Empower Tribe, owner of Behringer and TC Electronic, tried to enforce a patent on polyphonic tuning. A US judge dismissed its case against Boss with prejudice, ruling the patent too abstract. Here’s why the fight matters well beyond a tuner pedal.
Native Instruments has turned A. G. Cook’s signature sound — the man behind Charli xcx, Caroline Polachek and Oklou — into a dedicated soft synth. Super*Saw isn’t another preset pack: it’s a sawtooth-stacking machine built around gesture, and it’s out now for $99.
Analogue Solutions unveils the Filtopia, a monophonic analogue synthesiser that flips the usual logic on its head: instead of a single filter, it lines up five of them in parallel. Handmade in Great Britain, limited to 200 units and priced at £1,799, the instrument targets a sonic territory that most monosynths barely touch – formant tones and multi-band sweeps. Five parallel filters: the real point of the Filtopia The name doesn’t lie. The heart of the Filtopia is not its sound source but its bank of five parallel-wired multimode analogue filters. Where a classic synth sends the signal through a…
Analog Sweden is finally shipping the SWEN2, a desktop analog monosynth that carries the DNA of its 1996 swENIGISER forward. A 12-mode multimode filter, a second oscillator, a generative sequencer and a Eurorack-friendly patchbay make this a dense little box for just under $700.
The M-VAVE FM-1 packs a six-operator FM engine straight out of the Yamaha DX-7 playbook into a battery-powered pocket box selling for roughly $60 to $100. Twelve voices, 32 algorithms, SysEx patch import and a built-in speaker make classic FM more accessible than it has ever been.
VRAC popularised the art of “drumifying” any source. Here are seven plugins, free and paid, that push the idea further — from Krotos Reformer Pro’s real-time resynthesis to kit builders XO, Atlas 2 and Battery 4, plus the pure synthesis of Waldorf Attack 3.
Novation crowns its Launchkey MK4 range with a large-format 88-key semi-weighted model. OLED screen, 16 pads with polyphonic aftertouch, onboard creative tools: this controller targets musicians who want to really play the keyboard without giving up DAW integration. Priced at $449 / €378. Announced on 14 July 2026, the Launchkey 88 MK4 is the latest — and largest — link in a range that Novation has refreshed this year. Where the 25, 37, 49 and 61-key models were aimed at compact studios and mobile live rigs, this 88-key version is for those who refuse to choose between the feel of…
Image-Line has released FL Studio 2026, its annual update, free for all licence holders. On the menu: a completely rebuilt FLEX, cloud project backup, an assistant that operates directly inside the session, and a Transmitter plug-in that splits transients and the body of the sound. A detailed look at a packed release. The pace is now well established: every summer, Image-Line ships a year-stamped version of FL Studio, offered to all its users under its lifetime free-updates policy. FL Studio 2026, available since 7 July and already updated to 2026.1.1, is no exception. Beneath the layer of visible new features,…
Nine years after first showing a prototype as he came of age, Jacob Brashears is finally moving the Shear Electronics Relic into production. This polyphonic analogue synthesiser is not yet another “inspired by” model: it is a stubbornly fully discrete reconstruction of the Oberheim OB-X, with eight bi-timbral voices, announced at around €14,000. An extreme object, which raises a real question about what fully discrete analogue is still worth in 2026. An OB-X rebuilt component by component The starting point of the Relic can be summed up in one sentence: reproduce the 1979 Oberheim OB-X circuit without ever resorting to…
There are free software tools that you install out of curiosity and uninstall the next day. VRAC, released under the banner of French developer BEATSURFING (published by DRUW Audio), does not fall into that category. Behind its deliberately provocative promise — “turn any sound into a drum kit” — lies a genuine percussive synthesis tool, designed for hands-on performance rather than preset browsing. And it doesn’t cost a penny. Feeding the machine with anything at all The concept can be summed up in a single sentence: you drop an audio source into VRAC — a pad extract, a loop, a…