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The New England Digital Synclavier System was a powerful, integrated system for music synthesis and recording, first developed at Dartmouth College by Jon Appleton, Sydney Alonso, Cameron Jones and finally brought to world wide exposure by Brad Naples. Released in the late 1970s, the Synclavier boasted a 100 kHz sampling rate and storage on large magneto-optical discs. Synclaviers were purchased by hundreds of artists and recording studios, often at prices in excess of $200,000. Notable early adopters included:

Pat Metheny
Michael Jackson, particularly on his 1982 album "Thriller"
Laurie Anderson, whose 1984 album "Mister Heartbreak" includes visual depictions of Synclavier sound waves in the liner notes
Frank Zappa, who composed his 1986 Grammy-winning album Jazz From Hell on the instrument. He continued to use it on his studio albums until his death in 1993, culminating in the posthumous release of his magnum opus Civilization, Phaze III (by Zappa's estimation, 70% of this two-hour work is exclusively Synclavier.)
Producer Mike Thorne, who used the Synclavier to shape the sound of the 80's producing bands such as Siouxsie & The Banshees, Soft Cell, Marc Almond, and Bronski Beat
Record label founder Daniel Miller (Mute Records). It found use on most Depeche Mode albums in which band member Alan Wilder was involved.
Sting
Genesis
The Cars
Herbie Hancock

New England Digital went out of business due to venture capitalist's pulling the plug in 1992. The Synclavier is no longer manufactured, but many systems are still in use in the recording industry, particularly in Sound Scoring & Sound Design for major movies and in music composition and performance. In the mid 80's, the Synclavier adopted the Macintosh Computer as the front end/user interface to the synclavier as championed within the company by Mac fantic, Svend-Erik Filby

The Synclavier is based around two separate systems - FM voices and SAMPLE voices - combined together under one dedicated Real Time Performance control software interface. There is also the option to add the Direct-to-Disk™ hard disk recording system which is also controlled seamlessly using the same control software. The Synclavier is famous for its depth of sound, versatility at sound creation and production, and speed of use.

For information on the company that originally made the Synclavier, see New England Digital.

External links

Steve Hills's What Makes The Synclavier So Special And Different?
Synclavier homepage
NED-Synclavier User's Groups [1]
Brian George of Demas: The owner of Synclavier hardware company http://www.synclavier.com/
Yaking Cat Music Studios The maiden Synclavier site created by & for users

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 * Herbie Hancock
-New England Digital went out of business due to venture capitalist's pulling the plug in 1992. The Synclavier is no longer manufactured, but many systems are still in use in the recording industry, particularly in Sound Scoring & Sound Design for major movies and in music composition and performance.
+New England Digital went out of business due to venture capitalist's pulling the plug in 1992. The Synclavier is no longer manufactured, but many systems are still in use in the recording industry, particularly in Sound Scoring & Sound Design for major movies and in music composition and performance. In the mid 80's, the Synclavier adopted the Macintosh Computer as the front end/user interface to the synclavier as championed within the company by Mac fantic, [[Svend]]-Erik Filby
 The Synclavier is based around two separate systems - FM voices and SAMPLE voices - combined together under one dedicated Real Time Performance control software interface. There is also the option to add the Direct-to-Disk™ hard disk recording system which is also controlled seamlessly using the same control software. The Synclavier is famous for its depth of sound, versatility at sound creation and production, and speed of use.