Korg minilogue

Brilliant little synth. For the price, it is unbelievable. It has its own distinctive sound, which I would describe as bouncy and lively, with a slight grittiness. Perfect for house/techno - particularly the chord mode. I have been using it on everything since I got it. Instant classic.

Pros:
- It has a hands-on immediate appeal. Everything is laid out well. One knob or switch for all the main functions. Super easy to program and tweak, and tweaks can be stored in the sequencer or sent as MIDI ccs.
- Analogue VCOs. It really does make a difference. The sound has a lot of movement in it. The VCOs are especially useful for double tracking compared to digital stuff.
- Dual osc, dual envelope design - much more flexible than a Juno.
- The voice modes, esp. the chord mode.
- Impressive detail in the menu settings, e.g. the LFO can be sync'd to key-on, free but sync'd across all voices, or free for each voice. Nice.
- The sequencer is cool.
- The delay, with a high pass filter that you can switch into the delay feedback path, is a really nice addition. It's quite lo fi, which floats my boat.
- You get an audio input.
- Build quality seems decent.

Cons:
- No markings on the knob caps. Hard to read the settings.
- LFO can only have one destination at a time, and affects both OSCs. A real shame. e.g. with PWM, it modulates the shape of both OSCs at once, so you can't have the classic ensemble patch of a PWM square plus a simple saw.
- The filter isn't the best. It's an analogue filter, so it still sounds nice, especially with res down. But push the resonance up and the volume drops, and it becomes whistly and not very musical to my ears. It sounds quite Curtis-like. I wish it had more of a smooth Roland type filter sound.
- The VCOs are cheap and cheerful. I wouldn't say buzzy, but they have some grittiness to them, though you can filter it out to some extent. The square also has a lot less low end than I would expect - but the triangle is bassy so you can add that in to compensate. So the OSCs definitely have character, but the CEM3340 in my SH101 sounds much fuller. (But then it only has one, and the Minilogue has 8).
- The shape parameter gives mixed results, esp on the saw. It would be good if this gave you supersaw, but it doesn't; it goes a bit inharmonic.

When you think of the price though, these complaints fade away. It's a VCO 4 voice, 2 OSC per voice analogue poly for around £500. Many VCO *monosynths* cost more. I mean yes, the filter could be nicer but it's still an analogue filter. Yes the VCOs could be smoother but they are still VCOs. If you want a classier sounding VCO poly, you're looking at the Prophet 6, which costs 5 times as much.

Overall then, this is a winner.

By the way... The clicking envelopes issue that everyone was going on about hasn't caused me any trouble. You just turn the attack up slightly. And the small keyboard doesn't bother me either. The small size of the synth means it fits neatly where I can get to it.

It's a fairaly good synth, knobs are cool, enough to tweak them all day, keyboard is ok too. Preisweis maybe the best

Great polyphonic synth for a great price. The keys aren't full sized but they aren't too small anyway. It sounds really good and it has a couple good features that make it must if you want a poly synth without having to rob a bank.