Analog Synthesizers

6

The analog revival

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 19) and the upmarket ...