Articles

The line of volca devices from KORG, a legendary japanese company, is probably the most balanced and functional in the segment of portable and inexpensive music creation tools. These are truly original products, combining the best ideas of synthesis and sampling of the last century with a convenient, intuitive design and nice sound, for their price.

We can explore and inspect Ultranova’s architecture as long as much we have time for it and aspiration, of course. It’s not that infinite but surely draws attention of the most curious ones – those who understand Novation and consider Ultranova a special instrument. And those who’re not going to compare it. To anything.

Clavia might have got a too quick move on releasing Nord Lead A1 and deprived themselves of extra profit they could get with their recent Nord Lead 4. Well, maybe they wanted to grip the audience with two great products at once. Great but quite different so both of them have their own line of fans and in this review we’ll touch upon their architectural and sonic basics.

Analog generator waveform is far from being perfect – it’s unstable and suffers from inevitable voltage-brought deformation. Many of the analog filters are unsteady – you might hear some noises, phase shift or self-oscillation. But these very drawbacks make the signal so brisk, lively – well, actually, alive indeed. Digital developments helped to tame analog sound, cut it into samples, increase polyphony, give you a synthesizer equipped with the functions which were simply unobtainable in analog instruments. In 1990s instrument manufacturing companies got highly interested in analog modeling technologies development – they were eager to re-create those smallest details of electric musical instrument circuit behavior.

Armed with a huge number of buttons and knobs the two most powerful arrangers made by Japanese synth making giants Yamaha and Korg seem to contrast ironically the quality with… another quality: stunning sound of Yamaha with the excellent sound of Korg, all-embracing functionality with catchall possibilities. Anyway Ketron Audya reminds us of its firm presence on the market featuring great price/quality proportion and has everything in its favor featuring all the advantages an arranger or composer would need.