The Korg DSS-1 is a 12-bit polyphonic sampling synthesizer released in September 1986. It came out at a time when many of the popular synthesizer companies were beginning to get into sampling, an area of sound design that had previously been left to a handful of fledgling companies such as Fairlight, E-mu, and Ensoniq. Like Yamaha and Casio, however, Korg did not stay long in the sampling arena. The DSS-1 (along with the rackmount DSM-1) was the company's only sampler until 1998 when Korg introduced sampling options on their Triton and Trinity series of workstations, and on their Electribe series of drum-and-phrase samplers. Concept and features The DSS-1 is a 12-bit sampler with analog filters and envelopes. It can sample at 12-bit resolution, with a maximum sampling frequency of 48 kHz. The usual sample editing features are included, such as truncate, loop, crossfade, keymapping, and so on. Multisamples can contain up to 16 individual samples. A single floppy disk can hold 4 "systems", each of which stores 32 patches including all subtractive synthesis parameters and the multisamples used in those patches. The maximum internal sample memory is 256K on a factory standard unit, with some (now rare and hard-to-find) hardware upgrades that increased the memory up to 2MB. A single DSS-1 floppy disk can hold up to 512k worth of multisamples, but only a max of 256K can be loaded into the machine's internal memory. Like most digital-analog hybrid synthesizers, its architecture is set up much in the same way as on a standard subtractive analog synthesizer. The subtractive analog engine on the DSS-1 allows for two oscillators to be combined and/or detuned. For each oscillator, one of 16 single-cycle waveform loops or full samples can be selected. Also on board the DSS-1 is a simple, non-realtime additive synthesis engine. This allows you to create single-cycle waveforms by either drawing them with a data slider, or by setting the relative amplitude levels of 128 sine waves. These digital oscillators are then fed through a fully resonant VCF and a VCA section. The DSS-1 has the same VCF as on the Korg DW series and the Poly-800 (Korg custom filter # NJM-2069). The DSS-1, unlike the DW series or the Poly-800 allows the filter to be switched between 12dB and 24dB modes. Modulation sources include two individual sine wave LFOs (which Korg calls "MG" for "modulation generator"). There is one LFO