silent

51 minutes ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

MAME has some emulated CZ-synths. Likely latency is too high for live performance, but they do produce sound.

That is good enough! As long as the emulation core is accurate, and open source, and it's not boring.

ah, alr.

7 minutes ago, Brad Saucier said:

Resize your image to fit the requirements with a photo editor.  

I will try this again, I was having a hard time getting it smaller even with compression

5 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

Which image?  

Your profile image

On 3/2/2018 at 2:57 PM, AlenK said:

You don't have an iPad so you can't run Casio's own CZ app? There are alternatives. Here's the latest I have heard of: https://www.uvi.net/en/vintage-synth/cameo.html. Currently on sale for half price until March 5th.

 

But don't rush out and buy it until you look into the other commercial offerings, including Virtual CZ (review here) and Cazius. Or you could decide to save your money and download a free offering, instead. A couple of them are described here, along with emulations of other vintage Casio keyboards. And there are also soft-synths inspired by the CZ series that take phase distortion and go to town with it, the way you hoped Casio would. One example is Digits 2.0.

 

Short of a used CZ a soft-synth is probably the only way you will be able to get that CZ sound in the foreseeable future. For some unfathomable reason Casio seems completely unwilling to capitalize on the past success of, and goodwill toward, their old CZ synthesizers by releasing new hardware synthesizers based on phase distortion, or even to include phase distortion as an available synthesis mode in a particular model. New keyboards capable of making true CZ sounds (not just having a few CZ waveforms in them, as is the case with the XW synths) would quite likely sell pretty well. 

It kinda sucks that there are not any open source emulations of Casios PD and iPD synths.
Maybe someday? Even an emulation core of the sound source itself would be good

3 minutes ago, Brad Saucier said:

You can edit each post to say "delete" and it will be deleted by one of the admins.  

Now I know! Thanks! (btw, how do you get that high quality image in the tiny size requirements?)

Greetings

I am looking for some accurate and open source emulation cores of casio synths, iPD and older.

If you can find them, please provide links to them in the replies to this post.

If you've made one and are willing to allow it to be used freely, please also share it here.

Thanks!

Hey! Dear visitor!

Please note that a lot of these modules are very rare! (And also I am now counting Rackmount Modules)

While I myself are looking for and listing them as I find them (I should make a post with the ones I do find and edit it as I go.), I am only one person, I can't really do this by myself very well. (please do not try to read this sentence too much)


You know what, this post is the one that gets the list, I don't want to make a separate post just for the stupid list. This will be marked as the solution so it's easy to find.
 

• GZ-50M GM sound module, rather small.
• GZ-70S GM MIDI speakers, Japan exclusive
• GZ-30M smaller GZ-50M and also Japan exclusive.
• WP-150 PCMCIA midi module, similar to the GZ-50M
• VZ-10M Uses Casio's wonderful iPD sound source. It's a VZ-1 but as a MIDI module. You can link multiple of these together to create a larger, more complex synth.
• CSM-1 Casio Sound Module. It was an older one that came out in the 80s. Also, Japan Exclusive AFAIK.
• CSM-10P a CSM-1, but only for certain instruments, might have been designed to be paired with the CSM-1. It's a piano module.
• VZ-8M Essentially half a VZ-10M in multiple ways. Could connect to the VZ-10M and VZ-1 synths to give them more functionality.

Casio happens to have a few desktop midi synths and sound modules. I've listed a few of them in the solution, but I was wondering if there are more I don't know about. Feel free to share what you know about them!

I've been looking for a VZ-10M btw, if you happen to find one up for sale, I would appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks!

3 hours ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

Does GT-155F and GT-155 look the same (pinout etc)? Then it might be actually a microcontroller with internal rom used as a single-chip softsynth, while the camera version only differs in software.

They're similar, they're both DSP chips, they're proably jsut running different DSP masks. Though it is possible that the limits it has *are* hard limits. seeing as the MZ-2000 had to use 2 DSP chips to get it's functionality.

1 hour ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

Does GT-155F and GT-155 look the same (pinout etc)? Then it might be actually a microcontroller with internal rom used as a single-chip softsynth, while the camera version only differs in software.

Sometimes on DSP chips, you can set up various different versions of chips. While the GT-155 and GT-155F might be the same base DSP, functionally they're completely different. It's also possible that any data I do have on it from googling it is completely incorrect and that the GT-155 is just the GT-155F without the ability to program user tones and/or load them from floppy.

 
I strongly wish that there was more useful information on things like this.

I would still count it as hardware and not a full on softsynth as it is using a deticated DSP chip to do the things. So it's possible the DSP has a few different program masks that change what it can or can't do, what the pins do, etc. And the GT-155F is the identifier of the mask for the wavetable synth. As far as I am aware the GT-155 and GT-155F are not pin compatible.

Why does this have to be so confusing, I've spent months or more trying to figure out this thing and every place I look I just get more confused.

8 minutes ago, silent said:

https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/GT155F
https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/GT155_HG51B155FD_

 

idk what one is in the WK-1800 currently, let me check

Well, neither of these are correct. It thinks the GT-155F is a completely different chip. They both might be using the same base but configured differently.

1 hour ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

Does GT-155F and GT-155 look the same (pinout etc)? Then it might be actually a microcontroller with internal rom used as a single-chip softsynth, while the camera version only differs in software.

It is a dedicated DSP chip. Confusing stuff is confusing.

https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/GT155F
https://www.jotrin.com/product/parts/GT155_HG51B155FD_

idk what one is in the WK-1800 currently, let me check

1 hour ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

Does GT-155F and GT-155 look the same (pinout etc)? Then it might be actually a microcontroller with internal rom used as a single-chip softsynth, while the camera version only differs in software.

I am now confused which one is which, I might need to look at the chips in my Casio again.

1 hour ago, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

Does GT-155F and GT-155 look the same (pinout etc)? Then it might be actually a microcontroller with internal rom used as a single-chip softsynth, while the camera version only differs in software.

I don't think so, I need to check.

13 hours ago, silent said:

I assume the GT-155F's voices are layed out something like this:
Voices: 1 2, 3 4, 5 6, 7 8, 9 10, 11 12, 13 14, 15 16, 17 18, 19 20, 21 22, 23 24, 25 26, 27 28, 29 30, 31 32. 
Tone Paramaters (this is the things that would be set up in the WK-1800's Synth mode) (Notice how I separated the pairs of voices with commas, that's because they can be combined by the tone being used)
DSP: ALL Channels (10 modes)

Voices are assigned left to right AFAIK and the latest note played/triggered gets priority (sadly there's no way to override with hold-down or sustain that I know of) while the oldest notes are the most likely to get cut to make room for the newest notes. The thing is though, the synth still tries to play all the notes when playing a midi file with higher polyphony than what it supports, causing it to chug along attempting to play all the notes when it can't. I guess the voice reassignment isn't superfast. And also sending that much MIDI to it probably lags the CPU a lot.

ZPI, such as on the MZ-2000 (which is what it debuted on) can do twice what A2 can do

The GT-155F (not the GT-155 which is a camera chip) is a 32 DCO wavetable with independent envelopes, panning, LFO?, volume, and filter per DCO. Each voice can use 1 or 2 DCOs (Polyphony is reduced when using multiple DCOs together, but tone complexity is increased) There's some other things I need to look into on this synth to see what it can or can't do, but it sounds good already. This was recorded from a WK-1800. I might re-record this on an MZ-2000 for comparison when I have an MZ-2000 in my posesion. (I do not have an MZ-2000 yet) And should provide a good example of what the GT-155F sound chip sounds like.

On 5/10/2020 at 3:38 AM, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

The Casio jargon for sound synthesis engine is "sound source". The different engines have cryptic 2 or 3 letter abbreviations proudly mentioned in ads, but with exception of some professional synthesizers the deeper meaning and inner working was hidden from customers (not even told in service manuals). So many of these may be rather advertisement buzzwords than technologies, enshrouding that they were just minor variations of older sound engines. This list is likely inaccurate, because many old or low grade sound sources were not mentioned anywhere, so I only added them from own hardware examination. Also with modern models (large compressed samples) and pianos I am no expert. The IXA sound source (CTK-1000 from 1993) was the last engine with many classic synthesized sounds (now even with velocity and some editable parameters), although it already lacks the famous (SA-series) program loop synthesis preset sounds with complex algorithmic envelopes. After IXA Casio dropped the use of synthesized preset sounds in favour for long wavetable samples imitating natural instruments, which IMO makes newer keyboards mostly boring. With the HPSS sound source from 2013 (XW-G1 synth) fortunately a new versatile synth engine came out, which however does not fully include older (e.g. PD) synth algorithms. This list is sorted by technology rather than release date.

(I can not enter this as HTML table here, so it is a little messy.)


List of Casio sound sources:

sound source full name 1st use notes & features year

plain squarewave
? ML-80 monophonic squarewave (1:1, 100% tremolo) 1979
? ML-81 monophonic squarewave (1:1) with decay envelope 1980
multipulse squarewave
? VL-1 monophonic multipulse squarewave with switchable fixed filter. 1981
? PT-20 like VL-1 with obligato + chord/bass voice. 1982
? MT-11 2 layered bipolar multipulse squarewaves with switchable fixed filter. 1983(?)
? MT-200 bipolar multipulse squarewave with switchable fixed filter. 1984(?)
stairwave
CV Consonant-Vowel synthesis CT-201 2 mixed stairwaves with switchable fixed filter. CT-201 & 202 layer 2 such sound CPUs with each a filter. 1980
? VL-5 only 1 stairwave with switchable fixed filter (very different hardware). 1982(?)
? MT-65 programmable CV (sound IC with external CPU). 1983
? CT-6000 velocity sensitive CV variant (layering 3 sound ICs). 1984
SD Spectrum-Dynamics synthesis HT-series user programmable CV variant with VCF for synthesizers. 1987
additive synthesis
? 1000p additive synthesis (5 layered sinewaves, sounds drawbar-like). 1981
Phase Distortion (FM)
PD Phase Distortion CZ-series Casio's FM synthesis variant. 1984
iPD Interactive Phase Distortion VZ-series PD successor with programmable routing. 1988
speech synth
? TA-1000 data-reduced speech synthesis (LPC based?, PARCOR?) 1983(?)
sampler
? SK-series lofi sampler (SK-1 has also drawbar softsynth). 1986
? FZ-series 16 bit sampling synthesizer. 1987
? SK-60 lofi sampler on different PCM engine hardware. 1996
software based (wavetable + multiple synth algorithms)
PCM Pulse Code Modulation various,
e.g. SA-series Casio wavetable softsynth on a chip, including many other synth algorithms like FM variants or program loop synthesis. The generic term "PCM" was earlier used for anything sample based (e.g. Casio percussion ICs). 1988
CD Casio Digital ? MT-540 PCM engine version with external 16 bit sample ROM. 1988
Super CD ? CT-770(?) PCM engine version with velocity, effect DSP (external 16 bit sample ROM).
AP ? AP-7 PCM engine version with velocity, used in first Celviano piano. 1991
? VA-10 PCM engine version with effect DSP + Harmony Arranger. 1992
IXA Integrated Cross-Sound Architecture CTK-1000 PCM engine version with velocity, multisamples, effect DSP (external 16 bit sample ROM | last engine with many synthesized classic "PCM" sounds). 1993
A2 A² (A-square) wavetable with sample compression + effect DSP.
HL Highly compressed Large waveform A2 successor?
ZPI Zygotech Polynomial Interpolation MZ-2000 IXA successor(?) with special sample morphing. 2000
AHL Acoustic & Highly-compressed Large-waveform CTK-4000 HL successor with acoustic instrument multisamples. 2008
AIF Acoustic & Intelligent Filtering System Privia piano simulation 2009
AiR Acoustic and Intelligent Resonator Privia piano simulation 2013
HPSS Hybrid Processing Sound Source XW-G1 PCM engine successor for versatile synthesizer (partially hardware based). 2013

ZPI is also wavetable, but it's more complex than A2 and has more features. Some ZPI synths use two DSP chips, one for the synth engine and one for effects.

On 3/3/2023 at 5:42 AM, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

This is impossible. ROMs can not be rewritten, only desoldered and replaced by a new physical chip to install a new version.

That would be a cool mod to do. (btw you can change the DAC modes too)

I was thinking of getting a second WK-1800 and making a custom PC MIDI synth box out of the internals. Maybe putting some larger ROMs with the same pinout and allowing you to load things from the PC itself. As well as allowing you to fully control it from the computer.

But I do not want to try reverse engineering it, and writing software, and drivers, for it. Maybe someday tho? For now, I just connect my WK-1800 to my PC via MIDI. Would be cool tho to have it in a midi box. (I *think* Casio actually made one) 

On 12/16/2015 at 1:34 AM, Chas said:

 

Casio developed the mid 80's PD CZ sound source into 1988's VZ-1 (it used iPD - Interactive Phase Distortion). I'm 99% certain the VZ-1 was the last Casio to feature any form of PD, and after the VZ-1 Casio pretty much dropped its "pro" keyboard line-up until the MZ2000 (approx. 1999 onwards) and then the XW's in 2010/ 11. Most Casios from 1990's onwards used some form of PCM (that might be what the "IXA" sound source was), then the MZ 2000 was released and used "ZPI Sound Source - (Zygotech Polynomial Interpolation) - no, I've no idea what that is either but it does sound good!

 

The XW's then went on further and used HPSS, a great step forward in terms of programmability and flexibility, and also still using PCM for some excellent sounds.

 

I wonder where Casio will head next? 

ZPI is wavetable with special morphing and interpolation. (and some other cool stuff like envlopes)

On 4/21/2024 at 9:01 PM, Chas said:

 

Many of us have been looking for a long time to purchase one... Remember, they are very, very rare. 

If they ever turn up for sale, you're most likely to find one advertised in the usual classifieds - Facebook Market Place, Craigslist, Gumtree etc. Then you have places such as Reverb and of course eBay. Classifieds are likely to be the place to find a bargain, as you can hope that someone has one to sell (house clearance, deceased relative etc.) and they just want rid of it, so you might get a bargain (as long as you have the ability to collect it). With Reverb and eBay, sellers tend to check completed listings and price accordingly. Plus vintage Casios/ Casiotones are now quite collectible and prices tend to be quite a bit higher on those sites than they used to be.

 

Also bear in mind that many large old home organs are very hard to sell because of their size and because they are difficult to transport, and though the Symphonytron 8000 is much slimmed down in comparison to some of them, it's still a sizable system. Most large home organs, unless they are vintage Hammonds or Wurlizers, are often advertised for very little, or even "for free".  Thrift stores also tend to not want the large home organs because they aren't very popular, take up floor space and not many people have the means to transport them. Sadly, it's meant that a lot of those old home organs simply got sent to landfills. 

I have a Conn new Caprice home organ, it needs some cleaning and repairs but it still works

On 4/21/2024 at 9:01 PM, Chas said:

 

Many of us have been looking for a long time to purchase one... Remember, they are very, very rare. 

If they ever turn up for sale, you're most likely to find one advertised in the usual classifieds - Facebook Market Place, Craigslist, Gumtree etc. Then you have places such as Reverb and of course eBay. Classifieds are likely to be the place to find a bargain, as you can hope that someone has one to sell (house clearance, deceased relative etc.) and they just want rid of it, so you might get a bargain (as long as you have the ability to collect it). With Reverb and eBay, sellers tend to check completed listings and price accordingly. Plus vintage Casios/ Casiotones are now quite collectible and prices tend to be quite a bit higher on those sites than they used to be.

 

Also bear in mind that many large old home organs are very hard to sell because of their size and because they are difficult to transport, and though the Symphonytron 8000 is much slimmed down in comparison to some of them, it's still a sizable system. Most large home organs, unless they are vintage Hammonds or Wurlizers, are often advertised for very little, or even "for free".  Thrift stores also tend to not want the large home organs because they aren't very popular, take up floor space and not many people have the means to transport them. Sadly, it's meant that a lot of those old home organs simply got sent to landfills. 

Some people are selling theirs, good luck to you!

a commenter on the video I posted has one and might be selling it as of when they commented, idk if it's still around

On 5/1/2024 at 6:00 AM, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

With home organs there are highend and household models. Things like Wersi Helios or Farfisa Maharani likely still find buyers, while a lowend Bontempi B370 (possibly even some Yamahas) gets scrapped. In a TV report they even smashed a >100 year old antique harmonium to pieces in a so-called "anger room" because nobody wanted it (the thing was pretty with lyra ornament, but had only 3 registers which made it unsellable).

Yeah that and the fact they just uhh.... well... maybe didn't even know what it was

I assume the GT-155F's voices are layed out something like this:
Voices: 1 2, 3 4, 5 6, 7 8, 9 10, 11 12, 13 14, 15 16, 17 18, 19 20, 21 22, 23 24, 25 26, 27 28, 29 30, 31 32. 
Tone Paramaters (this is the things that would be set up in the WK-1800's Synth mode) (Notice how I separated the pairs of voices with commas, that's because they can be combined by the tone being used)
DSP: ALL Channels (10 modes)

Voices are assigned left to right AFAIK and the latest note played/triggered gets priority (sadly there's no way to override with hold-down or sustain that I know of) while the oldest notes are the most likely to get cut to make room for the newest notes. The thing is though, the synth still tries to play all the notes when playing a midi file with higher polyphony than what it supports, causing it to chug along attempting to play all the notes when it can't. I guess the voice reassignment isn't superfast. And also sending that much MIDI to it probably lags the CPU a lot.

16 minutes ago, silent said:

Some extra notes on A2
- A2 has envelopes (Attack, Decay, Pitch, Volume)
- The WK-1800s DAC might have several hardware modes (have fun with that!)
- The A2 sound chip (GT-155F) is undocumented as far as I'm aware, and any potential documentation leads to the homepages of the manufacturers websites
- It might have some small samples here and there for some things (Drums, possibly some fairlight samples)
- A2 can combine two voices/DCOs together, allowing for more complex tones at the cost of polyphony
- A2 does not have portamento, and can't dynamically change panning while a note is playing (As far as I know, which is why tones that do, use two DCOs)
- A2 has some sort of filter in the DCO parameters, but I am not sure what type it is, or what it does.

so here's essentially what A2 is:
Wavetable with envlopes, filters, and DCO pairing.
Each voice can use 1 or two DCOs
MIDI controlled, with effects being controlled via the midi channels
Lots of fun to play around with (I want this thing in a tracker)

ZPI is also Wavetable, but it can dynamically morph the waveforms  in realtime as well as interpolate them, It also supports samples, more DCO combining (up to 4) a drawbar organ, software that allowed you to make and import your own tones, and some other cool stuff.

ZPI, such as on the MZ-2000 (which is what it debuted on) can do twice what A2 can do

On 5/10/2020 at 3:38 AM, CYBERYOGI =CO=Windler said:

The Casio jargon for sound synthesis engine is "sound source". The different engines have cryptic 2 or 3 letter abbreviations proudly mentioned in ads, but with exception of some professional synthesizers the deeper meaning and inner working was hidden from customers (not even told in service manuals). So many of these may be rather advertisement buzzwords than technologies, enshrouding that they were just minor variations of older sound engines. This list is likely inaccurate, because many old or low grade sound sources were not mentioned anywhere, so I only added them from own hardware examination. Also with modern models (large compressed samples) and pianos I am no expert. The IXA sound source (CTK-1000 from 1993) was the last engine with many classic synthesized sounds (now even with velocity and some editable parameters), although it already lacks the famous (SA-series) program loop synthesis preset sounds with complex algorithmic envelopes. After IXA Casio dropped the use of synthesized preset sounds in favour for long wavetable samples imitating natural instruments, which IMO makes newer keyboards mostly boring. With the HPSS sound source from 2013 (XW-G1 synth) fortunately a new versatile synth engine came out, which however does not fully include older (e.g. PD) synth algorithms. This list is sorted by technology rather than release date.

(I can not enter this as HTML table here, so it is a little messy.)


List of Casio sound sources:

sound source full name 1st use notes & features year

plain squarewave
? ML-80 monophonic squarewave (1:1, 100% tremolo) 1979
? ML-81 monophonic squarewave (1:1) with decay envelope 1980
multipulse squarewave
? VL-1 monophonic multipulse squarewave with switchable fixed filter. 1981
? PT-20 like VL-1 with obligato + chord/bass voice. 1982
? MT-11 2 layered bipolar multipulse squarewaves with switchable fixed filter. 1983(?)
? MT-200 bipolar multipulse squarewave with switchable fixed filter. 1984(?)
stairwave
CV Consonant-Vowel synthesis CT-201 2 mixed stairwaves with switchable fixed filter. CT-201 & 202 layer 2 such sound CPUs with each a filter. 1980
? VL-5 only 1 stairwave with switchable fixed filter (very different hardware). 1982(?)
? MT-65 programmable CV (sound IC with external CPU). 1983
? CT-6000 velocity sensitive CV variant (layering 3 sound ICs). 1984
SD Spectrum-Dynamics synthesis HT-series user programmable CV variant with VCF for synthesizers. 1987
additive synthesis
? 1000p additive synthesis (5 layered sinewaves, sounds drawbar-like). 1981
Phase Distortion (FM)
PD Phase Distortion CZ-series Casio's FM synthesis variant. 1984
iPD Interactive Phase Distortion VZ-series PD successor with programmable routing. 1988
speech synth
? TA-1000 data-reduced speech synthesis (LPC based?, PARCOR?) 1983(?)
sampler
? SK-series lofi sampler (SK-1 has also drawbar softsynth). 1986
? FZ-series 16 bit sampling synthesizer. 1987
? SK-60 lofi sampler on different PCM engine hardware. 1996
software based (wavetable + multiple synth algorithms)
PCM Pulse Code Modulation various,
e.g. SA-series Casio wavetable softsynth on a chip, including many other synth algorithms like FM variants or program loop synthesis. The generic term "PCM" was earlier used for anything sample based (e.g. Casio percussion ICs). 1988
CD Casio Digital ? MT-540 PCM engine version with external 16 bit sample ROM. 1988
Super CD ? CT-770(?) PCM engine version with velocity, effect DSP (external 16 bit sample ROM).
AP ? AP-7 PCM engine version with velocity, used in first Celviano piano. 1991
? VA-10 PCM engine version with effect DSP + Harmony Arranger. 1992
IXA Integrated Cross-Sound Architecture CTK-1000 PCM engine version with velocity, multisamples, effect DSP (external 16 bit sample ROM | last engine with many synthesized classic "PCM" sounds). 1993
A2 A² (A-square) wavetable with sample compression + effect DSP.
HL Highly compressed Large waveform A2 successor?
ZPI Zygotech Polynomial Interpolation MZ-2000 IXA successor(?) with special sample morphing. 2000
AHL Acoustic & Highly-compressed Large-waveform CTK-4000 HL successor with acoustic instrument multisamples. 2008
AIF Acoustic & Intelligent Filtering System Privia piano simulation 2009
AiR Acoustic and Intelligent Resonator Privia piano simulation 2013
HPSS Hybrid Processing Sound Source XW-G1 PCM engine successor for versatile synthesizer (partially hardware based). 2013

Some extra notes on A2
- A2 has envelopes (Attack, Decay, Pitch, Volume)
- The WK-1800s DAC might have several hardware modes (have fun with that!)
- The A2 sound chip (GT-155F) is undocumented as far as I'm aware, and any potential documentation leads to the homepages of the manufacturers websites
- It might have some small samples here and there for some things (Drums, possibly some fairlight samples)
- A2 can combine two voices/DCOs together, allowing for more complex tones at the cost of polyphony
- A2 does not have portamento, and can't dynamically change panning while a note is playing (As far as I know, which is why tones that do, use two DCOs)
- A2 has some sort of filter in the DCO parameters, but I am not sure what type it is, or what it does.

so here's essentially what A2 is:
Wavetable with envlopes, filters, and DCO pairing.
Each voice can use 1 or two DCOs
MIDI controlled, with effects being controlled via the midi channels
Lots of fun to play around with (I want this thing in a tracker)

ZPI is also Wavetable, but it can dynamically morph the waveforms  in realtime as well as interpolate them, It also supports samples, more DCO combining (up to 4) a drawbar organ, software that allowed you to make and import your own tones, and some other cool stuff.

On 4/13/2024 at 1:37 PM, Mike Martin said:

My boss at Casio had one. I'm pretty sure he sold it. I'll confirm. 

It's a cool keyboard. Maybe some people on this forum could provide links to where one could be purchased?