Kawai K5000

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The Kawai K5000 (commonly abbreviated 'k5k' on internet forums) is a series of digital music synthesizers manufactured by Kawai Musical Instruments of Japan. The first of the series, the K5000W keyboard workstation, was introduced in 1996. The K5000S performance keyboard and its rackmounted sibling, the K5000R, were introduced soon after. In Japan, Kawai stopped production of all models of the K5000 by the summer of 1999, although they were officially discontinued months earlier in other parts of the world. The K5000 is notable as one of the few commercial synthesizers that use additive synthesis, and it was Kawai's second attempt at this kind of synthesizer. (The first was the Kawai K5, nearly ten years earlier.)

The K5000S was intended for live use, and so it includes a 61-key keyboard with velocity and channel pressure sensitivity, a pitch and (assignable) modulation wheel, sixteen realtime control knobs (four of them assignable), a programmable arpeggiator, two assignable front panel buttons, a damper and (assignable) expression pedal, and two assignable foot switches. The K5000R has the same functionality as the K5000S, but can be controlled only via MIDI. The K5000W, with the same keyboard as the K5000S, was intended as a songwriting workstation, and removes the arpeggiator and control knobs and offers a sequencer and two supplemental sound banks not available on the K5000S/K5000R, including General MIDI.

A K5000 sound is comprised of up to six different layers, each of which could use the "advanced additive" synthesis engine or perform fairly standard subtractive synthesis using the internal PCM sound bank. Each source that used additive synthesis could use up to 64 harmonics per source (tuned in a harmonic series, each with their own amplitude envelope) and had its own formant filter that could be modulated by an LFO or its own envelope. The standard digital filter, available with both additive and subtractive synthesis, is known for its rather extreme self-oscillation at higher resonance settings. Another useful feature is that most functions of the synthesizer can be tied to velocity, location of a note on the keyboard, and MIDI controllers, allowing for timbral variation in response to player dynamics.

Most people who know the K5000 remember it for its ability to create strange, evolving pads, not unlike the Korg Wavestation, and for its intensely harsh, "digital" sound.