As of September 2021, Casio is not manufacturing any professional synthesizers per se, although it does market certain high-end model personal keyboards, such as the WK-7600, as 'crossover' products for the professional market. The company re-entered the synth market with the XW-P1 and related products in 2012, but these were discontinued by 2020. By about 1993, all professional synths had been dropped from Casio's product line. This period was dominated by samplers, and Casio chose not to update its FZ-1, introduced in 1987. However, by the early 1990s, Casio seemed to have lost interest in the professional music market. A series of other models based on phase distortion synthesis followed over the rest of the decade, and then the company introduced the VZ-1, which used a mix of phase distortion and true frequency modulation synthesis, at the end of the decade. The first commercial product to use phase distortion synthesis, the CZ-101, appeared in 1984, and at a list price of under $500 US, it put Casio on the electronic music map. The Cosmo served, among other things, to prototype phase distortion synthesis, a synthesis method Casio had developed that was implementable at a reasonable cost with early-1980s technology. Casio made time last week to debut its new 'hybrid-GPS' digital camera, the EX-10HG.Though just a working prototype for now, its namesake feature is creating buzz already. Soon after, the company embarked on a project to produce a large synth combining several digital technologies, for electronic musician Isao Tomita the result was the Cosmo system. Other electronic products such as hand-held games, digital watches, and early versions of digital cameras.Ĭasio moved into music electronics with the first of its personal keyboards, the Casiotone 201, in 1980. All-solid-state calculators followed in the 1960s, and by 1975 the company had an extensive line of pocket calculators of various levels of sophistication. In the '50s, the company set about to build a calculator with no moving parts other than relays, and it introduced its first such device in 1957. A few years later, the company got into building electromechanical adding machines and desk calculators like other such machines of the era, these used gears and wheels, and were powered by either a motor or a hand crank. Its first product was a cigarette holder. In electronic music, Casio is noted mainly for the phase distortion synths it produced in the 1980s, although it has produced over 100 different models of personal keyboard devices since 1980, and these do sometimes find their way into recordings.Ĭasio got its start in 1946. Large Japanese manufacturer of a wide variety of consumer electronics devices.

Casio prototype