Best keyboard to imitate 80s synth sounds

[Analogaddict]

I'd probably go with a Nord Stage, Kronos, and D-05 and call it a day.

 

I agree, the Kronos will get you very far. For a weekend warrior 2-board rig, Id go for a Kronos and an FA-0X. Thatll cover the 80:s basics very well, and you can easily add one-shot samples on the FA series.

[ProfD]

As an owner, I'd recommend the Roland System 8. It even has an FM wavform that gets very close to DX territory.

 

Otherwise, I'd go with a Roland FA or DS to cover all of the bases without any doubt.

[chulo]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, with all the suggestions it gets a bit confusing and makes it harder to decide. I'm looking at the Roland JDXI or the DS61. WOuld thy be wise choices? They both around 500.

[joegerardi]

Ummm.... no. No, it doesn't.

Ummm.... yes. Yes it does. If you can read and see the PRETTY MUCH part. (If not, I put it in CAPS and bold to help here.) It has Yamaha tines; it has close to Jupiter; it has those airy D-50 sounds; it has crappy 80's organ sounds; it has strings. Granted, it hasn't Prophet and OBX, but that's also in the "pretty much," and you can fake them if you're capable of using a filter.

 

Taking into account the OP's budget, there's going to be compromises. This one mitigates a lot of them.

 

..Joe

[AnotherScott]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, with all the suggestions it gets a bit confusing and makes it harder to decide. I'm looking at the Roland JDXI or the DS61. WOuld thy be wise choices? They both around 500.

In this lower price range, I would also look at Korg Kross and Casio XW-P1, both of which are better for integrating additional sounds via MIDI (i.e. adding sounds from an iPad/iPhone, where you may find more sources of 80s-ish sounds as mentioned earlier). Of those two, I'd say the Korg advantages are better "rompler" sounds, the sampler and trigger pads; Casio had the better lead-line (mono) synth and more real-time control potential (i.e. 4 knobs and 9 sliders, vs the 2 knobs on the Korg).

 

ETA: the enhanced MIDI capabilities also make the Korg/Casio better suited for possible future expansion of adding something like the D-05.

[allan_evett]

The new Roland D-05 Has pretty much every sound that defined the 80's

 

Ummm.... no. No, it doesn't.

 

Strongly agree. The components needed to cover 80's songs well include a strong VA element (or very high-quality ROMpler tones), and a good variety of complete samples. The D-50 only had attack portions of samples.

While I stated earlier that the VR-09b / VR-730 could do the job, I'd consider that the 'Good', in a Good/Better/Best scenario. The 'Better' could be the recently discontinued Roland Jupiter-50/80 (or, going back a little, a Korg Triton Extreme or Roland Fantom X / G). For 'Best' I like Burningbusch's idea of a Korg Kronos. Some good deals can be found on a used, original version Kronos.

[J. Dan]

These kinds of threads always crack me up. In more than 30 responses, Mike was the only one who asked what kinds of 80 songs, and so far it hasn't been answered. So everybody gives their opinion based on what 80s is to THEM - some focusing on what is best at making a particular sound, some based in covering a variety of 80s sounds one at a time, some based on covering the complex arrangements some 80s songs have, some focussed in analog, others on FM and others in LA.

 

Damn near any keyboard that can do 2 parts and do the delay time on one part could do the song in the video in the right hands.

 

"80s sounds".... It takes very different requirements to play Jumo, Jessie's Girl, Mony Mony, and 1999, than it does to do Human League, New Order, Information Society, Depeche Mode, etc....and still different for Poison, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, etc.

 

The sounds fall into several categories depending on what you're doing:

 

Analog Subtractive - any decent VA should be able to cover this, however, if you're only using the most basic sounds (Jump,mJessie's Girl, etc) then any decent ROMpler will cover them. The more unique or more tweaking to do, the more you'll need a VA to tailor the sound.....but this requires that you know synthesis and know how to get the sounds.

 

FM - this often covers many of the early bell-like and metallic sounds a long with EP's and basses. Most modern ROMplers have a decent collection of classic FM sounds. FM programming can be difficult, so you'd only benefit from an FM engine if you have a lot of experience with FM programming,

 

Sampling - bands that did sampling back them had very limited sample memory and many were low resolution. Early 8-bit stuff had a particular sound. This will only help you if you have access to the same sources to sample or if you can find sample packs to buy with the sounds you want.

 

Bread and Butter - I put this together but you could split it in 2. Early digital keyboards used a combination of PCM samples or in the case of stuff like LA synthesis, a combination of sampled attacks basic waveforms looped. But the goal was to produce realistic sounds of things like acoustic piano, stings, brass, etc. Every Rompler has better versions than were available back then, but many also have samples of the old versions (M1 piano, for instance).

 

That's strictly the sounds. Probably more important is how you're going to use it. You could get a vintage Jupiter 8 and cover some of the Duran Duran sounds perfectly as long as you have outboard effects and don't need more than 2 sounds at a time and 8 voices.

 

How many parts do you need to play at a time? Will you need to use an arpeggiator or do any sequencing? If so, will you need a separate click track out to a drummer? Do you know how to do synth programming and your own sampling, or are you just going to stick with presets?

 

Your budget and the fact that you had to ask in the first place makes me guess that you'll be playing one or 2 parts at a time and strictly presets, in which case, I don't think there's really going to be any discernible difference between the keyboards within your budget.

[Moonglow]

Thank you for that factor analysis, Dan.

 

Seems the same categories have largely remained to this date, but the relative proportion of utilization has changed over the years.