Kawai K3 (1986) Digital Wave Memory Synthesizer

Hybrid synthesizer based on additive synthesis mixed with digital wavetable and true analog VCA and VCF circuits.

KEYBOARD 61 velocity keys with aftertouch.
Main panel features an alphanumeric display, 61 buttons and 1 jog wheel encoder which is also nice for real-time parameters tweak.

Back panel terminal connectors:
- main signal output (impedance switch high/low)
- headphones
- cartridge data slot
- Midi interface
- footswitch input for damper
- footswitch input for program patch up.

 

 

TECH a 8-bits CPU (labeled CPU-06) manages up to 6 voices polyphony.
A voice is composed by 2 DCO at 16' to 4' octaves with individual gain mix, pitch and balancing.
Each oscillator DCO can be assigned to a 2 kinds of synthesis between:

- wavetable subtractive PCM - digital additive

WAVETABLE the internal 32 Kb ROM (check SP37 + SP38 EPROM) contains 32 (+1 noise ) short cycled waves coded at 8-bits. The PCM is organized in 2 groups (FULL wavetable list HERE) :

- PCM mathematically generated waves e.g square, sinewave and sawtooth. - PCM acoustic transients e.g piano, brass, organ, bell, guitar, plucked, string, trumpet, guitar, slap, hammered tine, metallic wave, digital harmonic, pipe, glocken, harpsichord and sax.

Hear all waves

ADDITIVE process sums sinewave waveforms at variable intensities from 32 harmonics out of the 128 available.

31 intensity levels for each selected harmonic, this process is defined step by step then created harmonics combination is saved to a specfic memory slot.

PERFORMANCE it is possible to assign the 6 voice polyphony in 2 performance modes:

- split: 2 sounds are assigned - unison: stacks voices with monophonic mode and portamento (but no possible detune). The aftertouch can be individually assigned to 3 parameters each with 15 levels - balance: determines the relationship between pressure and mix balance between OSC1 and OSC2 - VCF: between pressure and filter cutoff - VCA: between pressure and amplitude.

FILTER analog resonant filter is multimode.
The VCF keyscale determines the relationship between keyboard scale and filter cutoff.

- lowpass at 4 poles based on famous chip SSM 2044 - static highpass. Hear filter

LFO a single delayed modulator (shapes: triangle, saw, square, random and random chromatic - which is more linear than classic random) and 3 destinations:

- LFO to pitch - LFO to filter - LFO to amplitude

Hear LFO S&H

ENVELOPE 2 scaled analog EGs based on BA6110 chip:
- EG amplitude 4-segments ADSR
- EG filter 4-segments ADSR.
VCA Keyscale function determines relationship between keyboard scale and amplitude.

EFFECT stereo chorus based on Panasonic BBD MN3009 + MN 3011 generate different chorus effects and a kind of very short timed simulated delay.

Same chorus IC can be found also many famous Roland synthesizers e.g Jx3p, Alpha Juno, Juno 106 ...

MEMORY:

- 50 RAM slots RAM doubled if cartridge model Kawai RC-2 is present, patch and additive combinations can be also saved to sysex Midi Dump. Battery replacement : a 3V cr2032is soldered to the mainboard.

 

EDIT programming on display is pretty annoying, fortunately there are external softwares:

- Midiquest / Soundquest (PC / MAC commercial) - caged (for Atari ST) PIC - Kawai K3 table editor (for atari 400/800XL) PIC - K3 / K3M programmer for Lemur system - Ctrlr K3 template -PIC BELOW or hardware sysex controllers with template like: - Behringer BCR 2000 (VIDEO) - Kenton Freak (LINK) - stereo ping (LINK)

RELATED FAMILY:

k3m rackmount - same without keyboard, lacks handy data wheel.

 

 

VST PLUGIN / SAMPLED VERSION there are some free and commercial samples set:

Cobalt VST is an Emulation of K3 but also: -Korg DW-8000 - Ensoniq ESQ1 -Ensoniq SQ8L

No longer officially available

K3 GALLERY: