Synthesizers

JJ Jeczalik emerged as the pre-eminent Fairlight programmer of the 1980s primarily as one fifth of the art-pop collective, Art of Noise, but also in projects ranging from ABC and Dollar to Yes and Malcolm McLaren.

David Vorhaus of White Noise chats with Rob Puricelli about his early involvement with the Fairlight CMI and his Kaleidophon ribbon controller and Maniac sequencer inventions.

Elektron have treated three of their flagship instruments to a major redesign. We see what’s new...

Qu-Bit’s Wave is presumably named after the Wave (wav) format samples it plays — up to four of them at once. A 4GB MicroSD card is included, ready-populated with drum hits, vocals, synths and sound effects, easily enough to get you going...

The M3 workstation, already a powerful beast, has gained impressive new features and an Xpanded name tag. Is it now top of its class?

Keyboard workstations have always been something of a Korg speciality, ever since they created the concept almost 20 years ago with the M1. Does their latest offering, the M3, live up to its pedigree?

Cakewalk have taken the workhorse soft synth that was bundled with their Project 5 loop sequencer, put the sound library on steroids and made it available as a separate product on both Mac and PC.

We finish our in-depth examination of Korg's new mega-workstation, taking in the remaining synth engines, the sampler, the KARMA algorithms and the onboard sequencer, and draw our conclusions about it...

Storm, the French software studio from virtual-instrument creators Arturia, keeps on improving. We check out version 3.

Two and a half years after the launch of Yamaha's impressive Motif workstation synth, the range has been further enhanced and upgraded. How much better can it get? We find out...

The latest in Roland's line of MC-series workstations is their best (and most expensive) yet, incorporating synthesis, sequencing, real-time control, and sampling. But in an increasingly software-driven world, can a Groovebox still cut it?

Korg's Trinity and Triton have led the workstation market for so long that updating the concept can't have been easy — after all, how do you improve the best? So what's new in the Triton Studio, and will it keep Korg ahead?

Is it a synth, a sequencer or a sampler? The answer to all three questions is an emphatic 'yes', as Paul White finds out when he takes the E4XT Ultra into his studio.

Norm Leete waxes lyrical about the mega-synth that introduced sampling to the world back in 1980 and went on to appear on innumerable hit singles and albums.

Philip Meehan fondly remembers his first love — a keyboard with the voice of an angel, the mind of a genius, and the body of a heavyweight boxer in a big black coat.