RAM Music Machine was a hardware add-on for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

and

Amstrad Amstrad was a British electronics company, founded in 1968 by Alan Sugar at the age of 21. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 1980. During the late 1980s, Amstra ...

CPC 464 The CPC 464 is the first personal home computer built by Amstrad in 1984. It was one of the bestselling and best produced microcomputers, with more than 2 million units sold in Europe. The British microcomputer boom had already peaked before Am ...

664 __NOTOC__ Year 664 ( DCLXIV) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 664 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era be ...

released in 1986. It was more advanced than the earlier SpecDrum and it could play melody samples, drum patterns or be used as an echo machine. One could sample sounds in 19,444 samples a second and use them. It also had

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, an ...

ports to connect to

synthesisers A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

. By 1990 the hardware was advertised with a price of £50. Notable users include a teenaged

Aphex Twin Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known as Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born British musician, composer and DJ. He is known for his idiosyncratic work in electronic styles such as techno, ambient, and jungle. Journalists from publication ...

References

{{Sinclair computers and clones Drum machines ZX Spectrum Musical instruments invented in the 1980s

See also

References