WORLD OF MUSIC ; PORTABLE KEYBOARD - Latest Portable Music Keyboards, Synthesizers and Music News

Future Retro has announced that their updated Vectra synthesizer, with firmware 2.0, is now available via dealers and their online store.

The Vectra is a unique digital-analog hybrid synthesizer that features four oscillators, white and pink noise sources, four ring modulators, a four-channel mixer, five LFO’s, six morphing envelopes, six primary multimode analog filter types, a main analog VCA, and numerous internal modulation routings and VCA’s controlling modulation amounts.

The Vectra’s synthesis architecture is designed to allow the greatest flexibility in recreating multiple synthesis techniques of the past, while introducing several new innovations and methods. According to the company, it’s like having a powerful self-contained semi-modular synthesizer, with approximately 500 internal signal routings and around 256 storable sound parameters.

New in Vectra Firmware 2.0:

• Randomization over sequencer parameters.
• Reset to step 1 of sequencer.
• Midi cc control over sequencer parameters.
• Midi cc in and out of joysticks.
• Sequencer parameter improvement for more convenient usage of features during live performance including keyboard enhancements.
• The update also includes bug fixes and a new sound library.

The Future Retro Vectra is available now for $1,599.95.

RipX DAW for Apple Vision Pro is an immersive music production environment that enables you to step inside your sounds.

Not satisfied with creating ‘the world’s first AI DAW,’ Hit’n’Mix has set its sights on creating an immersive version of its RipX music production software for Apple Vision Pro.

There’s not a great deal of detail on this right now, but we do have a teaser video and the promise that you’ll be able to “walk around and interact with melody while it plays through you, just like it’s really there”.

This being a 3D environment, different instruments can be distinguished by distance, and all audio – whether that be live recorded, MIDI or stem separated – can be edited on a note by note basis. There are no waveforms – just visualised sound.

Regardless, this is a glimpse of what DAWs will look like in the future or just a novelty remains to be seen, but Hit’n’Mix is confident that RipX DAW for Apple Vision Pro will give users ‘a new way to create and enjoy sound that needs to be experienced to be believed.’

Since the launch of Apple Vision Pro earlier this month we’ve already seen a new Moog synth that’s exclusive to the platform and an AR version of Algoriddim’s djay. Users of other DAWs have been experimenting with using the headset as an immersive laptop display.

RipX DAW for Apple Vision Pro availability and details TBA soon.

Elyra is a new instrument, a crossover between a Synth and a Guitar or a Bass.

Various attempts have been made in the past to bring together the concepts of the synthesizer and the guitar in a new hybrid instrument. Now joining this lineage of innovation is a new product from BLL Instruments’ Elyra – a modern synth played like a guitar or a bass.

Elyra is a polyphonic and multitimbral synthesizer that can be hooked up to a strap and played like a guitar or a bass. The instrument’s interface is made up of two “strumming zones”, a fretboard made up of a 4×12 of touch-sensitive pads, two assignable sliders and an OLED screen alongside a touch wheel and a number of additional buttons.

Just like a guitar, the instrument is played by selecting a note via the fretboard and sounding the “strings” by striking one of the two strumming zones; one is designed for chordal strumming and the other for riffs and arpeggios. You’re able to slide from one note to another, execute pull-offs and hammer-ons, and tune the virtual strings to any configuration of notes that you like.

Though it’s designed to be used with a strap, the battery-powered instrument can also be laid flat and played on a desktop like a conventional synth; when Keys Mode is activated, notes can be sounded with a single press on the corresponding pad, without using the strumming zones.

Elyra is equipped with a synth engine designed by Kodamo, the makers of the Mask1 synthesizer; delivering both virtual analogue and FM synthesis, its polyphonic architecture offers 16 voices, and timbres can be layered to create multitimbral patches.

Two LFOs are onboard and you’ll have a choice of two resonant filters, a 2-pole -12dB/oct low-pass and 4-pole -24dB/Oct high-pass filter. Three effects slots on the master can be filled with a choice of distortion, overdrive, bitcrusher, chorus, delay and reverb. If you don’t fancy making use of Elyra’s unique interface, there’s a 256-step sequencer onboard for programming patterns stored via SD card.

Elyra is available now for $1099/€1199. Find out more on BLL Instruments website.