nolace

The tone is pretty soft even with harsh waves. Most of the Casio stuff seems to have sub frequencies filtered off, even if you have the octave set to those low notes. I used to bump up the eq below 100hz to get sub frequencies with this. This synth uses Phase Distortion Synthesis, which people compare to FM synths however it's different enough from a DX7 imo - you can choose different waveforms as opposed to only have sin waves but still have morphing sounds, turning a saw to a sin as a example.The softness lent well to ambient type sounds.

The effects and editing of the effects is much more extensive than a SP404 or 303. However, the effect when applied to the sample bank applies to all samples, as opposed to being able to choose single samples for effects like the 404. You have mute groups on this, clicks can be pretty noticable tho. Sequencer is basically useless and too often produced a "DISK BUSY" type error. There is a vari-speed option which is like playing all sample at a fixed slowed down rate on tape, changing frequency response and all, as well as sample time, and of course pitch and speed. Resampling is your friend here. I always felt like I could give my drums character using this unit with all the effects and eq.

This is a great sampler and one of the advantages it has over some of the other is the ability to tune your samples. You can sample at 3 different bit rates, where sampling at the highest will leave you will less sample time and sampling at lowest will leave you more. The sequencer is not the best, like a lot of small samplers from this time, but i believe using quantize (which it is pretty capable of) and resampling with extra silence or space at the start of samples will allow you to get that un-quantized feel. Ive heard people say its like the mini sp1200 in sound quality, definitely not in features. But a very unique piece of production gear. I used it on the main portion of this track, even the filtering sounds throughout. Guitar -> Johnson J-station -> ST-224 or vestax handytrax -> ST-224. Some of the guitars that appear later are overdubs: https://nothingstellar.bandcamp.com/track/scattered-clarity https://nothingstellar.bandcamp.com/track/another-season