Stagebox Software has just released its free software emulator of the 1987 Yamaha VSS-30 sampling keyboard.
The cheap, toylike keyboard was really a beauty of a synth, offering up crunchy 8-bit goodness of whatever audio you fed in through its mini microphone.
Perhaps maligned at the time, it now produces the nostalgic, highly sought-after sounds that take us right back to — the eighties.
The VOIKS engine offers up a realistic (not facsimile) emulation of the VSS-30. You can record audio via any attached microphone or drag in audio files. The software then tries to simulate the initial effect of recording via the original (crappy, let’s face it) microphone — no hi-fi here — before giving you access to the sound shaping and mashing functionality.
The interface is not a mock up of the hardware instrument, but you can get the same kind of results. You get a nice big display of the current waveform, the envelope you’re working on, and then buttons or dials for setting other parameters.
As well as plain sampling there’s also overdubbing for layering up into a single sample. Looping too.
VST3/AU on macOS and Windows.
