Yamaha TX16W

The ‘16’ in TX16W stands for 16-voices, which is nice, but unfortunately it does not apply to this late-eighties sampler's specs. It's only 12-bit (as opposed to 16-bit) and shipped with a slim 1.5 MB of RAM. Albeit, this is a sampler more than 15 years old. Supposedly marking Yamaha's entry into professional rack-mount samplers, the TX16W seems to take its rack-design from Yamaha's REV-series effects processors. A narrow 2-line LCD display, numeric keypad and about a dozen other buttons makes for a lousy sample-editing experience - yet this was how it was done in 1987/88. With internal RAM expandable up to 6 MB's, floppy disk storage, digital filters, and 8-part multitimbral operation, the TX16W was good for its time but is certainly now, a dinosaur.

This 12-bit sampler has a variable 50 kHz sampling-rate without aliasing, eight monophonic outputs, polyphonic stereo out and an external audio input (Mic, Line) on the front-panel. The original TX16W's System OS had to be loaded from 720kb disks in non-DOS format, and frequently needed reloads from the System disk. Moreover this OS is one of the worst ever made. Alternative: Typhoon 2000, a freeware OS provides much easier handling, support for RS422 (you can connect it directly to the built-in MIDI interface of a Mac for SCSI-like communication), 17 factory filters and support for the AIFF audio format. Typhoon is a must have to stay healthy while working with this sampler. It is good for M1-type pianos, percussion sounds, voice samples and your basic 80's style sounds. It has been used by Jimmy Edgar.