The instrument
Following the success of the RX series, Yamaha launched the Rhythm Programmer RY30 in 1991 and the rack version RM50 a little later. It was a response to the successful R8 drum computer from Roland. The Yamaha RY-30 is 16-fold polyphonic and multitimbral. It also has a sequencer section with extensive MIDI implementation.
Details
The sound generation of the RY-30 Rhythm Programmer provides 174 internal PCM waveforms (16 bit/48 kHz) and can be expanded via wave cards. Two waveforms form one voice each. Some of the samples consist of pure waveforms such as sawtooth or overtone-rich oscillations. In combination with the edit features, the RY-30 is a small synthesizer.
The resonant multimode filter (high and low pass, each with 12 dB and 24 dB slope), the VCA with envelope and the modulation options open up more possibilities than its contemporaries.
Yamaha designates a programmed set of two waveforms and corresponding synthesis parameters as VOICE. 96 voices can be stored in the internal memory and 32 on an external memory card.
With the sequencer, four-bar patterns can be created within the polyphony and up to 20 songs can be created from up to 999 parts. 100 programmed patterns are stored in ROM, 100 freely playable patterns in RAM.
(Source: Amazona)