Arturia's CS-80V

Arturia does it again with a software emulation of a classic analogue synthesiser. We turn 17 again and play with the CS-80V...

Weighing in at 83kgs you also had to be able to afford not one, but two roadies! Its technology came from an even bigger instrument, the GX-1, released in 1973 which was as much an organ as a synth with three keyboards and a full set of pedals, and that rolled up at a cool $60,000. It was actually snapped up by several prominent musicians of the time including Stevie Wonder, Keith Emerson and Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.

The CS-80 also sold to many super stars including Paul McCartney, ELO, Vangelis and Jean Michel-Jarre and it was truly groundbreaking in its day.

 Features included 16 oscillators using two oscillators per voice (eight-note polyphonic), key split and layering, a ribbon pitch controller that has passed into legend, and a velocity and after-touch sensitive keyboard which was weighted, too. It included presets and you could create your own, programming and storing four of them on miniature versions of the main control panel.

Innovative or what! For an analogue instrument with no digital storage features it certainly was.

Cutting edge

The CS-80 had its own sound, often described as 'cutting' but, based on technology that is essentially 30 years old, it's difficult to imagine what a virtual version could bring to the synthesis party. French music software developer Arturia has already created an impressive Moog synth emulation in the Moog Modular V and Minimoog V and the company has obviously looked at the CS-80 to see if it could be brought up to date. And it has, in several interesting and powerful ways.

The box includes PC and Mac plug-in and stand-alone versions. Installation is easy, using a serial number for copy-protection, and you're offered a choice of plug-in formats to install.

There's one main screen, a rather neat recreation of the CS-80 front panel. One of the problems with bit mapped images is that you need to run them at a resolution such as 1024 by 768 in order to clearly see the legend and detail on the fascia. If you use a low screen resolution the detail is difficult to read. However, once you become familiar with the controls this becomes less of a concern.

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