14 thoughts on “UVI KAWAI Vintage Legacy Brings Back Vintage ’80s Sounds”

1. Still have my K1m, and love it. It’s a delicious string and pad machine, I don’t really bother with the cheesy pcm attack transients much though. I do regret selling the K 5000r, that thing had a character I’ve never been able to replace.

2. I like seeing this appear. I had a K1II and a K5. The former was filterless and therefore kind of shrill (I EQ’d it a lot) and the K5 was additive before the processing power required reached a proper level. I still got good mileage from them. They just didn’t feel fully baked. Softsynth versions often smooth out the rough edges.

   I wish Kawai had gone just one step further with their synths. The K5000 was a winner that missed its best market window, but the rest just needed a v.2 or v.3 to be grand slams. UVI tends to offer their VERSION of a synth rather than going component-deep, but the demos sound like a good compromise for the price. No one else has been in a rush to emulate Kawai’s classics, so its good to see someone get to them. The K4 was a poor man’s D-50, but still very inviting to play.

3. I agree with S-Trigger Dave. They create UIs that are inspired by the look of the originals. The sliders on the K4 are a good example. These look like great subtractive synths with modern features which use sounds from the synths and drum machines rather than recreating the additive engine of the K5 or modelling the analog filter of the K3. You are getting the authentic sound complete with the audio ouputs and whatever artifacts they may have added to the signal. They take inspiration from the past and do their own thing to create new sounds which I think is a cool approach.

   I have some of their other libraries and they all work well and sound good. I love the old Kawai stuff so I’ll probably get this at some point.

4. The demos sound great. If anyone is interested, there is also a free K1 VST by Nils Schneider.

   1. I second that. K1v sounds truly great and is absolutely free.
      https://www.nilsschneider.de/wp/nils-k1v/

   2. Thanks. There’s an interesting look at the K4 on Nil’s site too.

   3. And a K3V from Digital Systemic.

5. Il stick with mild Schneider K1 – £150 is a disgrace

6. The K1ii was the first synth I ever bought, the XD5 the second, and I still have them both. Their value to me is more nostalgic than sonic, and spending another $89 to get the same sounds seems pretty silly. But I’ll probably do it anyway.

   1. There’s a lot of fun to be had here. I’ve owned a K1 and I’ve used this vst more in the past two days than I ever used my real K1. The R100u drum machine was a pleasant surprise. Very gritty and very useable.

7. Is the additive part just samples or you can mangle the partials?

   1. Just samples based on what I see on the UI in the video and from what I’ve experienced with UVI’s other work. They sample the heck out of the OG hardware and then create their own sample playback engine and UI to give users quick creative control over those samples. They aren’t striving to recreate the original synths in software.

8. i would rather have vintage Kawaii any day. LA was weak sauce.

9. I used to own a K3 and still have a K4r in my rack. Unfortunately I don’t think these plugins quite measure up. For one thing, the K4r responds–sometimes quite dramatically–to aftertouch and the K4U factory patches don’t. There are sound layers that seem to be missing entirely, and many of the patches seem dull and lacking in the “sparkle” of the originals. I bought this package in part so that I could get rid of the hardware unit but it seems I’ll be hanging onto it for the time being. Make no mistake, I like UVI’s stuff. I think their Quadra series is amazing, as are many of their other plugins. It does seem they missed the mark on this one, though.