The early Synclavier Digital Synthesizer used FM synthesis, and was sold mostly to universities. Some such systems had only a computer and synthesis modules, no keyboard. The system evolved in its next generation of product, the Synclavier II, which was released in early 1980 with the strong influence of master synthesist and music producer Denny Jaeger of Oakland, CA. It was originally Jaeger's suggestion that the FM synthesis concept be extended to allow four simultaneous channels or voices of synthesis to be triggered with one key depression to allow the final synthesized sound to have much more harmonic series activity. This change greatly improved the overall sound design of the system and was very noticeable.
The company evolved the system continuously through the early 1980s to integrate the first 16-bit digital sampling system to magnetic disk, and eventually a 16-bit polyphonic sampling system to memory, as well. The company's product was the only digital sampling system that allowed sample rates to go as high as 100 Khz for full digital sound quality, which was unsurpassed and frequently complimented by leading sound design and music recording engineers, who make up the Who's Who of modern music and sound effect recording.
Synclavier II models used an on-off type keyboard (called the "ORK") while later models, labeled simply "Synclavier", used a weighted velocity-and-pressure-sensitive keyboard (called the "VPK") that was licensed from Sequential Circuits and used in their Prophet T8 synthesizer.
Ultimately, the system was referred to as the Synclavier Digital Recording "Tapeless Studio" system among many professionals. There is absolutely no doubt that the Synclavier System was "the" pioneer system in revolutionizing the movie and television sound effects and Foley effects methods of design and production starting at Glen Glenn Sound. Although pricing made it inaccessible for most musicians, it found widespread use among producers and professional recording studios, competing at times in this market with such high-end production systems as the Fairlight CMI.
When the company launched and evolved its technology, there were no off-the-shelf computing systems and integrated software and sound cards. Consequently, all of the hardware from the company's main real-time CPU, all input and output cards, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog cards and all of its memory cards, and more, were all developed internally, as well as all of the software. This was certainly a monumental task at best in those times. In fact, the hardware and software of the company's real-time capability was used in other fields completely remote to music, such as the main Dartmouth College campus computing node computers for one of the nation's first campus-wide computing networks, and in medical data acquisition research projects.
New England Digital ceased operations in 1993, the bulk of the assets purchased by Fostex of Japan. Though the Synclavier is no longer manufactured, around fifty systems are still in use today.
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