The S900 was a 12-bit machine with a tiny 750K memory and a floppy drive for sample storage. At the time it was a revelation but it’s now really very basic by today’s standards.

However….
Like so many early samplers such as the E-mu Emulator II, the SCI Prophet 2000 and the Ensoniq Mirage, the S900 has sonic character in bucket loads and still has a following to this day.

One feature of the S900 that was often overlooked was a curious 13 pin connector on the rear panel marked “VOICE OUT”…

AKAI had released a small number of polyphonic analog synthesizers during the same era as the S900. These included the AX73 keyboard and the VX90 rack mount. They have often been overlooked over the years possibly due to their rather control-free front panels and menu driven user interfaces. This is a perhaps a little unkind as these instruments feature genuine Curtis VCOs and filters unlike many offerings of the time such as the Juno-106 which was a DCO synth. To this effect they drift out tune with temperature like the best of them!

Thank god for the auto-tune button!…
The infamous 13 pin connector permitted the sampler to be used as a complex oscillator source driving the filter stages and VCAs modulated by the envelope generators. In short, you get to mix 12-bit digital crunch with the warmth of analog filters!


The Sampling Process…
The instruments in the S-VX Hybrid Library were constructed using several vintage analog sound sources acting as complex sampled oscillators feeding the VX90 synth.

This formed the basis of an unusual albeit somewhat clunky hybrid synth…. Sound sources were mostly Minimoog model D but also included 1938 Novachord, 1967 Philicorda GM751, 1978 ARP Omni-2 string section, Roland JUNO-106 polysynth and 3 tube waveshaped 1960′s tube oscillators beating in parallel.

32 ten second long raw oscillator sources were captured in 12-bits using a recently refurbished S900 fitted with a new backlight and a (superb!) Lotharek HxC virtual floppy drive. The results were stored on SD card as part of a bank of 79 virtual disks.

The resulting interim sample set acted as oscillator sources for the VX90. Several patches were programmed on the VX90 to filter the oscillators transposed over five octaves from the S900 and the results from the VX90, including it’s gorgeous analog chorus, was multi-sampled direct from the output in 24-bit stereo.

376 samples were captured in this manner for the library.

The result?…
Complex warm analog oscillator sources transposed over 5 octaves with a touch of 12-bit crunch shaped with classic Curtis VCFs and VCAs!

System Requirements
The S-VX Hybrid Library requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher