As Vangelis is by far the most important cs80 artist I think many users expected to be reminded of those sounds but instead will get dissapointed by the nature of the many pre-programmed sounds on offer.
But rather than expecting secret ingredients from those, I think you'll get much closer to the real cs80 feeling by using and combing the physical preset buttons (11 on channel 1 and 11 on channel2). That, in combination with setting the control sliders located left and right of these presetbuttons as wel as changing these during play, will get you closer to the cs80 and eventually the Vangelis sounds.
For instance:
starting from scratch with the default setting of cs80v you could:
1. pick no.3 "brass" from channel 1 and no.3 "brass" from channel 2. setting the brilliance slider relatively low will create no immediate sharp sound with the initial touch but use the aftertouch of your keyboard to open the brilliance. use a bit of delay (left from the keyboard), set channel 1 on 16foot and channel 2 on 8feet for a more spaceous brass sound or try that vice versa. make sure that the MIX slider of both channels is exactely in the middle so you'll hear both channels equally balanced.
2. with the above sound, setting channel 1 to 8feet and channel 2 to five-and-a-halve feet wil set the two synths a “fifth” interval apart. With a relatively short sustain mode (left from the keyboard), a bit of portamento (again left from the keyboard) you’ll have the basis for the harmonica sound as used in “Ballad” and “bladerunner’s OST”. Also, you will need to have the initial pitch bend slider fully opened for this effect. However, since that feature is not working properly (in fact, it’s completely wrong the way it bends) on the cs80v, you can forget about that. This initial pitch bend bug should really be on the priority list to be fixed as it is a very important feature on the real cs80!
3. Use the flute preset (no.4) on channel 1 in combination with the brass preset (no.3) on channel 2 or another typival Vangelis combination is the flute from ch1 with the bass (no.4) or guitar from ch2. brilliance slider needs to be relatively high in this case to have the bass or guitar sound of ch2 immediately comes out at initial touch while, after that’s faded out, the flute which uses a much slower attack will still keep on sounding. Use aftertouch on your keyboard to add a little VCO for vibrato (like in the melody from "to the unknown man" or “hymn” from opera sauvage)
4. Use the funky green preset buttons, This sounds great, especially when using the ring modulator.
This will remind you of Vangelis’ experimental “Beaubourg” album
So, there's a lot to achieve by using the controls left and right from the preset buttons. They are the most important controls to get acqainted with to get to know a CS80 and with that in mind I am really surprised to see so many pre-programmed sounds that have really SO little to do with a real CS80 and would have better suited a regular FM synth or a ROMpler. Also, there are too many of these sounds that only use 1 channel! The cs80 is a combo synth, i.e. 2 seperate synths (2 cs60 really) in one machine, so why only use one of them?
I'm no programmer and don't pretend to make better sounds. I just think it’s the wrong approach to introduce this as a regular MULTI preset synth because it should be exactely the opposite.
In case you are blessed with a midi controller keyboard with many knobs that can be appointed to the sliders then make sure you have them all assigned (via midi learn) to those left and right of the presetbuttons in the first place. Use the ringmodulator, the sub osc, the aftertouch sliders, brilliance(!) and resonance(!). needless to say, that an aftertouch (even if it is only channel aftertouch) keyboard is essential. no point whatsoever to use the cs80v without it.
Best,
V
