It is the 90s & there is time for Klax!
I kept finding myself saying the AN200 is great box, but if only it had a better interface. And there was something with a better interface. It’s like c’mon son, but with a montage of gold coins pouring through the air and chin scratching. There’s a point where the price is low enough you may as well tap that Paypal button (as usual, cheaper to fly in from the USA than buy local). Plus, Jexus recommends it and everything he says is always correct without exception.
There seems to be two sizes at the Yamaha factory: teeny weeny and fuck I can’t carry this of which the CS80 is the grand poobah. I guess it’s not that big but it turned out to be a lot bigger than expected, and it was planks like this that pissed me off hardware in the first place. Like if I am carrying it down the road and it feels like a surfboard then that’s where I start pining for VSTs.
Anyway. I was a bit surprised to find that the engine is a slightly earlier version of the PLG-AN150 card/AN200. Most obviously there’s no supersaw so that’s your rave set busted right there. The second LFO is also underdeveloped. Generally it has the same flow – two oscillators, algorithms for FM and Sync, a filter with a couple of modes, a feedback loop and a bunch of FX. Still the same kind of Prophet 5 tactics and sounds and it is a very analogue experience, based around little adjustments that are incremental to the noise. Move that filter just a little, put the resonance just so, and there it is.
The knobbery is decent. It takes a little time to get used to the multiple functions (reading the little text in a dark room not a help) but it’s nowhere near as tedious as e.g. the MiniNova. Let’s say you want to twiddle the frequency cutoff. That’s green text on the left, so push the green button on the left and there you go, all the knobs are to do with the filter settings. I’m not as keen on the upsy downsy buttons over on the right, but most of that is about making dance party arpeggios and screw that for a lark. The dumb thing is that you can assign 8 custom functions to the knobs but when you do there’s no label that states what they are. Update – push the buttons down for the names you fool.
I’d venture this would make a nice controller. The keys are velocity and after touch sensitive, it’s got a ribbon controller for some extra woo and then – knobs. One last question. Why is there a little ledge over on the right? What goes there? A singing skull? Certainly not the Mopho in the photo. That was a cause of regret.
I’m not in love with it, like I was with the MS2000, but I know the latter is only going to get so far. This will go the extra… if you are prepared to turn knobs very carefully…