KeyboardUniqueSquared Pro Audio Blog

PRO AUDIO

Paul
January 11, 2013

Arturia MiniBrute Overview

If you read much about the Arturia MiniBrute in synth forums, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the most absurdly elitist of synth snobs saying anything bad about it. While it is their first foray into proper analog hardware, Arturia have brought into the world a tough little synth with features not often aligned with the price point of the MiniBrute. They have been hard to get ahold of, but I finally picked up one during the brief second we had them in stock.

One of the nicer features that I don’t really touch on during this brief overview video is the aftertouch. While I mention it in passing, I don’t go on and on about just how rad aftertouch on an affordable analog synth is. So let me do it here: OMG YOU GUYS!!!! AFTERTOUCH!!!!

That said, it really is quite a nice option to have …

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MOBILE STUDIO

Taylor
January 8, 2013

Moog Factory Tour: Minimoog Voyager

Our exclusive Moog Factory Tour takes us to one of the most celebrated and widely used analog synthesizers, the Minimoog Voyager. Jim Debardi takes us on a guided tour of the Minimoog by providing a little history as well as guding us through how the Minimoog Voyager is constructed at the Moog Factory.

The original Minimoog Model D was designed by Bob Moog and manufactured throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s. It was the first time that musicians were able to have a compact and affordable means of producing analog synthesizer sounds that were beginning to dominate a lot of the popular music of the day. The Minimoog was highly regarded for its fantastic filter and oscillator sounds as well as its analog circuitry which defined the way synthesizers were constructed throughout the decades following the Minimoog’s release. In 2001 Moog Music announced plans to update and release a new version of the …

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Taylor
December 12, 2012

Akai MAX 49 Keyboard Controller Overview

inMusic, the parent company that owns Numark, Alesis, and Akai, has been pretty busy this year. All three of their leading companies have been releasing much of the gear featured at Winter NAMM 2012 and teased through YouTube videos and company press releases. Gear like the Numark 4TRAK, the Alesis QX line of MIDI keyboard controllers, and the very popular Akai Synthstation 49 and MPC Renaissance. In addition to releasing tons of new gear this year they also acquired formerly AVID owned M-Audio to round out their line of professional audio equipment. We will likely see more from inMusic this year at Winter NAMM 2013 in January and we will have plenty to report from the show room floor.

We first saw the Akai MAX 49 almost a year ago at Winter NAMM 2012 and our first impression was that the MAX 49 was a collection of improvements …

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Taylor
November 20, 2012

Akai Synthstation 49 Review

We first saw the Akai Synthstation 49 at Winter NAMM 2011 and surrounding this keyboard controller was all the buzz about the future of production and the integration of iOS devices. The public has been waiting patiently, filled with questions and anticipation for the keyboard controller that looked to take the most advantage of integrating an iPad with a keyboard controller. We were finally able to get our hands on one, play around with some different apps, and take it for a test drive when performing and using it for production. For those of you that have been holding out and waiting for the Synthstation 49, here are the things you have been waiting for:

Layout and Features

As the name implies, the Akai Synthstation 49 is a 49 key controller with selections for recording and playback, selecting instruments, and selecting between sequences, octaves, and songs. There are 9 MPC style pads for …

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Chris
October 30, 2012

Casio XW-P1 Overview

In this overview we cover the features of the Casio XW-P1. The XW-P1 is one of Casio’s latest professional synthesizers and comes loaded with all kinds of cool features. But let’s start with the basics. There are 61 semi-weighted keys on this unit. Two large transpose buttons give you easy access to five different octaves. The P1 has all of the standard PCM voices you expect from any synthesizer both sampled and synthesized. You’ve got your piano, brass, strings, and some great drum sounds. Four large assignable knobs control of some basic filters and envelopes on each of those voices by default.

But there’s a lot more going inside the brain. You’ve got your sine, triangle, sawtooth, ramp, pulse width, hard sync, etc. waveforms with many variations including waves like sub-octave sine. You can layer them as well, so if you layer a bunch of sine waves, you can do …