The Synclavier I was commercially available in 1977, based off the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer of earlier times. The core was a New England Digital minicomputer architecture (they did sell just the minicomputer to the military, as a side).
The truth is that there were quite a few digital synths in labs in 1977. -- Will On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 10:22 AM W2HX via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > And by 1979 there was the fairlight... > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI > > > 73 Eugene W2HX > Subscribe to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@w2hx/videos > > >Speaking of old computerized music playing technology, there are two from > >the PLATO system at the University of Illinois that are perhaps the earliest > >of all in their category and not all that well known. > > The first of the two is the GSW (Gooch Synthetic Woodwind), which is a four > voice, 7 levels per voice, square wave synthesizer. It's fully documented in > Sherwin's US patent 4,206,675. That one was attached to the auxiliary device > port of a PLATO terminal and driven from the host computer, at 1200 bps. It > worked quite well for playing music and was widely used for music education. > It's a very simple device as you can see from the full schematics (which are, > surprisingly, given in the patent). That patent was filed in 1977 but the > invention is somewhat older, perhaps 1975 or 1976. > > The followon to that is the GCS (Gooch Cybernetic Synthesizer), unfortunately > not well documented. That's a 16 voice programmable waveform (256 words by > 16 bits per voice), more levels (256?), driven as a peripheral off the > 8080-based "programmable PLATO terminal" from a program running in that > terminal. So the musical score level definition of what to play still came > from the host, still at 1200 bps, but the attack/decay etc. shaping would > happen in the terminal. That one was a bit of an electrical muddle, with > memory, logic, and D/A per voice followed by a 16 input combiner. Getting > the analog parts to work right was a hairy task with far too many trimpots. > Sherwin vowed that any followup would be digital all the way to one final > D/A, which of course later became the answer in the PC sound cards, but if he > did that it was after I left. The GCS was built around 1977. There were > some interesting related pieces of work, such as a speed-sensing piano > keyboard (so unlike an electronic organ you could have dynamics, exactly as > on a piano), a music editing system with a score printing program to print on > a dot matric (electrostatic) printer, and some other stuff. > > I'm not sure if the GCS is the earliest fully programmable waveform digital > music synthesizer, but if not it is close. > > paul >
