Synthtopia

Chase Bliss recently announced that it was ending development of the Chompi sampling keyboard, saying that they were pushing against the limits of what the hardware was capable of. Since then, Chase Bliss and Chompi Club have released the Chompi’s firmware under an Open Source license, and TemeculaDSP has turned it into a free plugin, Nibbi, that you can run in your DAW as a VST, Audio Unit, or AAX plugin.

In his latest video, synthesist and sound designer Ian Dixon shares his take on the classic E-Mu Emax II sampling synthesizer. The E-MU Systems Emax II is a 16-bit digital sampling workstation, released in 1989, as a more powerful successor to the original 12-bit E-mu Emax. While the Emax II offers improved specs across the board, it dropped the analog filters of the original. As a result, both versions have unique sonic capabilities and fans among synthesists.

In his latest loopop video, host Ziv Eliraz demos a Convolution Playground, a new browser-based application that lets you explore the sound design possibilities of impulse responses. Convolution Playground is free to experiment with, but you need to be a Patreon subscriber to use the export function. Here’s what Eliraz has to say about it: Turn audio files into effects.

Elektron may have banned discussion of firmware hacks and mods from its official forum, Elektronauts, but it the unofficial mods seem to be just be coming faster. Developer Soejrd shared this demo of Sophie for Digitakt, a metallic percussion synth machine with a few modes, all using the regular Digitakt signal path. Here’s what he has to say about it: Sophie for Digitakt Sophie is a metallic percussion synth machine for the original Digitakt (Mk1), OS 1.53.

Sampleson Backgrounds is a new soundscape creation tool that lets users combine words and ideas on a canvas to generate evolving cinematic atmospheres. Backgrounds uses semantic audio retrieval to match words and concepts with a curated library of more than 22,000 audio cells and 11,000 local embeddings. Users can drag keywords onto a canvas and combine concepts such as strings, rain, bass or thunder to create evolving soundscapes.

In this video, Mark Verbos introduces the Verbos Electronics Haas Zone Processor. The Haas Zone Processor enables chorus, flange, phase cancellation, doubling, ADT, waveshaping and other effects. At the core is a multi-tapped digital Delay Bank, largely influenced by vintage studio processors including the Marshall Time Modulator. Tap1 can be switched and swept from less than 1mS up to 20mS. Tap2 is chained from the output of Tap1, adding an additional 1mS-20mS. Tap3 ranges from 9-42mS.

Synthesist Ian Dixon shared this video intro to his free Roland D-50 Editor Librarian. The Librarian is a browser-based Web MIDI tool for backing up, browsing, importing and editing D-50 sounds, without sending your patch data to the cloud.

Kaona B.A.C.H. is a four-voice composition generator module that creates melodic, harmonic and rhythmic structures, in real time ,for Eurorack and MIDI systems. B.A.C.H. offers 12 composition systems, ranging from fugue and canon to Markov-based randomness, cellular automata, fractals and generative rhythmic structures. The module can control modular equipment through Gate, Pitch and Mod outputs and MIDI synthesizers through independent MIDI channels.

At Knobcon 2026, Mike from SISKworks was showing the Cassettone, described as a “poor man’s Mellotron”, and the Modified Tape Player Prototype, a motor-controlled cassette instrument. Video Summary: “Five buttons trigger playback, and each button has a knob that tunes motor speed for a different pitch. The newer prototype keeps that five-key approach and adds a Daisy microprocessor for delay, reverb, filter, harmonizer and reverse grain effects.

The explosion of unofficial firmware mods for classic hardware continues, with free mods for the Akai MPC 2000 & 2000XL. MPC2000 MODS is a modified operating-system project that adds features to the Akai MPC2000 Classic and MPC2000XL. Version 1.8 adds the ability to monitor an analog input after leaving the sampling screen and control sequence playback while recording. The mod pack also expands tuning, program assignment, sample chopping, filtering, file management and sequencing functions.