Akai S1100

Akai's flagship stereo sampler, the machine that turned the S1000 into a complete digital studio in a single rack space.

Overview

Akai's S1000 had already become the default sampler in professional studios, so the S1100 kept the same core architecture and added what engineers kept asking for. That means a built-in digital signal processor with reverbs, echo, chorus/flanger, and pitch shifting. It also has a SMPTE reader/generator with cue list programming, a SCSI port for hard disk or magneto-optical storage, and a digital output on XLR connectors in EBU type II format. The Recording Engineer show report that covered its quiet AES introduction noted that it was based on the popular S1000 but went well beyond it in significant ways. It singled out the phase-locked stereo sampling and the on-board DSP as the headline additions. Contemporary coverage in Mix (June 1991, p.26) featured the S1100 as the new Akai sampler used by Starr Parodi, keyboardist for the Arsenio Hall Show, who praised it for adding elements that musicians could previously only imagine.

The S1100 samples in 16-bit stereo with true phase-locked operation, at a selectable 44.1kHz or 22.05kHz. The manual specifies 28-bit accumulation and an 18-bit D/A converter with 8-times oversampling, which is a big part of why the machine has a reputation for clean, unromantic accuracy rather than coloration. The A/D side uses 16-bit conversion with 64-times oversampling. Polyphony is 32 voices. The standard 2MB of memory is expandable to 32MB using SIMMs. That gives 24 seconds of mono sampling at 44.1kHz in stock trim, or nearly six minutes when fully loaded. Halve those times for stereo work.

Connectivity is where the S1100 separates itself from its predecessor. Two jack inputs handle L/Mono and R. The output section has stereo L/R jacks, eight assignable individual outputs, and a stereo headphone jack. S/PDIF digital I/O sits on RCA phonos, and the SCSI port takes hard disks, Syquest cartridges, and magneto-optical drives. The front panel carries a 40 x 6 character backlit LCD with graphic waveform editing. It's small by modern standards, but it can draw the waveform you're trimming, which mattered when loop points had to be set by eye.

The filter section is a 2-pole resonant lowpass per voice, 12dB per octave. An optional IB304F board adds a second bank of 2-pole resonant multi-mode filters covering highpass, bandpass, lowpass, and EQ, plus tone control. Envelopes run one ADSR and one multi-stage generator, with the IB304F adding a third. Two multi-wave LFOs cover triangle, square, sawtooth, and random waves. There's polyphonic and monophonic portamento, and a legato mode that single-triggers playback to emulate old monophonic synths and solo instrument phrasing.

DSP functions beyond the effects include timestretch, re-sampling, and digital EQ. The optional 4-channel multi-effects processor does more than the spec sheet suggests. It has two channels of simultaneous distortion, three-band EQ, ring modulation, modulation effects (chorus, phase shift, flanging, pitch shift, autopan, or rotary speaker), and stereo delay and reverb. Two spare channels add more reverb, so there are four reverb processors total. The Recording Engineer report described the DSP as offering various reverbs, echo, chorus/flanger, and pitch shifter. It also noted that version 2.0 software was promised to allow direct-to-optical-disk recording with a 650 magneto-optical drive.

The sound library is fully compatible with the S900, S950, S1000, S1100, S2800, S3000, S3200, S2000, and S3200XL, so a studio's existing sample library carried forward intact. The Recording Engineer report added that S1000, S950, and S900 discs would play back on the S1100. Data storage options include floppy disk, hard disk, Syquest removable cartridges, and magneto-optical disks, and hard disk data can be backed up to DAT tape over the digital I/O. Flash ROM support allows up to 16MB of non-volatile storage on top of the 32MB of ordinary RAM, for 48MB total, keeping favorite sounds resident when the power goes off.

The S1100 is not warm in the analog sense. It's clean, precise, and slightly clinical, built for accuracy rather than romance. The 32-voice polyphony and the depth of the output section made it a natural centerpiece for a MIDI studio. The SMPTE reader/generator with cue list programming meant it could lock to picture or tape without external sync boxes.