CME Intros ASX Advanced Synthesis Expansion - A Synth On A Card
CME introduced the ASX, a DSP board which goes into the expansion slot of UF and VX series keyboards and provides a flexible synthesis engine, turning the CME MIDI controller keyboard into a stand-alone synthesizer.
Yep – it’s a $369 synth on a card.
The ASX offers sufficient DSP power to run dedicated synth modelling plug-ins. Four plug-ins are included with the ASX, which can be dynamically loaded one at a time:
Minimax – a polyphinic replica of the Minimoog
LightWave – a wavetable based virtual analog synth
B4000 organ – a model of the Hammond tonewheel organ, and
Vocodizer – a vocoder controlled via a dedicated microphone input.
Next to the microphone input, the ASX provides stereo line out, stereo headphone out and a USB port to connect to the ASX Editor Software. The Editor provides graphic interfaces to each plug-in and allows access to all settings of the plub-in. Sounds can be managed, exchanged via an online server and uploaded to the ASX.