Jason O'Bryan

Abbey Road Institute

"CZ V demands your attention, with just a few tweaks to the beautifully crafted presets, unique and endless sonic landscapes began to emerge. Intuitive, emotive and inspirational in equal measure, the CZ V is my new favourite software synthesiser."

Marcus Lambkin

Shit Robot

"The V Collection has so much to offer but the surprise stand out for me could be the Casio CZ-V. The interface is so easy to use and so much fun to play around with that it's very hard to resist. Easily one of my favorites."

Tomás Mulcahy

"I was pleasantly surprised that the real character of the hardware is right there in CZ V! And I think there are four main strengths, in order of importance: The percentage level control on each envelope really opens up the possibilities in a very big way, allowing the CZ V to respond to the player in a much more organic way from modulation. It also makes it much easier to have bright or dark within the patch. Now it’s so easy to tweak the patch so that it sits right in your track. I love it!"

Tomás Mulcahy

"I love the chorus. With one voice it is very much like the hardware CZ, and with two or three voices, it is pretty much the perfect chorus for a synth! When I got the initial specs, it was the looping envelopes that most excited me. I would have killed for this feature on the hardware, back in the day. It took me a while to figure them out, but I did, with relative ease, and they are hugely useful."

Tomás Mulcahy

"I have been using a CZ since 1992, starting with the CZ-5000 and ending up eventually with the CZ-1. Back then it was my only polysynth. With the sequencer it was like an affordable workstation, so I wanted it to make every sound possible. With CZ V it is more of an adventure. This is because it is exactly the same as the old hardware and at the same time is a very up to date synth with all the features we take for granted in software today. So the method was simply to explore and have fun. Several times I started from an initial patch and just explored the new possibilities, especially with the extra Mod Envelopes, the more detailed velocity modulation and the Custom Waveform."

Don Solaris

"The main strength of CZ V in my opinion is definitely the user interface. It is heads and shoulders above other competitive products, making sound design and programming seem like child's play. I have built most of the patches so fast that programming was no longer an issue. In fact the only issue was inspiration - I was able to make sounds almost faster than I could imagine them."

Don Solaris

"When building this soundset I had two goals. First was to try to emulate some of my existing sounds from my beloved CZ-1 (which in the meantime I sold, since CZ V covers it 99%). The second goal was to try and push the software to the limit and see what will come back - whether it will break or continue to impress. Most of the time it was the later, especially when trying the things the CZ-1 never had. The only time i would briefly hang from a cliff was when stacking too many voices in unison which my Mac Mini (late 2012) was no longer able to push. But other than that, I was super happy to participate in this project!"

Paul Schilling

"My approach is to treat the whole thing as an instrument - including the FX, routings, and all the other well-considered additions.First thoroughly understand the core synthesis engine and then expand outward to fully grok the whole thing. Be the synth. From that place I take sometimes an improvisational approach, sometimes a vector "must get a certain sound" approach. Either way, almost always something interesting happens, and such was the case with CZ V."

Thomas Koot

"Just as with analog synths, the rawness and imperfections of early digital synthesizers give them an unmistakable character. Like the original CZ series, the CZ-V provides sounds with real character, it has a vintage feel, but in a completely different way than an analog synthesizer."

Maxime Dangles

"I really loved working on the CZ V, to be honest I never had to work with a phase distortion synthesizer. I would do it more often in the future, it's very powerful, especially with the ability to create its own waveform."

Maxime Dangles

"I never had a CZ synth before so I really discovered it through the process of sound design, thanks to the modulation matrix and additional LFOs, it’s a very powerful way to create sounds. I was really helped by the Arturia added functions that let me go further and faster in the sound exploration. I was not looking for a specific type of sounds, just wiggling knobs until it sounds great."

New Loops

"One of the features in the CZ V that I found really useful was being able to loop the envelopes. This opens up all kinds of possibilities for rhythmic and sequenced sounds. The ring modulation is good fun too and is great for making harmonically rich sounds for example, bells and buzzy leads. For sound design, I usually start with my own initial preset that has the synth set up how I want. This is often different for each synth but with common settings like pitch wheel amounts set to 12 semitones, the mod wheel and after touch set up as modulation sources, and volumes at unity. I find this approach gives me consistency across all my presets."

Clément Bastiat

"The way CZ V handles phase modulation is interesting. It has lots of envelopes so the sounds are alive. It seems simple and efficient at first, but with some clever phase modulation curves, you can really make it sound like an FM synth."

Clément Bastiat

"I sometimes let myself flow while discovering features and let myself be surprised, which usually get me to some exciting sounds I was not expecting. Other times, I have specific sounds in mind and just do what needs to be done"

New Loops

"If I had to pick 3 of my favourite presets from CZ V they would be these: they show a wide range of possibilities for this synth."

New Loops

"I don't tend to start with a sound in mind when making a preset. I like to start with my blank patch and get multiple oscillators working together. Then I will look at the features in the synth and start adding modulation. The key is to experiment with all the different features as these can vary quite a lot between synths and this is where you start to get unique sounds."