Toying around with the juxtaposition of patches, their respective envelopes, the split keyboard mode and the vector joystick is a perfect way to create rich, sophisticated, highly evolving sounds and landscapes. That allows for very complex sounds, bearing in mind that the Wavestation is a vector synthesis synth, allowing the player to "move" inside the sound with a joystick (Dave Smith brought this to Yamaha and Korg from the ill-fated Prophet VS - my first synth was a Yamaha SY35, one of these surprinsingly rare vector synths). This synth works with "performances", which are combinations of patches, each one able to stack up to 4 oscillators. While the factory presets are decent (including the cool Mini Lead patch used by Tony Banks on "Fading Lights"), the Wavestation isn't a preset machine, but a real synth with vast programming capabilities. The screen, after all, is quite big and although fumbling through menus and sub-menus isn't the most practical way to tweak the sound, everything is laid logically enough and with a little practice (because the manual is very thin), programming becomes somewhat easier. It sure looks slick, but what about programming? Well, I would certainly prefer a vintagish array of knobs to control the parameters in real time, but as digital synth design goes, I've seen worse than the Wavestation. No knobs, but a LCD screen and some buttons. At first glimpse, the Wavestation suffers from the infamous "80’s interface" bug….
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