Chaniyth wrote on 2016-10-26, 18:08:
I've never seen or heard of one of these before so I did some research about it (seems the majority of sites with information about it are in French, so I had to use Google's crude translator then reconstruct the information into English as close as possible). It is an external synthesis expansion module and was released in September 1989 with a then price of around 2000 French Francs.
To amend further to what the OP already posted, the Dream Sam XR provides 4 operators FM and 28 PCM samples for drums (16 bit / 44 kHz) has 3 percussion sets along with 96 Patches (sounds), 32 Multipatch (including 4 presets), 28 user patches, 16 channel polyphonic with 3 mono modes and 8 multi-timbral sounds.
There is a possibility that it was pretty much obsolete within under 6 months of release due to how fast synthesis sound was evolving in that era.
I've been looking in to these DREAM synths recently, I believe they may have sold the boards for OEM use as the structure described is very nearly identical to some other units released by other companies using DREAM chips.
The Wersi MAX-1 came in a different but similarly sized case with more front-panel controls and an LED character display, but had the same specs as the Sam XR/XP. Wersi is a German organ company who are well known to repackage and rebrand midi expander products from other manufacturers. The MAX-1 may have been editable from the front panel.
The Evolution EVS-1 also has the same specs but has far more available information including a PDF manual available online, some contemporaneous reviews in Sound on Sound and Music Technology, a mention or two online, some youtube demos, and sound editors in older MIDI software like SoundDiver and SoundQuest. It originally came with an Atari ST based sound editor/control program, and they offered Mac and PC versions.
From the manual description, it's far more than a 4-op FM synth. The DREAM chips were wavetable-based with 32 waveforms, which were then used with up to 4 oscillators in FM, Phase Modulation, Amplitude Modulation, Width Modulation, and Waveshaping. It might be better to think of it as an FB-01 on steroids.
All 3 units were 16-voice, with 8 part multi-timbrality and had 3 sampled drum kits. The differences may have only been the internal preset sounds, or Wersi and Evolution may have implemented their own controls and DREAM may have only provided the sound generator board.
If anyone has one of the three they aren't interested in, particularly the Sam XR or XP or the Wersi MAX-1, I'd be very interested in buying it. I'd like to know whether the other units can be controlled with the EVS-1 editors, similar to how the FB-01 can be edited with nearly any Yamaha 4-op editor.
DREAM went on to make more complex wavetable chips that were used by German synth makers Quasimidi later in the 90s in all of their products, and are the company that today make the SAM General MIDI chips used in the DreamBlaster. I guess they kept the SAM naming scheme.
