Matriarch is Moog’s flagship semi-modular synth – with stereo filters, stereo delays and stereo VCAs, four oscillators and a few paraphonic modes, and 90 patch points, there’s a lot of territory to explore and cover. Here’s my full review, detailed … Continue reading Moog MATRIARCH: Review, full tutorial and patch ideas
With the Minilogue XD, KORG did something which may prove to be one of the most interesting things a synth manufacturer can do: they opened up its digital oscillator and effects engine to any developer that cares to create plugins … Continue reading Korg Minilogue XD Review, full tutorial and 8 patch ideas
Crave from Behringer is a semi-modular analog monosynth based their 3340 oscillator and ladder filter, with a single LFO and envelope, an arpeggiator/sequencer and a 32 jack eurorack compatible patch bay priced at around $200. The market for analog synths … Continue reading Behringer CRAVE: Review, tutorial and patch ideas
There are quite a few solid hardware sequencing options on the market – both standalone sequencers spanning from Arturia’s KeyStep and BeatStep Pro, through Novation’s SL MkIII, all the way to Squarp’s Pyramid, as well the capable sequencers built into … Continue reading Pioneer DJ/Toraiz SQUID: Review, tutorial and top 14 features that make it special
Most drum machines and sequencers don’t support importing MIDI clips or loops, which is a shame because there are plenty of MIDI clip/loop libraries out there with excellent content, many played by real drummers with obvious human groove and feel, … Continue reading Drum Machine Trick: How to Import Loops from a 100,000+ MIDI Clip Library into Almost Any Sequencer
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