If you don't know what it is, it's two Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) sound chips (Yamaha 2612 in V1, and uhh, some other number in V2) in a small aluminium box with a boatload of faders to control every aspect of each operator, some LFOs to modulate them, and an arpeggiator/sequencer (I never use).

You might think it sounds like a Sega Genesis game all the time, but it does not. The LFOs really open up the 2612. It does some amazing performance tricks you certainly don't hear in Sonic the Hedgehog. But, it does those, too. Channel your inner Yuzo Koshiro, then make it sound like something entirely else.

A while back, Twisted Electrons saw fit to make the firmware open source, and it's wonderful how much functionality they've added. Looping envelopes that can loop from different points in the six-stage envelopes, new voicing options, a MIDI tool to change settings from your PC, heck, a couple weeks ago they added the ability to change the scaling of the envelopes. It came out four years ago, and the updates keep on coming.

Just so I don't sound too much like a fanboy, I will qualify that it is a bit of a janky box. Voice stealing is weird sometimes, and these chips are noisy and scummy sounding. It's probably the most analog sounding digital thing I've ever heard. I guess there are still a few minor bugs with the firmware, but none that I personally notice.

Still, it's only 450 Euros and eminently worth it.

Recently I've been on a hardware granular synthesis search (we're in a renaissance) and I love seeing how each box (1010music - Lemon Drop, Tasty Chips - GR-1 and GR-MEGA, Oddment Audio - groc, and the plinky and Tempera) implements their particular version of granular synthesis because I can steal their ideas!

I watch a tutorial or demo video, and they explain how the hardware works. I can then go and open up Notepad++ and code up my own version of their instruments in Csound. For free. I don't even have to subscribe to their silly hardware limitations, either.

It doesn't exactly stop me GASing over some of them (man, the groc looks sexy, though it's a bit early to tell how good it is), but it does at least prevent me from making too many impulse purchases.

This turned into a bit more of a CSound rave than I intended again. Seriously though, if you're interested in sound synthesis and are even mildly technologically inclined, I really advise learning either Csound or one of the other languages like Supercollider or ChucK. The only problem is that every piece of hardware after that is going to be a disappointment.

In my ongoing quest to destroy my bank account and prevent my child from attending university, I'm considering a Nanobox. Specifically the Lemon Drop because I've had a fascination with granular synthesis for something like 25 years now, and the Razzmatazz, Tangerine, and Fireball don't really appeal to me at all (at least not right now while I'm lusting over hardware granular synthesis.)

Up to now, I've done all my granular synthesis for free! Csound has a number of granular opcodes that are incredibly powerful. Sample length limit is almost non-existent, grain density can be cranked into the tens-of-thousands before it starts to become a problem, you will never run out of voices, and there are more tweakable parameters than you find on any piece of hardware. Even something like the GR-MEGA from Tasty Chips really can't keep up with Csound and a mildly competent PC.

So yeah, I'm not used to paying money for granular synthesis, but I'm also used to generating all my granular sounds with code rather than knobs and a keyboard. The thing is, the Lemon Drop only partly mitigates this concern. It's a tiny box with two knobs, four buttons, and a decent amount of connectivity. It's not exactly a knob-per-function kind of thing that will make sound design a delight. I like their implementation, but I could do just as well with code, just not as immediately. $400 is a big ask.

I do have a Microfreak, which introduced granular synthesis in the latest firmware, but I find the implementation a bit lacking. It's not terrible, but the limited interface of the Microfreak hampers the design potential quite a bit. I should probably fart around a bit more there before I dismiss it too much, though.

Anyone own a Nanobox? Are they really worth $400? I do have a birthday coming up...

Seems like every couple of months, I seriously GAS over one of these things, and then think better of it. It's getting harder to resist. The extra screen space, battery life, onboard mic (unless it's total garbage), and USB C connection make it way more tempting. Not so much the extra $$$ tho. Still cheaper (and better) than a Polyend Tracker Mini here in Korea.

I had a bit of cash, and have been working with a portable setup lately that is mostly Koala Sampler, my phone, a Samson Go mic, and a tiny DAC that is literally a USB-C jack to two 3.5mm audio jacks, one in and one out, and decided I needed some more hands-on sound design power.

In the spirit of maintaining portability, I looked to smaller devices. The problem I find there is that a lot of portable devices look like they're about as much fun to design sound on as a VST or app, so why not just spend a fraction of the cost and do that instead? I did end up working out some of the trouble I had getting Csound for Android working, which is great since there's almost infinite sound design potential there if you don't mind coding (which is how I mostly made music for the first 15-years I was doing it.)

I made a track with Csound and Koala, and decided I still wanted something more immediate than code. So, I bought a Microfreak.

I'm sure the copious firmware updates in the 4 years since it came out have something to do with it being way more capable than I had initially assumed (and at the time I was comparing it with Hydrasynth, which is significantly more capable.) It's got something like 24 different oscillator types now which cover a lot of ground from VA, to wavetable, to granular, and even samples now. They're all a bit limited since there are only 3-4 parameters per oscillator that can be tweaked, but Arturia (and presumably Mutable before them) made sure that those parameters are the ones you really want to control.

I've made more patches on it in a couple of weeks than I have on the Hydrasynth in a couple of years. (Mind you, I've made many more finished tracks with the Hydrasynth so far, so we'll see in the end.) It's super easy to dial in usable and interesting sounds. And yeah, you can "freak" out and make it sound like a university student first discovering LFOs, but I find that side of it decidedly less interesting. If I want cutting edge modulation experimentation, I'll code something up in Csound. The Microfreak just effortlessly does great leads, basses, and pads.

Like everyone else who has one complains: it'd be nice to have some onboard effects since it sounds pretty dry without them. Luckily Koala has quite a few decent effects these days. Really, the amount of sound design, and track creation potential between a $350 synth, a $15 app, and an $8 interface is making me feel a bit dumb over the desk packed with hardware I have at home. (Never mind the $1200 phone I suppose...)

This time its a more minimalist jam.

I recently got the Roland S-1 and T8, so decided to try to make something simple while learning how to use them.

Gear: Roland T-8: Drums @baseli+ 303 bassline sound. Roland S-1: Main bass groove Korg Volca FM2: "Melody" line

Setting up the triggers with midi should allow me to send gates to say an Erica Synth pico drum set.

I’m wondering if anyone’s given this a try and how did it work out for you? I feel like I could just play something in way faster than programming.

So yeah, anyone literally tracking in drums with your synths using midi from an electronic kit?

What got me thinking about this was watching this video from Drumeo featuring II from Sleep Token. Worth the watch if you are into drumming and percussion.

With all the talk of samplers since TE decided to release the ridiculously hyped K.O. II, I decided to finally pick up Koala Sampler. I've heard many good things about it, and for good reason. It's amazing! It's so immediate and fun and actually stupid powerful if you shell out (~$15 for everything) for the mixer, effects, and time stretch extras.

I dusted off my ancient sample collection and plopped them on my phone (Galaxy S23 Ultra) and am putting finishing touches on 3 tracks in just a few days, and just hauling it out to play with my daughter who gets a kick out of it. I even found a new use for my Samson Go mic which works with Android and has a headphone jack. It's perfect since the S23 Ultra doesn't have a headphone jack (fuck you very much Apple, Google, and Samsung) and the Samson mic is obviously much better quality than the (actually not that bad) internal mic.

My phone battery hates me. Though I don't really notice Koala being any more demanding than anything else. I'm just using my phone so much more.

The base version is ~$5 and very much worth it to check out if phone sampling is for you. I really recommend at least the mixer upgrade. It really adds a lot of functionality for another $5. The time stretch stuff that comes with Samurai (the name of the other upgrade) is decent as well, though certainly not as necessary if you mostly use one-shots instead of loops.

Namely the new EP-133. TBF, it's the cheapest thing they've made besides the POs. It's really the first thing they've made that's genuinely got me excited. I don't even have a sampler. I mean, besides a PC which is arguably the most powerful sampler in existence.

Cuckoo's demo on YouTube is pretty good, but I wish Loopop would get his hands on one. I prefer his manner of stoic tutorial-review over Cuckoo's also-OK giddy enthusiasm.

Made a place to jam and have fun while I learn piano and finger drumming in the office. Separating learning from playing has been awesome to have.

Edit: I promise I’ll post the music that I make here! Pictures are good, but I need to back it up with music.

So I just went a little crazy and bought a few hardware synths. Every single day since I have jammed after work as a meditative exercise. And some of this shit is sick (to me).

I’d like to be able to capture some of these jams. I have a Zoom F3 for recording, and I understand the entire recording process. My question is if anyone is out there jamming with synths, how do you grab snippets worth sharing and then putting that out into the community?

(I know the sub seems dead, but hey.. who knows)

Here's the main video if you don't want to read the article.

There's actually a surprisingly good basic description of subtractive synthesis(considering how new it was) as well.

Have a question about what synth - soft or hard - you should buy? Ask here! At least give us an idea about what kind of music you want to make and an inkling of how you want to do it.

What's on your mind regarding synthesis? See any good shows recently? Made an obnoxious noise experiment? Made a delightful noise experiment?

If someone asked me to guess what Korg was going to do next, I would not have said a full-sized, 61-key update to the Wavestate. Well, that's what they did.

I don't know how I feel about it. I like the synthesis engine: it's unique and versatile. It really nails those ethereal 90s digital tones with more modern modulation capabilities and sound quality, but it seems like such a niche thing, I don't know if it warranted a full-sized version.

Also, what's with the UI? They took almost the exact same layout as the original, and plopped a gigantic keyboard on the bottom. Now, there are huge blank spaces on both sides of the knobs and tiny screen. Korg really ought to have made the whole thing less deep and spread the UI out across the length of it. I guess they save on R&D by this route anyway.

Personally, I'd say spend the money on a decent MIDI controller, and just buy the VST if you really want those sounds. The hardware here doesn't seem like anything special, and the UI, frankly, looks awful.

I wonder if the Opsix or Modwave are going to get the same treatment.

Csound is my passion! I've been programming bleeps and bloops with it for nearly 25 years now. Short of one of the other synthesis languages (I've been meaning to check out Supercollider for years) no software, VST, or hardware synth can do a fraction of what's possible with Csound.

Lately, I've been playing with wavetable synthesis in Csound. The cool thing about using Csound for wavetables, is that there are very few limits of what you can do with those wavetables.

For instance, a piece I recently worked on I wrote an instrument that used a sin wave from a table with 16384 points between -1 and 1 for its single wavelength.

Inside the instrument, I made an if statement that ran once per cycle and randomly either squared the value of a random point or took the square root of the value of a random point (and made them negative again if they were initially negative.) Since all the values are between -1 and 1, this means they never go outside of that range, but they do either get closer to zero if squared, or closer to -1/1 if rooted.

In the end, it means the harmonic spectrum slowly changes in an odd and random manner. The change could be sped up or slowed down by using fewer or more points since the randomization is happening once per wavecycle. I tried some other values, but settled on 16384 because 8192 was a little too quick, and 32768 was a bit sluggish. (Csound likes its powers-of-2, which isn't a strict rule since there are oscillators that will use tables with lengths that aren't such, but I kept it simple.)

Unfortunately, for all its complexity, the end result doesn't really sound too dissimilar to a plain old filter sweep on a harmonically rich waveform. You never know until you try I guess. Ha!

Mine is without a doubt Loopop.

I get none of them are truly non-partisan since their livelihood depends on synth sales, but I feel like he truly leaves commercialism at the door in all his videos.

He has a very matter-of-fact quality to his videos. He tells you what a piece of gear can do, and shows you how to do it. He's always very subtly enthusiastic about interesting features, but never tries to sell you hype. It's like a manual in video form. Which is very much appreciated. I can form my own opinions thank you very much.

I wiffle-waffled over calling this post a "review" for some time since I'm hesitant to put much stock in other people's opinions on subjective matter: like whether or not something sounds good or has an intuitive interface, but in the end, if it quacks likes a Moog ladder filter, it's likely a Moog. Thus "Review".

Recently, I really wanted a Pulsar-23. Given that thing costs a whole lot (and is most likely worth it, it's an inspiring piece of technology/musical instrument) and music has never been more than a hobby for me, I ended up with an LXR-02 instead. I've had it for a few months now and have quite thoroughly put it through its paces. I do not regret my purchase.

It's an entirely digital, drum synthesizer. Six voices that you manipulate with encoders, and volume sliders. I/O is impressive for such a small box: four mono outs that can be assigned to specific voices in various patterns. Five pin MIDI in and out. Clock in/out for Eurorack, and a very, very loud headphone jack.

The voices are divided into three "drum" voices that do a good job on kicks, toms, snares, and cymbals if you really push them. Then there are a snare, clap/cymbal, closed hi-hat, and open hi-hat that add (and remove) some parameters to better imitate their namesakes.

it's in the editing possibilities of the voices that I find most of the value in this box. Oscillators, envelopes, modulation, FM (none on the snare engine), click (transient generator), filter, LFO, and mix controls are present for all voices. I'm honestly hard-pressed to think of a more versatile hardware drum synth on the market. I've heard convincing emulations of just about every famous drum machine that people have whipped up on the Elektronauts forums. That's good news. If you want traditional electronic drum sounds out of it anyway.

Luckily for outre me, it goes super weird too! The per-voice LFOs can be routed to any parameter on any voice. You can have an LFO modulating an LFO, modulating an LFO, modulating hi-hat decay for some mind-altering patterns. Yeessshhh. Melt my brain

The sequencer is no Elektron sequencer, but it's almost there. As of firmware 1.6 (the latest as of this posting) it's got most of the usual suspects of modern drum sequencing: per-step parameter locks, swing, ratchets, up to 64 steps including every step in between and per-voice for polyrhythms, and a few extras like Euclidean sequence generation (that I have actually never used.) What the sequencer does not do is let you change the timing of the steps for triplets. Every beat of the clock is always four sixteenths. Which was a minor disappointment given I like to make things in less popular time signatures. Thankfully, I can just sequence via PC, which is how I typically do things anyway.

Performance options are typical as well, except for a couple of exceptions. You can change the sample rate of a pattern, and the bigger one: the morph function. What this lets you do is seamlessly morph between two separate kits. It's as nuts as it sounds. It's pretty neat to have a kick slowly turn into a bell. I have heard the complaint that the roll function is limited to max 16th notes. Not an issue for my style, but it might be for others.

This is getting way too long, and I haven't even mentioned the effects yet. They're there. They do what they're supposed to do. Some are more useful than others. Unfortunately, you can only use one at a time.

There is a disgusting amount of drive. Each voice's filter has drive, there is drive in the mixer section, and finally, there are a few different flavors of drive in the effects section. For a digital synth, it can really get nasty. In fact, I'd say it excels at the harder side of things. Which isn't to say it can't get subtle, because it certainly can, despite the majority of YouTube demos being 140bpm banging techno.

I might miss the inspiring interface and ridiculous amount of performance options on the Pulsar-23 that I'll probably never be able to afford, but I really think the LXR-02 was a good compromise for me. Realistically, it does more than the Pulsar in terms of sound design. The inspiring sequencing part not so much though. At least I have PC for that end.

To cut this short with some shameless self-promotion here's a track I made that is 50% LXR-02, and 50% Twisted Electrons' MEGAfm.

Let er rip!

It would be nice if you commented on others' posts as well.

Welcome!

I think it's no secret that this place was inspired by r/synthesizers on Reddit. It's definitely the subreddit I miss the most, so I made one.

Feel free to discuss anything related to the electronic synthesis of sound. Your latest music project. A neato patch you made. The cool new gear you just bought. Whatever. It's all good.

Post away!