The very earliest digital synthesis experiments were made with
computers, as part of academic research into sound generation. In 1957, the first
programming language for
computer music,
MUSIC, was developed by
Max Mathews on an
IBM 704 at Bell Labs in 1957. It generates digital audio waveforms through direct synthesis. MUSYS-3 (1970) (based on ) ,
EMS MUSYS 3 system was developed by Peter Grogono (software), David Cockerell (hardware and interfacing) and
Peter Zinovieff (system design and operation) at their London (Putney) Studio. The system ran on two mini-computers, Digital Equipment
PDP-8's. These had a pair of fast
D/A and
A/D converters, 12,000 (12k) bytes of
core memory (
RAM), backed up by a hard drive of 32k and by tape storage (DecTape). The earliest digital sampling was done on that system during 1971–1972 for
Harrison Birtwistle's "
Chronometer" released in 1975. In 1972–1974,
Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer was developed by
Dartmouth College Professors
Jon Appleton and Frederick J. Hooven, in association with NED co-founders Sydney A. Alonso and Cameron W. Jones. In 1977,
Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer was developed by Hal Ales at
Bell Labs. In 1977,
New England Digital (NED) released the
Synclavier, the first commercial synthesizer to use purely digital sound generation and also the world's first commercial FM synthesizer. Early commercial digital synthesizers used simple hard-wired digital circuitry to implement techniques such as
additive synthesis and
FM synthesis. Two other early commercial digital synthesizers were the
Fairlight CMI, introduced in 1979, and the New England Digital
Synclavier II, introduced in 1979 as an upgrade to the original Synclavier. while the Synclavier originally used FM synthesis technology licensed from Yamaha, before adding the world's first 16-bit, real-time hard drive streaming sampler later in 1982.
In Japan for programming it. In 1973, the Japanese company
Yamaha licensed the patent for
frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis) from
John Chowning, who had experimented with it at
Stanford University since 1971. Yamaha's engineers began adapting Chowning's algorithm for use in a commercial digital synthesizer, adding improvements such as the "key scaling" method to avoid the introduction of distortion that normally occurred in analog systems during
frequency modulation, though it would take several years before Yamaha were to release their FM digital synthesizers. In the 1970s, Yamaha were granted a number of patents, under the company's former name "Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha", evolving Chowning's early work on FM synthesis technology. Yamaha built the first prototype digital synthesizer in 1974. the
Casio VL-1 was the first low budget digital synthesizer, selling for $69.95. Introduced in 1983, the
Yamaha DX7 was the breakthrough digital synthesizer to have a major impact, both innovative and affordable, and thus spelling the decline of
analog synthesizers. It used FM synthesis and, although it was incapable of the sampling synthesis of the Fairlight CMI, its price was around $2,000, putting it within range of a much larger number of musicians. The DX-7 was also known for its "key scaling" method to avoid distortion and for its recognizably bright tonality that was partly due to its high
sampling rate of 57 kHz. It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s, and would become one of the best-selling synthesizers of all time. of built-in digital effects (reverb., chorus, equalizer). Roland called this Linear Arithmetic (LA) synthesis. This instrument is responsible for some of the very recognisable preset synthesizer sounds of the late 1980s, such as the Pizzagogo sound used on
Enya's "
Orinoco Flow." It gradually became feasible to include high quality samples of existing instruments as opposed to synthesizing them. In 1988,
Korg introduced the last of the hugely popular trio of digital synthesizers of the 1980s after the DX7 and D50, the
M1. This heralded both the increasing popularisation of digital sample-based synthesis, and the rise of '
workstation' synthesizers. After this time, many popular modern digital synthesizers have been described as not being full synthesizers in the most precise sense, as they play back samples stored in their memory. However, they still include options to shape the sounds through use of
envelopes,
LFOs, filters and effects such as reverb. The Yamaha Motif and Roland Fantom series of keyboards are typical examples of this type, described as 'ROMplers'; at the same time, they are also examples of "workstation" synthesizers. As the cost of processing power and memory fell, new types of synthesizers emerged, offering a variety of novel sound synthesis options. The
Korg Oasys was one such example, packaging multiple digital synthesizers into a single unit. == Analog vs. digital ==