This means that you have to access the three Settings pages to get into the guts of the synth. The Keys page (shown above) wastes a lot of space and displays only a tiny subset of the upper Part’s parameters. Mind you, the soft synth’s GUI won’t be to everyone’s taste. In truth, it’s so difficult to programme great sounds on the original AX73 and so simple on the soft synth that I found the comparison almost pointless. If you don’t have an AX73 or VX90 nearby to make forensic comparisons, why would you care? I then proceeded to create more complex patches, first staying within the range of the Akai, and then straying far beyond it. Was I concerned by this? Not in the slightest. The oscillators were close, but filter sweeps had a slightly different sound, even once I had tweaked everything to make it as similar as possible. I ran the soft synth alongside my VX90 (the AX73’s rackmount sibling) and set up a selection of simple patches to see whether it had the character of the original. At the end of the signal path, the output of both Parts is fed to a series of eight effects units (many of which you can sync to MIDI) that you can patch in any order you choose, and any combination of which can be active at any moment. and much like a Super‑JX10 (which incorporates two JX8Ps) or a DX5 (which incorporates two DX7s), there are two of these synthesizers - called Parts - available in every patch. There’s an 11‑mode, MIDI‑sync’able, three‑octave arpeggiator, and new keyboard modes. There are also four invertible HASDR contour generators with three triggering modes, seven selectable destinations and independent velocity sensitivities, and four LFOs with a host of new features including nine destinations, a programmable sample & hold mode, various triggering modes, a one‑shot contour mode, and both mono and poly modes. The chorus has four modes derived from the AX73 and AX60, plus a width control. The VCF retains audio‑frequency FM but now offers three modes (LP/BP/HP) and three cutoff slopes, and there’s an additional 6dB/oct LPF to help mould the overall tone. Each oscillator now offers waveshaping of all five waveforms and has a square‑wave sub‑oscillator. Happily, Martinic’s AX73 reaches far beyond the original. Furthermore, the AX73 suffered from some serious shortcomings, perhaps worst of which was that it still relied upon audio tape as its patch storage mechanism. Given what was on offer, it should have been a better synthesizer than it was, but the similar AX60 was easier to use and had a nicer sound, and the more advanced VX600 was streets ahead. There was portamento, an LFO provided modulation, and dual ADSR contour generators could be directed in two modes to the VCO, VCF and VCA. Following this, the signal then passed to a velocity‑sensitive VCA and a dual‑mode chorus. Each voice was based upon a single VCO and noise, followed by a velocity‑sensitive, resonant 24dB/oct low‑pass filter and a simple 6dB/oct high‑pass filter. It offered six voices that could be played as a single six‑voice patch, as a three‑note, dual‑voice but monotimbral layer, or as a six‑oscillator unison monosynth, the last two of these with detune to thicken things up a bit. The original keyboard was one of a small series of instruments that Akai designed using the CEM3394 ‘synth on a chip’. Avoiding the mainstream, they have so far concentrated on unusual instruments and effects such as the Elka Panther, the Kee Bass and the LEM tape echo, and their latest offering shares this philosophy, being a soft synth based loosely upon the Akai AX73 synthesizer. You may not have come across the chaps at Martinic as yet, but they’ve been writing plug‑ins for a while, both for their own brand and for other manufacturers. Martinic take Akai’s long‑neglected AX73 ball and run with it.
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