K5
KAWAI K5 Digital Multi-Dimensional Synthesizer is the first full-fledged additive synthesizer.
K5 has 32 oscillators - each made of 64 harmonics. The mixing 64 sine waves withing one oscillator can be controlled by 4 envelopes to create complex timbre changes.
2 oscillators are layered in a SINGLE Patch, and processed by additive-harmonics filter and formant section.
K1 can be considered as a simplified version of K5's engine - a host of preset additive waves without harmonic controls -, powered up with new features - PCM and AM.
KAWAI K5 (1987)
K1 soon became KAWAI's best-selling synth, as it has its own characteristic sounds and people wanted inexpensive PCM-related synths.
Various vesions of K1 were released.
K1 is the keyboard version, and K1m is the desktop module with a joystick.
K1r is the rackmount with 4 individual outputs.
Later K1II came out with a drum section and a reverb effect added.
KAWAI K1R (1988)
The drums seem to be synthesized ones like SINGLE Patches.
K1rII is the rackmount version with a drum section but without a reverb. There was an update program for previous K1 series to add the drum section.
PH50 keyboard and PHm module are the preset versions of K1.
KAWAI PHm (1988)
Soon after K1's success, KAWAI released K4 16Bit Digital Synthesizer. It's basically a PCM synthesizer - one of the earliest ones with digital resonant filters.
K4 also had AM and many waveforms called DC (Digital Cyclic). DC waves are additive resynthesis of acoustic/synthetic sounds like K1's VM waves, but as DC waves are actually single-cycle PCM loops, VM sounds fatter and more vivid.
See KAWAI GMega page for the updated version of K4.
KAWAI K4 (1989)
KAWAI XS-1 16Bit Synthesizer and SPECTRA KC10 are low-end version in KAWAI's 16bit-era.
They mixes DC waves and PCM samples, without a filter - as K1 did. The prototypes of them were called KL1 / KL1m, and they seem to be the successor of K1.
KAWAI XS-1 (1990)
When sample ROM was expensive, many benders developed hybrid synthesizers of small PCM samples and other synthesis engines.
The result was more than a cheap emulation of PCM, and many hybrid synthesizers with their own characters came out.
Roland D-50 is the first PCM/digital hybrid synthesizer. Its synthesis engine is called LA - Linear Arithmetic, and many versions of LA synths were released (see Roland D-110 / MT-32 pages).Many benders followed D-50's success, and K1 belongs to this hybrid synthesizer line.
Roland D-50 (1987)
YAMAHA made SY77/SY99 with FM and PCM combined. SY22/TG33 are low-end series of the FM/PCM hybrids.
CASIO made CTK-1000 as hybrid of their new 'nonlinear' synthesis and PCM.
Later KAWAI came back again to this hybrid line with K5000 Series, with much more powered-up additive / PCM synthesis engines.
KAWAI K5000W (1997)
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K1
Deep Synthesis: Home1. 2. 2005