Hacker News Reader

Casio also made some full spec samplers in the 80s that were well regarded and used on many classic records.

Bay Area producer domino used the rack version of this on the souls of mischief album. http://www.vintagesynth.com/casio/fz1.php

View on HN

The fz-1 and fz-10 were/are amazing machines. The only comparable gear from that era was the Synclavier which was 10x the price.

Aside from the sampling abilities, the onscreen wave editing is just amazing. One of the most underrated digital synths ever made IMHO.

After a false start called the ZZ-1, the FZ-1 was the eventual output of an R&D project called Cosmo. Isao Tomita and some of the YMO people consulted on it.

https://encyclotronic.com/synthesizers/casio/casio-cosmo-syn...

https://acreil.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/casio-cosmo-synthesi...

You could do all of this today with a VST.

I remember buying an FZ-1 when they were being blown out (like most of my synths at the time). It sounded really good and was relatively easy to do simple sampling, but the UI especially on that postage stamp sized grey LCD made it hard to do much else. I actually had a lot more fun with my stone age Ensoniq Mirage. That whole era was one of good sounding ROMplers with nearly impenetrable software (I'm especially remembering my K1000s).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com