Korg DSS-1

A few corrections to some reviews here. The DSS-1 is 8-note poly, not 16 as some have said. One reviewer kept repeating that it's not polyphonic (what?!) I think he meant that it's not multitimbral.

Since the parameters can be edited via MIDI sysex, I recently created a profile for the DSS-1 on the Kentron Control Freak (a slider-based control surface). While it works great for quickly editing patches, it is not good for real-time control of the DSS-1, as you will hear digital distortion noise when you adjust a slider while holding a note down (unlike the DW-8000 which was very friendly to real-time tweaking from the Control Freak). Also, the cutoff will not update in real time while holding a note down, you have to retrigger to hear the difference. The best way to do filter sweeps on the DSS-1 is to assign Cutoff to the joystick and turn pitch bending off. Also, the only way to monitor what you're doing is to look at the Control Freak's own LCD; the DSS-1's menu based LCD screen will not update in real time while you're controlling parameters via MIDI (another big difference from the DW-8000 whose LED's update in real time, letting you monitor what you're doing).

Here is a great hidden feature I discovered while setting up the Control Freak for the DSS-1. On the DSS-1 you cannot separately control Oscillator 1 and 2 volumes; it only lets you adjust Osc balance, e.g. if you want equal volume between Osc's, you can only get 50%/50%. However, as I studied the MIDI sysex stream for this Osc Balance control, I found out that it's actually adjusting 2 different controls: Osc volume 1 (values 0-100) and Osc volume 2 (values in reverse order, 100-0). So, using the Control Freak, I was able to create 2 separate sliders for Osc volume 1 and 2 respectively. This way, I was able to get both Osc volumes up to 100%/100% which you definitely can't do using the DSS-1 control panel!! As a result, some patches that I have always wanted to boost the volume past the max VCA Level, I was now able to do!!

Using the Control Freak to quickly edit patches, I created some wicked phatt sounds on this thing using saw, pulse & square waveforms, unison mode, osc detuning, flanging from the twin digital delays, and sync mode on. I mean TRULY wicked phatt, we're talking Prophet 5 and OBXa dirty gritty analog warmth! What an awesome filter on this mutha. Don't underestimate the power of the beast!

Overal rating for ease of use: 10, using the Kentron Control Freak!

Oops, my mistake (below...), the DSS-1 manual DOES in fact have the MIDI spec published in the back pages (I just got an original copy of the manual). Apparently the person who made the spiral-bound Xerox'd copy I was using failed to copy those particluar pages. How nice.

On 10/12/2002 Sa?o Podobnik wrote:
...the DSS-1 doesn't receive sysex or MIDI controllers and a patch editor would therefore be of no use. The only external software that can be used with the DSS is Turtle Beach's Sample Vision which helps you import and export samples...

---> NOT TRUE <---

The DSS1 *does* support Midi parameter control and patch bank sysex, it's just that Korg completely failed to publish the machine's Midi specs in the back of the manual; hence there has been scant third-party support for this synth over the years.

However, MidiQuest supports the DSS1 and has quite a nice parameter editing and multisample editing interface. But this software also supports some 500 other synths and samplers, and you pay accordingly for it ($200). As a consolation, you can get UniQuest for half the price and it will only support one synth.

But here's good news: I just saved $149 by switching to Geico... just kidding... You can still use the demo version of MidiQuest to edit patches and then save them via the DSS1 control panel (the demo version won't let you save complete patch banks to hard disk). And multisample editing is disabled. That's not bad though, you still get to use a nice Windows interface to edit your DSS1 patches!

Allthough the presets were very attractive when I first obtained this beast back in 1988, I later found that editing could be quite difficult which goes back to the manual - Whoever did the translation from Japanese to English did a terrible job. Back then we didn't have the luxury of the internet to exchange info with other users (sold mine in '92)

16 note polyphony if I remember correctly. Sampling rate was outstanding in its time. Could still pass by today's standards.

I felt the sampled instruments were very realistic. I played a lot of Rock and got a hold of some good sample disks of the older vintage synths. It responded very well to aftertouch

Dependibility would rank an 8. Mine went out on me on a summer gig while out in the sun. Found shade and restarted it and it fired right back up. Using it on a gig would rank a 6. The loading of disks was a pain in the ass.

Haven't bought a Korg since 1988 (DSS-1 was the last). Does that answer your question? This also makes me nervous because I'm considering picking up the CX-3 this weekend. Just started reading the manual on that unit. Hopefully Korg has made a turnaround in this respect in the last decade.

This unit had some good sounds on it and after figuring out the editing through some educated guesswork based on their shitty manual I did get the thing going good enough for my own performance. If I had to do it all over again I would have bought the M1 instead...mainly because I went through this stage of being a programmer and perfector of sampling. I got so far into that end of synthesizers that my playing began to take a back seat. However I would say that this was a good studio unit. It just wasn't very gig-friendly. On a final note I had a "reunion" with this unit not long ago - saw one for sale in a local music store. I had the manager plug it in for me for old time's sake.

Don't knock the DSS1, it's a monster. Just the VCF alone on this thing justifies its worth (Sound-On-Sound Magazine said "a resonant filter sweep from the DSS1 can put all but the mightiest analog synths to shame" - guess what, they're right!). Sure it's huge and heavy for what it does compared to modern synths, but go back in time to 1986 and try to combine analog & digital synthesis with sampling into one instrument, and you end up with this.

Some really wild sounds can be generated using the advanced detuning features, much better than on its little brother the DW8000. You can detune all 16 oscillators against each other in unison mode (instead of just 8 against 8 on the DW8000) for some really phat sounds. One of the custom-made disks I found on a web site included a patch called "Matrix-12" and my god it sounded just like one - the phattest strings I ever heard in my life, made possible by the pulse-width modulation samples on the Korg factory disks in place of actual analog PWM waveforms, but the detuning features and analog filter really bring them to life.

Very aggressive nasal sounding leads, plush strings, warm brassy pads, ability to self-oscillate: all of the great sounds you can get from a classic analog synth, it's all possible here. Plus the ability to sound like a DX7 with the inclusion of additive harmonic synthesis, ability to draw your own waveform with the data slider (technique introduced on the Synclavier, though it's a rather crude representation here, but it works), and ability play back raw samples with light envelope treatments, like on the Mirage! This I already say that this synth is a Monster? This synth is a Monster!

Mine hasn't given me a problem since buying it 2nd-hand on eBay. I heard the disk drives can go, so I'll give it a lower rating in this section. Also it can be annoying that all memory is volatile and must be stored to disk before you shut the unit off, or all your changes will be lost. At least the operating system doesn't have to load from disk (like on the Mirage). So when you power it up, you can at least do something with it if you have no factory disks, like make your own samples or draw your own waveforms and apply filtering and treatments to them. But you better at least have a blank unformatted 720K floppy to save your work.

Never dealt with Korg and never needed customer support. They are going for a tenth of their original asking price (or less!); if you see one for $250 or less, grab it!

7 only because of the sample mapping and loading procedure. It's easier to book a floght on the space shuttle than it is to get a final good sample from scratch.

For the time it was very good. 12 bit sampling,16 voices, very decent filters(no reverb had 2 DDLs) You could use the Harmonic synthesis feature to emulate the drawbars on a hammond b-3! See keyboard mag. from the late 80's. 1234810 14 16 stops in that mode or somehting like that gave you a decent organ sound. This thing could make almost any sound known to man. Onlt thing that stopped was the limited memory. You could get 1,2 or 4 meg ram scsi but paid a heavenly price. extra $400 for 4 meg. if you love to tweak and save space than it won't bother you. 1 long sample and many smmall ones are the only way to fly. no sequencer!!! Took about 30 seconds to load a disk. Noisy little sucker. Motorola drive. (excuse me)

keyboard responds to aftertouch and had a decent synth feel. Sounds made by third partys were often depended upon but were scarce. Factory sounds ok. RAW when you need it. GRRRRRRR!!!!! and round when you need it.

Built like an M1...Tank. You could launch this thing at Iraq and it would still play after it landed. very heavy.

korg fixed a small problem under warranty and got it back working perfectly.

Sold it along with my kurzweil EX-1000 to buy a korg 01/w pro-x. still wish to this day that i should have kept it around. With my DX-7 sample and Kurz strings layer that i tweaked (all internal memory samples) people could not believe the sound quality and ambience. I plan on getting another one some day. I miss it tremendously. This keyboard was THE MOST undersupported keyboard of the 80's. Everything back then was either the D-50, M1 or DX-7. Very little 3rd party support. The ones that did make it, made this thing shine but this board was a sleeper and Korg dropped the ball BIG TIME by not implementing affordable upgrades. If they would have, it would be right next to any of the 'monster vintage' synths of the 80's.

The DSS-1 looks more intimidating than it actually is - everything you can do with it is neatly silkscreened on the chassis with additional instructions on the backlit LCD. This is very fortunate because the DSS-1 doesn't receive sysex or MIDI controllers and a patch editor would therefore be of no use. The only external software that can be used with the DSS is Turtle Beach's Sample Vision which helps you import and export samples.

The factory manual is a waste of paper, in my opinion. It does a great job of DESCRIBING various features of the DSS-1 but it doesn't explain a single thing. Apparently, Korg assumed that people who bought a machine that cost $2600 in 1986 didn't know what a disk drive is, and preferred to read printouts of the LCD in the manual instead of the LCD itself when working with the machine. I heard that third party manuals are excellent, but I managed rather well even without them.

The DSS-1 is 16-note polyphonic, but isn't multitimbral in the true sense of the word. What I mean is that you can assign different samples to different parts of keyboard and they can be played together, but this doesn't count as multitimbrality. Sampling rate is 48 kHz (which doesn't help you much with 12 bit converter resolution) and I never got satisfactory results. Samples may be imported and exported via MIDI sample dump, which enables you to bypass the noisy converter and simply load converted professionally sampled sounds into the DSS.

One of my biggest complaints about the DSS-1 is that the contents of the internal memory cannot be retained after the power has been shut down. You have to save and load everything every time, and it may take rather a long time for all 374 kB - this is how much data the internal memory can hold. There is no sequencer, which makes the DSS-1 even more useless on stage - the major obstacle are, of course, its size and weight, which are understandable for a 1986 machine of such capabilities, but extremely inconvenient nonetheless. The thing is EXTREMELY big, don't let the pictures fool you. For instance, the DSS was bigger and heavier than my Yamaha DX7 IN ITS ROADCASE!

The keyboard action is solid, perhaps even a bit too solid and "clunky" for fast solos. Velocity and aftertouch reponse is nice, much better than Roland gear of the same period, and while you can control how much sound parameters are affected by velocity and aftertouch, the two features themselves are not scaleable.

The DSS-1 is an instrument of many characters, depending on how you use it. If you never progress beyond the decent factory sample disks containing your staple pianos, brasses and strings (including a few fantastic orchestra hits which I used most often by far - e-mail me at sartre@siol.net to hear the results), you'd be better of using a ROMpler as the inconvenience of having to load the sounds every thime anew outweighs their quality. On the other hand, if you're a sampling head, you may be disappointed by DSS-1's capabilities in this field. Sampling times are short, and text-only LCD isn't very helpful when samples need to be edited and/or processed.

You're likely to get most satisfaction out of the DSS-1 by using it as a synth with unique synthesis capabilities. The fact that the DSS-1 treats any sound as an oscillator allows you to make very original sounds - not effortlessly, but worth the bother if you're into that sort of thing. The analogue filters are reminiscent of Korg's classic synths of the early 1980's and can, when used on waveforms, augment the sound really nicely (filtering samples of real instruments won't get you far as they're not nearly as rich in harmonics).

Contrary to some DSS-1 users' experiences, mine performed flawlessly over the six months that I had it, including the disk drive. The construction feels solid and I'd even go as far as to say that the DSS-1 marks a new period in build quality of Korg instruments (just compare the Poly-800 and the DSS-1, and they're only two years apart). I even heard a story of a guy in Croatia whose DSS-1 was rained on. Apparently, the guy just opened the synth up, took everything apart, dried the components up with a hair dryer and everything still worked when he re-assembled it, which, if true, is pretty fascinating.

I sought no customer support, and I wouldn't count on it, either.

I sold my DSS-1 this morning and the first thing I noticed was just how much space I freed up this way. I wasn't particularly sorry to see it go, even though it wasn't a bad keyboard. Apart from the orchestra hits, I was using it as a master keyboard and now that Yamaha DX7 took over, I really didn't need it anymore. I have enough analogue gear (Roland MKS-30, Oberheim Matrix-1000, Waldorf Pulse) not to miss DSS-1's filters and whenever I feel a craving for something raw and metallic, I'll reach for the DX7...and this whole setup is probably still lighter and more convenient to lug around than just the DSS-1.

I had this synthersizer for half a year, and I don't want it back !!!

It's old fashion, uses 60 secconds to read a floppy disk, and has NO internal memory! All the futures of this instrument is better at other instruments... And it's size HUGE !!! You need a LOT of space!

For sure this was number 1 when it came, but that is 17 years ago (my synth. was a -85 model...)

I did NEVER think i would see this crap again, but I saw it to day at some internet auction home in Norway with a link to this discussion fora...

I had this synthersizer for half a year, and I don't want it back !!!

It's old fashion, uses 60 secconds to read a floppy disk, and has NO internal memory! All the futures of this instrument is better at other instruments... And it's size HUGE !!! You need a LOT of space!

For sure this was number 1 when it came, but that is 17 years ago (my synth. was a -85 model...)

I did NEVER think i would see this crap again, but I saw it to day at some internet auction home in Norway with a link to this discussion fora...

I had this synthersizer for half a year, and I don't want it back !!!

It's old fashion, uses 60 secconds to read a floppy disk, and has NO internal memory! All the futures of this instrument is better at other instruments... And it's size HUGE !!! You need a LOT of space!

For sure this was number 1 when it came, but that is 17 years ago (my synth. was a -85 model...)

I did NEVER think i would see this crap again, but I saw it to day at some internet auction home in Norway with a link to this discussion fora...

I had this synthersizer for half a year, and I don't want it back !!!

It's old fashion, uses 60 secconds to read a floppy disk, and has NO internal memory! All the futures of this instrument is better at other instruments... And it's size HUGE !!! You need a LOT of space!

For sure this was number 1 when it came, but that is 17 years ago (my synth. was a -85 model...)

I did NEVER think i would see this crap again, but I saw it to day at some internet auction home in Norway with a link to this discussion fora...

I must agree with the previous reviewers. This machine is NOT very hard to use, if you bother to take the time. You have all the information you need printed on the chassi itself, easily accessible.

If you want a flexible sampler I would have to give the DSS-1 a clear 1. However if you want a digital/analogue hybrid with arbitrary waveforms, additive synthesis, a very nice 12/24dB analogue filter and an analogue VCA. On top of that you get two, very varm sounding digital delays. Polyphone is ok considering it is monotimbral.

It's evil... Raw electronic sounds is what it is made for :)

I have mine in a studio enviroment and I haven't had any problems with it... In a live situation? I don't know.. I doubt the that anyone would want to carry this beast around.

There are places online where you can get a replacement disk drive, but apart from that? I have no high hopes... It's old...

Get it if you have room for it..

People complain about ease of use ? this thing is so incredibly simple. Its like your basic synth. The multi sounds are a little anoying to get the hang of but the draw waveform/synth functions are easy

Its OK-- sampling is sampling. I made full hip hop beats off of this thing. oh yea --- I am Looking for a power cable for my DSS-1 !!!! please help me -- the other cords that fit dont work --like for the juno 106. my Email is drewcampbell79@hotmail.com 12/2/01

The DSS-1 only makes one sound. but the sound that it makes it is RAW. its one of those trance noises that is so detuned that it doesnt tune with any other instrument ya !!

Its pretty good I dunno ... Ive had it for 10 years and I havent had any problems except I lost the cord and it doesnt work with any other cord....... help me I need one --- my email is drewcampbell79@hotmail.com

Corporations. Cant live with them . Cant live without them.

I LOVE MY DSS - 1