# Casio VZ-1

I bought my VZ-1 last month for 429 US dollars, and I'm smiling ever
since.  I know that Casio has this bad reputation of making only toy
keyboards, but this is really a pretty good intro level synth,
definitely worth the money. 

It is a 16-voice polyphonic synth with a 5 octave,
velocity and aftertouch sensitive keyboard.  It is also 8-way
multitimbral with static assignment of polyphony on each channel.  You
can split/layer 4 voices.  There are 64 ROM preset patches, and 64 ROM
combi areas where performance parameters such as keyboard
layers/splits, portamento values etc are stored.  Also, you can store
64 patches and 64 combis in RAM.  In addition, it comes with a 128
voice/128 combi ROM card.  In my opinion, some of the presets are
really good, and some just plain useless, with perhaps a half/half
split between the two (your mileage may vary :-).  Another good thing
is that in addition to the pitch bend wheel, there are two user
definable modulation wheels.  Also, there are inputs for a foot
modulator, foot volume pedal and sustain pedal.

MIDI implementation is fairly good, although there are some things
missing, like there is no local on/off and no program change mapping.
This makes it a little inconvenient to use it as your master keyboard.

As far as its sound architecture goes, there are 8 "modules" per
voice.  Each module consists of an oscillator with 8 possible
waveforms, an 8 stage envelope generator for the amplitude, and an LFO
that can modulate the EG.  Also there is a pitch EG with its
corresponding LFO, that can affect all of the 8 modules.  The modules
are organized in pairs, where the oscillators in each pair can phase
modulate or ring modulate each other, or are simply added.  Also, the
output of a pair can phase modulate the next pair.  So it can be in a
sense like an 8-operator FM synth with some limitations (like no
feedback), or an additive synth with 8 partials, among other things.
I think it is a pretty flexible architecture.  Also editing from the
front panel is quite easy and intuitive.

The largest complaint I have about it is the lack of public domain
support [EdNote: Look in the latest issue of Keyboard.  Sound Source
Unlimited has a MASTERAM Analog Collection for the VZ series].
There are no PD patches or editors/librarians as far as I
know (I was particularly looking for IBM stuff, so I don't know about
the ST).  Right now I'm working on writing a Glib based ed/lib for it,
but given my PhD workload, it will take a few months for me to finish
it.

--Ismail Dalgic
dalgic@cs.stanford.edu