News & guides for hardware synth lovers.
Hardware synthesizers in desktop or semi-modular format, without built-in keyboards. Focused on gear with CV, MIDI, and USB connectivity that integrates easily into modular or DAWless setups. Includes hands-on reviews, use cases, and comparisons.
Elektron’s Tonverk represents something fundamentally different: a complete philosophical reimagining of what a performance sampler can be when polyphony, multisampling, and elaborate routing converge in a single instrument.
The S2 continues the Organelle’s mission of democratizing computer music creation through Pure Data programming, but with the computational headroom to tackle patches that would have strained its predecessor.
The Organic Synthesizer That Bridges Melody and Noise Gets Smarter Bastl Instruments’ Softpop SP2 has always occupied a unique position in the synthesizer ecosystem—an experimental semi-modular instrument that treats the boundary between musical melody and organized noise as a creative playground rather than a technical limitation. But experimental doesn’t have to mean difficult, and the … Read more
The Chordcat represents Alpha Theta’s bold entrance into music production territory, leveraging decades of DJ technology expertise to create something entirely new
The original MicroBrute was never meant to be polite or refined. It was designed to be immediate, aggressive, and unapologetically analog in an era when digital convenience was king. The UFO edition preserves everything that made the original special while addressing the one issue that plagued early Brute series owners: those infamous sticky knobs that seemed to develop their own gravitational pull over time.
The Instrument That Thinks Like a Drummer, Sounds Like the Future Most synthesizers still cling to the 12th-century keyboard as their primary interface—a somewhat absurd situation when you consider we’re dealing with instruments capable of sounds that Bach could never have imagined. But X Audio Systems’ XTRIKE boldly abandons this centuries-old paradigm, asking a provocative … Read more
Sequential has answered years of community requests with the release of the Take 5 Desktop Module, stripping away the keyboard from their popular 5-voice analog polysynth while retaining everything that made it special. At $1,399 USD, it represents a $300 savings over the current keyboard version and brings authentic Sequential sound to desktop setups, compact studios, and space-conscious producers.