UVI has introduced Vintage Casio Legacy, a collection of virtual versions of 6 classic Casio electronic instruments.
The collection includes six standalone instruments, CZ, FZ, VZ, HZ, CTK, and RZ, each with its own character and history, plus a Multi instrument that transforms the suite into a unified performance workstation.
Here’s a video demo of the Vintage Casio Legacy collection:
Vintage Casio Legacy combines hardware sampling with modern sound shaping and performance controls, and features 1,400+ presets and 110,000+ samples.
Pricing and Availability:
UVI Vintage Casio Legacy is available now for $199 USD.
These are sample playback instruments.
When digital emulations of these instruments exist in the wild already, this seems daft.
And every last things has a lowpass filter with resonance on it.
The whole point of Casio’s CZ synthesis was to not have to execute computationally expensive lowpass filters.
Putting a low pass filter on a CZ is redundant for sure, specifically on a hardware synth. Behringer could and should have omitted the filter on the CZ mini and used that real estate for something like dedicated controls for the ring mod and noise, maybe adding cross mod.
I only heard a few examples here but as someone who is very familiar woth programming HTs abd the HZ… this didn’t sound familiar! Not very convinced of the CZ OR cz either as a former owner and user of those synths.
However, these plugins do have their own sound which is good to hear in a world full of plugins!
Its 36.27 GB in size and it doesn’t come on its own drive, so eek. You’ll need to budget for an outboard drive to hold it. That’s become costly, so plan ahead.
I’ll pass on this one, but I wore out a CZ-101 as a module and loved it. I’m not experienced enough with the full range to gauge this 100%, but it feels like the last Casio synth treasure chest you could ever need.
36GB?? I would think you could emulate it very well (and compactly) with a digital core and some virtual circuits and lowpass for the 12-bit D/A.
In fact, Casio seems to have made their own CZ app that includes the original (?) presets and should work with any CZ patches: web.casio.com/app/en/cz/
Sound to my ear is more modern (though with the original’s limitations like no velocity?), but you can’t beat interactive touch controls rather than the fiddly buttons and membrane switches of the originals (which I think also interrupt the tone.)
Reason’s Thor also has phase modulation amplifiers which can produce CZ-like tones, but sadly no 7-stage envelopes. I don’t recall if it has the full set of CZ waveforms such as the “resonance” waveform that mimics filter resonance.
iPad only, though.
Another option for CZ emulation is VirtualCZ, which works quite well. Will skip the url to avoid admin review but it’s easy to find and works on Mac/Win.
(I wrote a comment but it seems to have been mod flagged due to URL.) Casio has their own CZ app, which looks (and sounds) pretty decent and is an emulation (CZ’s were digital synths after all) rather than 36GB of samples. Reason’s Thor also has phase modulation oscillators.
The iPad version of the CZ is trash. They could have done so much better. There are dozens of great sounding iOS synths but the CZ is not one of them. (IMHO as a multiple Casio CZ owner over many years.)
Agree with the other comment mentioning the PD oscillator in Thor from Reason. I’ve done side-by-side comparisons with the CZ-1 and CZ-5000 I have, and it pretty much nails the waveform and sound, plus it offers a LOT more modulation possibilities. Only downside in comparison, IMO, is Thor only offers ADSR envelopes for distorting the phase of the wave versus the 8-stage envelopes in the hardware. As an honorable mention, I have to say the VirtualCZ gets enough of the sound right (and it has 8-stage envelopes) as well. Lastly, I also have the iPad CZ app, and it also hits the mark, sadly limited by 4-voice polyphony.
Having a bunch of sampled content from the CZ and VZ ranges just doesn’t make sense, when they are digital synths that can already be decently reproduced in a digital domain without sampling.