THE ADS (Advanced Digital Synthesizer) 100 was a high end (there was no given price when the 100 system was introduced) analogue synthesiser, probably most well known for not just looking like something from Star Trek but for providing the sound effects for 'Star Trek' films. The "Advanced Digital Synthesizer" 100 consisted of a dual-manual split keyboard, a crt video display for viewing sound envelopes, a large 'control cube' for disk drives and computer hardware, and a garish front panel for 64-oscillator additive synthesis and real-time sequencing.
The 200 model was a smaller and more compact version of the 100 that appeared quickly after the unsuccesful launch of the ADS 100. The CRT display included score notation and the instreument boasted a four track sequencer and five microprocessors to generate sound which allowed a powerful combination of Additive synthesis, phase modulation, frequency modulation, nested phase and frequency modulation. Tim Ryan from Con Brio says:
"It was totally configurable in software,' Ryan says, 'and we had 16 stage envelope generators for both frequency and amplitude, so it was kind of like the grandfather of the Yamaha DX7. On ours, you could build your own algorithms, using any of all of the 64 oscillators in any position in the algorithm. If you wanted additive, you could add 16 of them together. The phase modulation was similar to what Casio did with their CZ series. You could designate any tuning you wanted and save it. You could split the keyboard, stack sounds, model different parts of the keyboard for different parts of the sound, and save that as an entity - the kind of things that are common now.”
A total of three units of the ADS 200 were sold at for $30,000 each
The Con Brio ADS 2000
The Con Brio ADS 2000
The Con Brio ADS 200
The ConBrio ADS 200-R
In 1982 Con Brio relased the ADS 200-R a 32 voice (expandable to 64) featuring a 16-track polyphonic sequencer with 80,000 note storage capability with 'editing functions' available from the scoring screen. Only one instrument was ever built
The end of the Con Brio company came in the early 1980's when they failed to exploit the digital evolution and the simplicity of digital design that more comercial companies such as Yamaha created with their DX Synthesiser range.
"It was a labor of love, We didn't have much sales savvy, and that was eventually our downfall. Another thing was the intimidation factor: it had something like 190 buttons on it. We figured that no musician would ever want to enter commands, so we went to the trouble of putting on all those buttons. But obviously that approach was as cryptic as a computer language would have been. It was an amazing feat technologically, but with complete disregard for the people we had to sell the thing to.”
Tim Ryan
Sources
Mark Vail, "Vintage Synthesizers," Miller Freeman, Inc (pp. 78-79)
© 120 Years Of Electronic Music 2005
