machine, sampled sequences from the Fairlight and Ensoniq Mirage, and eventually even sampled vocal lines thanks to the Emulator (used by Paul Hardcastle on ...
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