muSonics Lyle Four-Voice American Format Monster Synth Now Available
The muSonics Lyle is an ‘American format’ monster synth, that offers a modern, modular take on the classic Oberheim Four Voice synthesizer.
It’s a fully-modular system, following the modern dotcom MU standard, with internal normalization. It builds on the company’s previously introduced Vanilla Synth, a monophonic MU format synth, inspired by classic Oberheim designs. The Four Voice essentially combines four Vanilla Synth voices in a single case, with additional models to handle polyphonic control.
Lyle Mays
We got a preview of the synth at Knobcon 2025, where it was still being called ‘The Four Voice’. Now it’s officially named Lyle – after the late Lyle Mays.
Mays, right, used the Oberheim Four Voice in his work with Pat Metheny, on seminal albums like As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. If you don’t know the album, go check out the title track right now, and consider the fact that the epic ambient electronic jazz classic was recorded 45 years ago.
Mays wasn’t just an amazing musician, but it sounds like he was a amazing guy, too. When he found out that synth designer Tom Oberheim didn’t have a Four Voice, Mays gave Oberheim his, even though the rare synthesizer was, by then, worth a small fortune.
Like the Oberheim Four Voice that it takes inspiration from, the muSonics Lyle is built from four completely independent synth voices.
This means that each voice has its own dedicated set of controls, and that creating a polyphonic patch requires adjusting the setting on each of the voices. This is more work than tweaking a computer-controlled poly design, but the result is that each voice has subtle variations, creating a very rich and interesting sound.
Here’s what muSonics has to say about Lyle:
“Lyle is a four voice Vanilla Synthesizer with a polyphonic envelope generator system, four voice mixer, MIDI allocation, and utility modules. It is the first polyphonic modular synthesizer with master control of time and timbre since the Oberheim Four Voice, whose circuits it is based on.
Anyone can throw four voices in a box and call it a polyphonic synthesiser, so what makes Lyle so special?
The Polyphonic Envelopes network has its own set of 8 envelope generators, bringing the system total to 16. Its EGs are normaled to the filters, oscillators, and output amplifiers of the system. The Vanilla Envelopes are still available and can be patched to interrupt the Polyphonic Envelopes.
The Polyphonic Envelopes control module is the only one of 7 in the network which is on the front panel. It gives you attack, decay, and sustain control for the VCF and VCA EGs, amount controls to route the VCF EG to the VCF and VCO modulation inputs, and an offset control for the VCF EG to the VCF modulation input (think global filter cutoff.)
There have been a few stabs at aggregate polyphony since Tom Oberheim built Lyle Mays and Pete Namlook their favourite synthesizer, but no one has done this.
Another nice feature of this instrument is the Vanilla Stereo Mixer, which not only gives you level and pan for each voice but also an additioinal gain stage to overdrive if you wish, bringing the total number of manageable gain stages (and potential distortions) to four per voice.
The instrument can be operated without any patch cables on the front panel. MIDI control and audio output happens on the back of the instrument. Patch points are for timbre authoring beyond the default patch, similar to an ARP 2600.”
Lyle is comprised of the following MU-format modules:
4 Control Distributor
4 Vanilla Modulation
4 Vanilla Oscillators
4 Vanilla Filter
8 Vanilla Envelope
4 Vanilla Mixer
Vanilla Stereo Mixer
Polyphonic Envelopes (8 additional envelopes)
Japanese Modulation
Transistor Logic
Active Multiples
Active Attenuators
4 MIDI Interfaces plus polyphonic MIDI allocator
Here are a few examples of Lyle in action:
The muSonics Lyle synthesizer is available now for $16,000. There’s currently a lead time of about six months. Visit the muSonics site for details.
