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2026 Winter NAMM Show: Apogee has added to its line-up of Symphony desktop audio interfaces with the release of the Nova, which comes packed with DSP for onboard effects processing.

In fact, one of the Nova’s big USPs is that it offers simultaneous realtime DSP processing on all four of its mic inputs, meaning that multiple sources can be tracked with a consistent sound. This could be useful when you’re recording drums, small groups, multi-speaker podcasts or a selection of live instruments.

The majority of the effects are contained within Apogee’s enhanced ECS Channel Strip, which runs on the Nova’s onboard ARM processor. This contains a 4-band EQ, high-pass and low-pass filters, a compressor and saturation/drive. There are also realtime reverb and delay processors.

The advantage of having everything in the interface, is that you should have zero-latency monitoring even when the processing is activated, as there’s no need for your computer to get involved.

Similarly, there’s also realtime speaker correction on every analogue output so that you can correct any room imbalances. Again, this is handled by the hardware rather than using a plugin in your DAW.

Of course, the focus of any audio interface is its sound, and Apogee is promising pristine gain, low noise and consistent performance across all inputs. Guitarists can take advantage of the clean DI capture and a new re-amping section, and the combination of high-gain mic preamps and aforementioned processing is designed to make this a one-stop box for podcasters.

Other connectivity includes MIDI I/O and ADAT expansion should you need to add more preamps and converters.

The Symphony Nova is slated for release in the second quarter of 2026 and will cost $1,499. Find out more on the Apogee website.

At the 2026 NAMM Show, held Jan 22–24 in Anaheim, California, Korg has officially introduced the phase8, an electro-acoustic instrument, based on the concept of acoustic synthesis.

Harnessing a new form of “Acoustic Synthesis” technology conceived at Korg’s experimental Berlin outpost, phase8 is the brainchild of renowned engineer Tatsuya “Tats” Takahashi, best known for masterminding the Minilogue and the Volca series.

Tats unveiled the final evolution of phase8 today on stage at 2026 NAMM Show, telling the audience that the product was inspired by the desire to design an instrument that feels “organic” and “alive” in a “flooded market” of feature-laden synthesizers. Tats declared that phase8 is not only “beyond analogue vs digital”, but “beyond electronics” altogether.

Acoustic synthesis has been a fairly niche concept to date, implemented on instruments like the Vo-96 Acoustic Synth and the String Armonica. It’s based around the idea of using electronics to control the vibration of physical objects – like strings on a guitar – which makes it possible to create sounds that would not otherwise be possible on an acoustic instrument.

With the phase8, Korg is testing the waters for making acoustic synthesis mainstream.

The phase8 offers eight independent electromechanical voices driving steel resonators – so the sound is controlled electronically, but generated acoustically.

At the heart of phase8 are eight chromatically tuned steel resonators – the synth comes with 13 of these that can be swapped out and tuned by the user – that produce sound via electromagnetic stimulation.

The resonators can also be physically touched, plucked, strummed or tapped, and Korg suggests that you place objects on the instrument to experiment with new textures and tones. phase8’s Air slider allows you to boost or dampen the acoustic response of anything that’s brought into contact with the resonators.

The phase8 is equipped with dedicated envelopes and velocity control for each resonator, and features a polymetric step sequencer that supports both step programming and unquantized live recording. Sequences can be stored and recalled via eight memory slots, and a Shift knob can be used to add delayed triggers to each resonator relative to the chosen tempo.

All of phase8’s controls can be automated across a sequence using the record function, and three modulation effects are on offer: you get good old tremolo along with two audio-rate, pitch-dependent styles of modulation, one of which can be harmonically quantized.

Connectivity includes MIDI TRS-A In/Out, USB-C for USB-MIDI and firmware, Sync In/Out and a CV input for hooking up the synth with a wider set-up, along with a ¼-inch line audio output, and a 3.5mm headphone output.

Note*: Korg has not provided an official video demo at this time.

The Korg phase8 is priced at $1149 and available now.

If you’ve been looking for sound design demos for the new Ashun Sound Machines Leviasynth, debuting at the 2026 NAMM Show, look no further.

Sound designer Jexus (sounds-for-synths.com) shared this demo of the patches that he created for the Leviasynth. Jexus is know of exploring the nooks and crannies of sound design with his patch library, and the Jexus Leviasynth presets cover a huge range.

Here’s what Jexus has to say about the Leviasynth presets:

“In 2025 Ashun Sound Machines contacted me and asked if I would like to create a set of unique patches for their upcoming synth. No details were disclosed about the instrument but, as you can imagine, I was curious. I agreed and several weeks later a monster 8-oscillator synth arrived at my doorstep.

Today all of you can see it and hear it in action – the LEVIASYNTH is ready!

Here’s a quick video with some factory presets I created on the new Leviasynth. In this demo I kept the internal reverb low and did a fair amount of tweaking to give you a better idea of the timbre / behavior of the synth.”

Check out the sounds and share your thoughts on the ASM Leviasynth in the comments!