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Space Brain Circuits’ DarkSky-4 synth might be as good as its name suggests – 4-voice analog synth sounds a lot bigger than it looks.

The DarkSky-4 is a new stereophonic desktop analog poly Synthesizer with four voices, dual filter, and more.

Small US-based developer Space Brain Circuits hasn’t been around for long, having so far distributed its 4-voice MidiVolts MIDI-CV controller and Poly Sequencer.

For the last few months, he has been working on his first synthesizer, and DarkSky-4 is the company’s first foray into hardware synthesis and it looks like it might be a very decent debut.

The DarkSky-4 is a desktop semi-modular synth with up to four voices of polyphony. You can choose the number of voices (1, 2 or 4) via three play modes, and play chords with a Poly mode or fat mono sounds with Unison.

Each voice has a saw and square waveform – the latter with pulse width – and the levels of these are adjustable with two mix dials. The signal then gets duplicated to be sent to two low pass filters, A and B, which can then be combined back into a mono signal or kept split as a stereo out.

As a stereo synth, you can get some beautiful and wide effects via the synth’s extensive modulation options.

Watch this video for some examples:

The modulation comes by way of an LFO with a square or sine wave and adjustable rate dial. This LFO can be applied to the pulse width, frequency modulation and filter parameters via dedicated level dials. Envelope modulation can also be applied to the filter and FM parameters.

A patchbay allows DarkSky-4 to be connected to external modular gear or enables more in-depth modulation. It includes 6 CV ins for pitch and cutoff, oscillator 3+4 sync in and LFO and envelope outs.

A nice boutique analog poly synth. While DarkSky-4 has a fairly basic layout and signal chain, the stereo flexibility certainly gives it a distinctive and fat sound.

Space Brain Circuits DarkSky-4 is available now around $699/ €666/£491 (plus tax and postage) on the official Etsy website.

The new Dave Smith Instruments Prophet Rev2 is the enhance version of the original Prophet ’08 and, in many cases, double its power. The Prophet Rev2 Polyphonic Analog Synthesizer features 61-key 16-voice  with Per-voice Dual DCOs, Sub-oscillator, and 2/4-pole, lowpass, resonant Curtis Filters; Bi-timbral Operation, Waveshape Modulation, Onboard FX Engine, Polyphonic Step Sequencer, Aftertouch, OLED Display, and USB.

The Prophet Rev2’s 5-octave keyboard is semi-weighted and supports velocity and channel aftertouch. Perhaps, the biggest change the Prophet Rev2 has is that you now get double the polyphony – 16 voices instead of 8. In addition, because the Prophet Rev2 is bi-timbral, independent voices can be stacked or split into different zones on the keyboard. The synth engine offers two DCOs per voice; include a sub-octave generator on oscillator 1, with four waveshapes; sawtooth, triangle, sawtooth + triangle, and pulse, a 2/4 pole, low-pass, resonant Curtis filter per voice.

New to Prophet Rev2 is waveshape modulation; you can vary the pulse width of any of the four waveforms by manually dialing in a desired waveshape width or by using an LFO or other modulation source. The polyphonic step sequencer is also new; up to 64 steps and up to 6 notes per step but, again, different sequences can be created for each layer. There is also a gate sequencer and an arpeggiator.

The effects section comprises reverb, delays; standard and BBD, chorus, phase shifter, ring modulation and distortion. You can actually apply a different effect to each layer, and effect parameters can be modulated using the expanded modulation matrix. There is also USB support and an OLED display. Dave Smith Instruments’ Prophet Rev2 is another killer synth and is at an amazing value, and would be available soonest by April.
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