NEWS
UniqueSquared

UniqueSquared
September 13, 2012

Arturia MiniBrute Now Shipping In Europe

The long awaited shipments of the Arturia MiniBrute have finally been shipped out to dealers in the United States, Japan, and Europe.  While supply for these units is limited, Arturia has made good on their promises and bumped up production in order to satisfy the worldwide need for these synthesizers.

The MiniBrute is a new analog synthesizer that hopes to step up to the plate with the big boys.  It features a smaller form factor that seems to remind us of the MicroKorg, although the dimensions make it less of a rectangle, and more of a square shape.  Faders and knobs on the front of the unit are in stark contrast to Korg’s philosophy, however.…

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paul

Paul
January 24, 2012

Casio XW-P1 and XW-G1 Synths – Announcement at NAMM 2012

So, in the weeks leading up to NAMM, there was a bit of eye rolling about Casio’s announcement that they would be re-entering the world of professional synthesizers. This is an unfortunate side effect of Casio’s exit from this market in the 80s. At some point Casio set their sites on the consumer market and have been firmly occupying from rooms and dorm room closets with their home keyboards for so many decades that a large enough percentage of folks have completely forgotten their influential CZ synths. The Casio CZ synths were based on a synthesis method known as Phase Distortion Synthesis. I am not going to get too deep into this, but Phase Distortion had some similarities to FM synthesis and Casio’s synths built during this period are classics that fetch good money from eager collectors on eBay.

That said, as one of those geeks who does remember, after …