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Moog Music today responded to recent speculation about the future of the company, and stated that they plan to keep their headquarters in Asheville, NC.

Speculation has been running wild since the company was acquired by inMusic in June, and followed that up with layoffs last Friday, with some saying that they’d closed completely, some saying that they’d laid off all of their staff and some saying that this signaled the end of quality synths from Moog.

Moog plans to outsource the manufacturing of some instruments, because it’s “necessary for the future of Moog”. But they will also continue to design, engineer, service, and manufacture instruments in Asheville.

Here’s the text of their announcement:

“Last Friday, we parted ways with a number of our skilled production team members. For those of us still with Moog, these employees represent friends, siblings, spouses. This hasn’t been easy for anyone. Please know that these folks were provided continued compensation and benefits as they plan their next career steps.

It has always been our mission to manufacture Moog instruments in our local community.

Moog Music headquarters will remain in Asheville, NC. We will continue to design, engineer, service, and manufacture instruments here. We will also manufacture a selection of our instruments with trusted partners who are dedicated to maintaining the quality and sound of Moog products. Some of these partners have already been helping us for years to create instruments you know and love.

These changes are necessary for the future of Moog as we continue to face the ongoing challenges of manufacturing electronic instruments in America.

We have a talented group of employees in Asheville who are committed to bringing you the best-sounding electronic instruments in the world. We’re here because we love these instruments, and we will continue to stay focused on developing inspiring musical tools for our creative community.

We’re grateful for the passion and care you have shown us. We ask that you please continue to show consideration to our employees and keep an open mind as we put the finishing touches on some of our most innovative instruments yet.”

This aligns with what the company stated when they were acquired back in June:

“We are proud to keep engineering, designing, and building instruments here at the Moog factory in our hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, USA.”

The company has unique institutional expertise when it comes to manufacturing their high-end reissues. The modulars and Minimoog Model D reissues take an obsessive-compulsive approach to recreating 50+ year-old designs, recreating the original circuit boards faithfully, using old-school build techniques and new old school parts. While the company hasn’t officially announced it, we’re anticipating that these synths will continue to be manufactured in the US.

Moog’s modern synth designs, though, generally use standard production techniques and parts. We’re anticipating that production of the company’s mass-market designs, like the Mother-32 & DFAM, will be handled by overseas partners.

What do you think of Moog’s announcement – and the future prospects of the company? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Pianoverse piano virtual instrument
IK Multimedia has released a new piano instrument plugin, Pianoverse, a new virtual instrument that they say combines the world’s finest concert-grade pianos with inspiring, cinematic effects.

Pianoverse offers an initial series of 8 instruments. All the samples were recorded using proprietary software in a bid “to capture each piano’s true sonic DNA”. The specific piano models that were subjected to this apparently forensic process include the Yamaha CFIII Concert Grand, a Yamaha U5 Professional Upright, a Bösendorfer 280 Vienna Concert and a Steinway & Sons New York D-27 More are coming soon, featuring models based on a Bösendorfer 200, a Steinway & Sons Hamburg D-274, a Fazioli F278 and a Koch & Korselt Upright.4.

IK’s team spent years sourcing treasured pianos from the most prestigious manufacturers. Each instrument is hand-tuned and prepared by a master tuner and then sampled using multiple microphone setups and IK’s custom-built robotic system.

IK says that it went as far as to create a “sampling robot” to play the pianos being recorded. This is said to feature “an extremely precise and silent linear motor with an elastic actuator on top made to perform exactly like a human finger,” Blimey.

Beyond Accuracy and Sound – Pianoverse itself is based on a new engine that features redesigned round robin and voice management to aid authenticity. For each instrument, you can adjust the lid position, harp resonance, pedal noise and the noise of the piano mallets, and there’s three-pedal support.

All of these can be accessed within Pianoverse – though they’re priced individually, we should say – and more, such as a Bösendorfer 200, a Steinway & Sons Hamburg D-274, a Fazioli F278 and a Koch & Korselt Upright, are on the way.

And it doesn’t end there: each piano comes with two sets of mics, one of which has a ‘classical’ sound and the other a more modern, upfront tone. Both the piano and mic signals can be treated with EQ and compression, and there’s a final master channel with EQ, a VCA-style limiter and a stereo width control.

You can also choose to position your piano in one of a wide variety of virtual spaces – not only in a concert hall, but also a warehouse, a vault, on an iceberg, in a desert or even on the surface of Mars. Each space can be shaped in a variety of ways, and it sounds like there’s considerable scope for creating lush, ambient soundscapes.

Creative Effects – And that’s before you get to the 12 new effects, which can be inserted on three simultaneous slots: the first slot being a parallel send effect, while slots 2 and 3 are insert effects, there are four modulation sources, as well- two envelopes and two LFOs – that can add additional movement to these processors: animate and move the sound and create extreme effects when desired.

Pianoverse piano virtual instrument runs on PC and Mac in VST/AU/AAX formats and is available now as individual pianos, with an introductory price of $/€99.99* (instead of $/€129.99) per piano. All-access monthly and yearly plans are also available starting at $/€14.99/month or $/€149.99/year giving access to current and newly released pianos without limitation.

Find out more Pianoverse piano virtual instrument on the IK Multimedia website.

Host Ziv Eliraz, in his latest loopop video – takes an in-depth look at the new Roland GAIA 2 synthesizer.

The review covers the interface, build, sound engine and demos of all 250+ presets.

Check it out and share your thoughts on the GAIA 2 in the comments!

Topics covered:

0:00 Intro
1:25 Overview
5:45 Build
6:30 Connectivity
7:05 Oscillators
7:25 Wavetables
8:15 Phase mod
9:05 Shaper mod
10:05 VA oscs
11:10 Noise fun
12:15 Sync
12:35 Ring mod
13:00 X-Mod
13:30 Mixer
13:50 Filter
15:20 Drive
16:20 Filter env
17:00 Amp tone
17:20 Effects
21:50 Modulation
22:10 Osc env
22:40 LFOs
25:00 Motion pad
26:30 Arp
27:30 Sequencer
29:15 Automation
31:05 Perf func
31:45 Chords
32:50 Models
35:00 WC-1, cloud
35:40 Unison
36:05 MIDI control
36:40 Pros & cons
41:05 250 presets