Deckard’s Dream (Yamaha CS-80 Inspired Synth) Audio Demos

At Knobcon 2017, Scott Rider, aka Old Crow, brought his build of the Deckard’s Dream, a new polyphonic analog synth inspired by the Yamaha CS-80.

Synthesist and sound designer Paul Schilling shared this collection of audio demos that he recorded. Riders’s Deckard’s Dream is a work in progress, and had one voice card out of eight, but the audio demos offer an interesting preview of the upcoming synth. 

Here’s what Schilling has to say about the demos:

At KnobCon I had the fantastic pleasure of spending an hour with a one-voice Deckard’s Dream, owned by Scott Rider aka Old Crow, the designer of the amazing CS-80 filter clones in the DD. What Roman Filippov has put together here is truly astounding.

The fact that this unit had “only” one voice card allowed me to focus in on the details of the sound of it. Rather than going through the presets I spent the whole hour tweaking the voice’s two parallel synth lines, which to me sounded absolutely wonderful and as close to the CS-80 as I’ve ever heard. Imagine what 8 voices of this beast would sound like!

Check them out and let us know what you think!

Pricing and Availability

Deckard’s Dream is available to pre-order, priced at US $3,749 for the pre-built synth and $999 for the DIY version (additional components expected to cost around $1,000.)

11 thoughts on “Deckard’s Dream (Yamaha CS-80 Inspired Synth) Audio Demos

  1. I’m duly impressed by the sound quality, but I’d miss the pitch-bend ribbon and engaging keyboard. Sitting at a real CS-80 is almost like playing a pipe organ. Its not a casual thing like pecking away at a mini-controller. Once I tried one out, I understood why anyone who could tour with it took the risk. Its got one of the biggest d*cks in Synthdom. If I felt that I needed more “CS-80” than I could synthesize myself, I’d go for a software option. Looking for a real one is a mild form of mental illness.:D

    1. I felt like you about this – till I saw it supports MPE! Which means it should fully support control from the roli seaboard, etc, and thus truly making it a modern cs-80 descendant!

    2. Doepfer makes their R2M Ribbon controller that I use on a Nord Stage synth section. Likewise, Nord’s Fatar keyboard is not bad for aftertouch, hopefully Fatar will reintroduce a Poly Aftertouch keyboard . . .

  2. It sounds OK to me, but not massive like a CS80, Jupiter 8, or other discrete polysynth. From the FAQ, “You may want to buy 17x CEM3340 oscillator chips from ON-Chip in advance, the unit also uses 59x V2164 VCA chips. Both in DIP package.” So is it a CEM-based synth? With Rider’s CS-80 filters as used in Boomstar, Omega, etc?

    Maybe Rider will design his own discrete voice cards for this. Muffs is down, I’m interested to read his thoughts on it. I remember that he was initially a sceptic, and he’s been talking about building something like this for a decade.

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