BL R-series engine BL R-series engine The R series is a line of petrol engines introduced by British Leyland in 1983 for the then-new Austin Maestro. It was only produced in one capacity—1.6 litres. The engine was essentially a lightly modified version of the E-series unit found in the Maxi and Allegro. The main differences over the older engine are to the sump and gearbox mounting flange, which were adapted to accept a traditional "end-on" transmission unit which had been bought from Volkswagen in place of the traditional BMC transmission-in-sump arrangement. The R series was mainly a stop gap, and had a very
Synthesizer States. This encouraged a trend towards producing music using digital sounds, and laid the foundations for the development of the inexpensive digital instruments popular in the next decade. Relatively successful instruments, with each selling more than several hundred units per series, included the NED Synclavier (1977), Fairlight CMI (1979), E-mu Emulator (1981), and PPG Wave (1981). In 1983, Yamaha's DX7 digital synthesizer swept through popular music, leading to the adoption and development of digital synthesizers in many varying forms during the 1980s, and the rapid decline of analog synthesizer technology. In 1987, Roland's D-50 synthesizer was released, which combined the