The management of the Japanese company has been sticking to the rule of “leaving analog in the past” for a long time. But it’s the market which rules and that’s why we did get JD-XA and JD-Xi from Roland, and now SE-02 analog monophonic synthesizer module created together with the eminent Studio Electronics company is getting its way through. Roland emphasized that this is only the beginning of a new series called Roland Boutique Designer. Read more about the Roland’s fight back to Mr. Dave Smith&Pioneer DJ Toraiz AS-1 and eventually Behringer D rackmount synth module.

A small Czech company Bastl Instruments demonstrated a few new ultra compact instruments – The Thyme effect processor, Kong drumpad signal processor, Dude 5-channel mixer and a super mini synthesizer softPop.

Who would have thought? The famous British instrument maker has fallen prey to mass madness – analog appears to be fiercely contagious. The company has announced Novation Peak – an 8-voice hybrid modular synthesizer based on new Oxford oscillators (3 per voice). Besides analog oscillators, this synth allows you to produce sound using up to 17 digital wavetables, offers a 16-slot modulation matrix and best possible interface concept “one button per function” – the front panel ensures 16 direct assignments. Click and read more about the next true market hit!

Having been sharing with us the story about hard work on Circuit (we’ve already told you about that) the British developers of Novation released the new firmware – 1.4 version – for their Circuit instrument. The update comprised some new possibilities including rethought user patches, samples, synth and drum patterns.

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.