Akai AX80, courtesy of Audiofanzing
A polyphonic analog synthesizer with digitally controlled oscillators, produced by Akai starting in 1985. The AX80 was a fairly typical synth for its era, with 8 voices, 4-pole low pass and high pass VCFs, a five-octave keyboard, and patch memory with a bank of 32 presets in ROM, and 64 user patch locations. At the time, Akai was better know for home hi-fi music and recording equipment, and the AX80 was the first synth it offered. With the tendency at the time being for vendors to offer "music systems" (e.g., Sequential and Oberheim), Akai introduced the AX80 as a part of its "Micro Studio" suite along with a digital MIDI sequencer, a four-track cassette recorder with built-in mixer, and the MR16 drum synthesizer.
The voice architecture began with two DCOs, similar to the Roland design, plus a suboscillator. The two DCOs produced sawtooth and pulse waveforms, with pulse width modulation available. Additionally, DCO 2 could be offset tuned and sync'ed to DCO 1. The audio path then traversed the aforementioned filters (based on the CEM 3372) and then to a VCA. A pair of ADSR envelope generators were coupled to the filter cutoff frequency and the VCA level respectively, plus either one could be routed to control the frequency of DCO 2. Each voice included no less than three LFOs; two were routed to modulate DCO 1 and 2 respectively, and the third modulated filter cutoff frequency. The LFOs could generate sine, triangle, sawtooth or square waves, and each included a turn-on delay that delayed the onset of oscillation until sometime after key-down.
Editing patches was accomplished via a one-knob interface. However, the AX80 virtuously offered a dedicated parameter select button for each parameter, so accessing parameters was much easier than a one-knob interface usually implies. The rather large data entry knob was a potentiometer rather than a rotary encoder; when a parameter was selected, it jumped to the knob value as soon as the knob was moved, which had advantages and disadvantages. A much-praised feature of the synth was its method of displaying parameter values. A series of vacuum-fluorescent displays across the panel displayed every patch parameter simultaneously, in the form of bar graphs. Each bar graph approximately lined up with the associated parameter select button.
Performance controls, in addition to the velocity-sensing keyboard, pitch and modulation wheels, a transpose control, and a "chord hold" feature. This allowed the performer to tell the synth to memorize a played chord; the chord could then be played by pressing one key to select the root note. The modulation wheel had two pushbuttons which allowed modulation (from the LFOs) to be routed or not to the oscillators and/or the filter cutoff.
Despite its virtues, the AX80 was not a sales success. This was blamed variously on it being priced far above the competing products from Roland, Korg and Sequential; the uninspiring factory patches, and lack of name recognition. It was also not helped by being rather late to the analog polysynth game, being introduced in 1985, after the all-conquering Yamaha DX7. And unlike its competitors, the AX80 had no onboard effects, at a time when that was beginning to become common. The MIDI implementation was very basic, and had no ability to transfer patch data. The Microstudio concept also did not catch on, with the sequencer and mixer/recorder being very quickly discontinued. By the next year, the remaining AX80s were being blown out at remainder prices. Akai did produce two derivatives, the monophonic AX60 and the polyphonic but less expensive AX73, so it was not a total loss. However, after this, Akai's next musical product was the S612 sampler, and it never returned to the analog synth market.
The AX80 was discontinued by the end of 1986. Probably a few hundred were made. A company called Tauntek wrote a firmware update in 2016 that considerably expands the MIDI capability, allowing patch parameters to be edited via Continuous Controller messages and transfer of patch data via sysex, plus some additional LFO parameters.