I have to thank everyone again who contributed to this thread! It really helped to clarify the differences/similarities among the entire CS-family. Again, for me it was between a CODE/Omega-8 and Deckards Dream. I'm now leaning much more toward the DD and will try it again at Big City Music someday. But as some here have shown, you can get that Blade Runner vibe on any number of other synths.

That's partly why I became so heavily invested in analog synths recently, specifically from DSI (i.e., P6/OB-6/PX/Mopho x4). Not that I love that "DSI sound," but you really get a lot of analog synth-mojo for your money from DSI, especially if buying all heavily discounted B-stock units. Plus my main goal was to get four different filters by buying the four different DSI synths. And I'm sure, between them, with the right controllers, technique, programming, and FX, I should be able to get close enough to that iconic CS-sound for my modest needs with what I already own.

Considering that the prototype for the CS-80 was the GX-1, I wonder how much they left off the CS-80 to make it lighter, cheaper and more economical?

The E70 is a great organ, and can be wildly modded (I own & modded one) but it's NOT 2 CS80's. It does have the same HP/LP filters and EG's, but the oscillators are a kind of wavetable chips that don't sounds like analog CS80 oscillators (much more stable in fact :-). Furthermore it doesn't have LFO's, ring mod, poly-aftertouch...
I got mine for 130 euro's (yes 130). Nice price in case you screw up and destroy it while modding :-). These beasts are big and heavy and old, and can fail any day due to leakage of capacitors, burnt out chips you can't replace, and all other kinds of fun...

With Blade Runner and Vangelis music in general, performance itself is very important, and he frequently used certain CS80-specific performance controls as he played live. Without those and it would be much harder to recreate the signature sound convincingly. Obviously, polyphonic aftertouch is one of them, and you'd need a proper controller (Midiboard is excellent for that) and a synth that responds to that. Less known is the fact that Vangelis used a CS-80 Sustain-II mode pretty heavily as well with long release tails that allowed him to sustain a chord on one keyboard and move his hands to others so he can play multiple of them at once. All Black Corp synths have Sus-II mode, but I don't know of any other hardware synths that do. A third component is the ribbon controller, which, combined with Sustain-II mode and polyAT complete the necessities. All that's left to do is to make a slightly detuned 2-osc sawtooth patch, make polyAT open the filter, and practice practice practice.

Just to reinforce the point that other synths (and not just Deckard's Dream) can convincingly do Blade Runner as well, here I used Xerxes prototype to perform the Main Titles in its entirety. Most tracks were played in live, just like the original:

I don’t think this can be stated enough. I’d say that getting a good polyphonic aftertouch board, and/or some MPE controller is probably more important than specifically obtaining the CS80. I often feel I get really close with my 002r controlled by my Rise 49 or GEM S2. My pressure strip is a Touché.

Oh. My. GOD!!

Point well taken. But implementing sustain II mode, that would have cost next to nothing! I'm guessing that this mode was just not understood well enough at the time, and then round-robin voice assignment just became the industry standard.

The only other poly synth that has a similar mode is the Voyetra 8 (Reset / Reset with retrigger )

Glad you brought that up. As you know, I also have a GEM, but that's taken a back seat (or rather closet) now that I have a Hydrasynth -- at least, until I have more space -- because the HS has both the poly AT and the pressure strip.

And poly aftertouch is really the core of the CS80 'feel'. Because you can get CS80 sounds from Arturia, but the expressiveness is determined principally through that poly AT interface*. So even though the Hydrasynth is a wholly different machine inside, it captures that CS80 vibe close enough for me.


*The Rise does this also, no doubt -- and even adds its own aspects, which are really the next step forward.

A Midi controller with polyphonic aftertouch and a ribbon + Arturia CS80 V4 = excellent CS80 experience. Much cheaper than a hardware CS80 (if you could find one), or a Deckard's Dream.