The Roland SH-101 is a classic for good reason. It sounds great and has a clear and straightforward interface. Unfortunately, Roland stopped making them over 30 years ago, which is what makes Behringer’s MS-101 so interesting, not to mention the … Continue reading Roland SH-101 vs. Behringer MS-101: Can you hear the difference?
FaderPort 8 from PreSonus is a controller designed to work with multiple DAWs, and its main differentiating feature compared to regular MIDI controllers is it motorized faders. While this may initially sound like a gimmick, using these faders is quite … Continue reading Do motorized faders improve DAW workflow? Ableton Live and Presonus FaderPort 8 Review
Blackbox is a new standalone sampler/sequencer/looper from 1010music – known for their powerful and flexible eurorack modules. It can play back samples chromatically and polyphonically, so you can play it like an instrument (including using single cycle waveforms) and it … Continue reading 1010Music Blackbox: Review and full workflow tutorial
Digitone Keys from Elektron has the same synthesis engine as the “regular” Digitone, but as it quite clear from the first time you look at it, something is very different: Elektron added a three octave keyboard, as well as the … Continue reading Elektron Digitone Keys – what’s new? Review, tutorial and comparison to Digitone
SWN – Spherical Wavetable Navigator – is a six voice stereo wavetable synth, and what makes it special is the way it stores wavetables and the “spherical” way it moves between them. Typical wavetable synths morph between a series of … Continue reading SWN by 4MS: Tutorial and Review of Spherical Wavetable Navigator
Moog’s Spectravox was Moogfest 2019’s Engineering Workshop synth. It’s not available commercially, at least not yet. The only way to get one is to have built it at the workshop (or buy it on eBay…). To see what it’s like … Continue reading Moog Spectravox – detailed overview, and How Vocoders Work
If you’ve seen my Eurorack videos, Plaits from Mutable Instruments is in many of them. It’s a very flexible module with 16 different sound engines and three control knobs for each. In MicroFreak, Arturia have taken 7 of the 16 … Continue reading Arturia MicroFreak Review and Massive Tutorial, including all 12 sound engines
Buzzzy is a Kickstarter Synth that has quite a few interesting traits in a tiny little package: it’s a 4 part multi timbral, stereo, digital MIDI module with up to 16 voice polyphony. This review is of a prototype, but … Continue reading Loopop Review: What is BUZZZY?
NLDR (pronounced “Noodler”) from Conductive Labs is quite a sequencer, if it can be called that at all. If I had to summarize what makes it different, whereas with a typical sequencer, you enter notes to express your ideas – … Continue reading Loopop Review: What is NDLR?
Intro Hyve Touch Synth is very is very different from other synths – it’s polyphonic with 60 analog oscillators, but it doesn’t have any filters or VCA envelopes – rather – the way your fingers touch its surface determines which … Continue reading Review: Hyve Synth – 60 oscillators and as many VCAs as you have fingers