UVI Kawai Vintage Legacy brings five Kawai Synthesizer and drum machine classics as multi-sampled virtual instruments back.
Digital synths are as much a part of history as analog synths. And there were a lot of exciting digital synths. Korg Wavestation, Yamaha DX-7, Roland D-50…. the most famous.
Not a big synth player today anymore, but Kawai used to have a large portfolio of special digital synths. These are back now in a new form. The French sample specialist UVI has multi-sampled various Kawai synths and drum machines from the past and created five virtual instruments.
UVI Kawai Vintage Legacy
Kawai Vintage Legacy features five independent virtual instruments stackable in a monster multi-instruments with four customizable synth layers and a drum module. All five instruments are based on multi-sampled vintage Kawai synthesizers and drum machines. It includes sounds from the K1, K3, K4, K5, R100, XD5, and more.
The bundle consists of a synth and drum section with a total of 28.75 GB (FLAC lossless encoding, was 62.55 GB in WAV). Synth instruments K1u, K3u, K4u, and K5u all offer deeply editable UIs, offering ADSR over amplitude and a multimode filter, creative effects, and a powerful arpeggiator
Then, the drum module, R100u, includes factory sounds from the R100, XD5 and comes outfitted with a sequencer and pattern library. The R100 used was outfitted with additional customized EPROMs, loaded with a selection of acoustic and modern electronic sounds, expanding the range of sonic capabilities while retaining the lo-fi character of the vintage hardware.
The bundle includes a sizable preset library with over 1,000 layers sampled from hardware and 1,400 hand-crafted presets. Plus, there are a wide range of compelling ensemble presets for the multi-instrument and drum kits.
Users will find plenty of ready-to-go sounds and inspirational starting points, and for those who don’t mind getting their hands dirty – every patch is fully-editable, allowing everything from subtle changes to radical reformations.
First Impression
The five virtual instruments are not an accurate emulation but offer many authentic, tweakable sounds. If you want ready-to-use Kawai sounds, you’ll get your money’s worth here.
UVI Kawai Vintage Legacy is available now with a special introductory price of $89/89€ through May 8th, 2023 (reg. $149/149€).
More information here: UVI
I should preface this comment by pointing out that I do really like UVI’s products. I have the Quadra Traveler plugin and it’s transformed my compositions. I can’t get enough of it! However I have to say I was rather disappointed by at least some of the Kawai Legacy recreations. I’ve owned a K1 in the past and I still have a K4r, and the Legacy sounds don’t really compare. The K4r’s sounds are a lot more dynamic and mutable and have some great, dramatic aftertouch effects, all of which which is woefully lacking in the UVI K4. I was originally planning to dump my K4r in favor of this product but now I’m hanging onto it. I can’t speak to the quality of the other instruments, having never owned any of them.