Seiko DS250 - a strange and extremely rare Additive synthesiser from the 1980's and used by J.M Jarre on his Rendezvous album. The DS250 has a set of presets built into it and it allows you to stack two presets by pressing a dual function key to select layer 1 and layer 2; it is a little awkward pressing these buttons, so their version just has two sets of 16 preset select buttons which is much easier.
The D-250 relies on some form of additive synthesis to create its sound and produces tones that are not clean and pristine, but instead have a wonderful earthy, organic and grainy sound that have bags of character.
After searching for many years to find one of these elusive keyboards I was immediately struck by its great set of presets, but I thought it was let down by not being velocity sensitive - so that was the first thing Loot Audio added to Castle Instruments version. I also thought it could benefit from resonant filters, so they added those and also added velocity modulation to allow control of the Filter Cutoff and resonance; this really added so much expression to the sounds. they also added multiple filter types which can be selected from the filter menu on the interface.
They also added controllable ADSR for amp and filter, Hi-Pass filters, and MIDI syncable LFOs; all of these extra features take the sounds way beyond what can be achieved with just the hardware synth. Loot Audio’s version has the original sounds from the hardware DS-250 and they created the factory presets for you in the preset folder, but it is great to be able to go way beyond what the hardware can do and explore new sounds - sort of like if Seiko had added all these new features to their original hardware.
Loot Audio's version also has two random patch generators - one for each preset layer which makes it easy to throw some chaos theory into their patch creation and just hit randomise until you get something you like.
Also included is a full effects section including Chorus, Phaser, Flanger, Tape saturation/warmth, Reverbs, MIDI syncable Delays and an arpeggiator.
The Castle Instruments DS-2500 is great for taking a journey into the strange and digital world of additive sounds and textures whose roots are firmly entwined in the original sounds from the DS-250 hardware and comes with 100 presets and 30 MULTI's to get you started.
Features
- 110 Presets
- 30 Multis
- Randomisation System
- 2 Layers (16 Voices per Layer)
- 41 Filters with LFO
- Arpeggiator
- 7 Global Effects
- Convolution Reverbs
System Requirements
- Full Kontakt 6.6.0 or above
- Important Note: Full version of NI Kontakt 6.6.0 and above is required.
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