Dave Smith’s collaboration with Pioneer tends to the minimalist side, but not so the new DSI keyboard. The REV2 is all about more. While it’s not called a Prophet 08 II or something, the REV2 is rooted in that earlier synthesizer. It still has two DCOs per voice. It still opts for the sound of […]

Some tools are simple enough that they only really make sense in context. So we’ve gotten word that not only are Bastl Instruments introducing a new sync tool – they’ve also done some clever collaboration to show how it helps you play in time. Klin is a tiny $49 sync box. It’s really simple — […]

Elektron has been making some beautiful analog stuff with, well, “analog” in the name. But it seems the time has come to fill a glaring opening in the market – one left not just by Elektron, but by the industry in general. Digitakt is dedicated drum machine hardware that’s also a sampler and also (at […]

Apple continues to modernize and streamlined its flagship Logic DAW. And for anyone fearing it would turn the app into GarageBand, what you’re getting is quite the opposite – Logic features added to GarageBand, and some ongoing pro-oriented improvements to Logic itself. (Don’t worry: no EDM presets or fake drummers in this article. So read […]

First, a sampler. Now, a synth. Pioneer DJ, not content with essentially owning the DJ booth at this point, have their second production instrument in less than a year. It’s called the Toraiz AS-1. It’s an analog monosynth. It continues the collaboration with synthesizer legend Dave Smith. Price: US$499 or €549 suggested retail, including VAT. […]

In place of drab text menus or something like that, the new Teenage Engineering PO-32 Tonic is … a little different. There are adorable characters with wide eyes and huge noses, quaffing cocktails. There’s a ringing telephone … with a mouse perhaps gnawing away at its end. There are spiders – various spiders. No, I […]

Teenage Engineering have been charming us for a couple of years now with handheld, pocket calculator, Nintendo Game&Watch-style synth and drum machines. And you might think they’d be out of weird ideas. You’d be wrong. The PO-32 looks to be both the most surprising, and most serious entry yet. It has an entire drum synth […]

Let’s be honest: audio interfaces are one of the pieces of gear most likely to make your eyes glaze over. That might even be doubly so for the many, many options available for iPhone and iPad – each, somehow, almost but not quite really solving what you want. So, great, IK Multimedia have yet another […]

Strap on headphones, and the sixteen minutes of Shift Symm is a brain-tickling assault. Even just within the stereo field, raw textures rumble and dance until you feel the sound’s structures inside your head. I was attracted to Zeno van den Broek’s work partly because that sense of patterning in sound and visual formed a […]

Remember when some pundits thought we were all going to dump our laptops and switch to tablets and iPads? So – not so much. But mobile platforms are having a big impact on music software – and KORG Gadget, now making the leap from iOS to Mac, may be most emblematic of that. Who is […]