Propellerhead Announces Plan To Turn Rack Extension Virtual Instruments Into Hardware

Propellerhead Software today announced a partnership with MIND Music Labs, to help software developers turn their Rack Extension virtual instruments and effects into hardware.

At the 2018 NAMM Show, MIND Music Labs has introduced ELK – an ultra-low latency operating system for musical instruments that they describe as “the Android of musical instruments”. And, in late 2018, they announced plans to bring VSTs to the platform.

Now, they’re working with Propellerhead to create a way to turn Rack Extensions into hardware synthesizers and effects, based on widely available ARM & X86 processors.

Propellerhead has announced plans to make Rack Extension virtual instruments available as hardware instruments.

Propellerhead’s Rack Extension platform has over 180 developers and more than 530 instruments and effects now available. Now, developers can take advantage of the huge library of Rack Extensions already available, ranging from synthesizers and sampled instruments to creative effects and boutique studio processors.

“Propellerhead is thrilled to partner with Mind Music Labs to help manufacturers build groundbreaking hardware products in the most cost-effective and scalable way,” said Ernst Nathorst-Böös, CEO, Propellerhead. “We believe that together, we can bridge the gap between music creation software and hardware, and help manufacturers bring the next generation of incredible synths and effects to market.”

25 thoughts on “Propellerhead Announces Plan To Turn Rack Extension Virtual Instruments Into Hardware

    1. Imagine having Thor in your eurorack case. That would feel a bit like Inception I think, but I guess we’re already on that level with the ER-301 haha.

    1. Uh, most euro is software in hardware wrapper. This is just a specific software in a hardware wrapper. I’m all for both. Custom modules that plug n play different vsts/racks would be dope.

  1. Seeing an LED display in an application such as the typically propellor head mod matrix would certainly be eye popping next wave. One thing that made the op-1 so we’re catching was it’s unique display abilities. I imagine this synth rack would be pretty big though, by today’s standards, I think a rack synth would not be a modern take for this thing .I’m more partial to desktop synth. I could see it being as big as an electibe emx 1

  2. great idea but propellerhead’s recent history of abandoning support of their products (thor for ipad, for example), scamming users on updates and the lack of optimization on newer versions of reason have me skeptic.

  3. Well, their first foray into the hardware scene with the Balance interface was a resounding flop. Maybe they’ll do better here but personally, I wish they’d apply their considerable research and development might into making Reason as good as possible.

  4. what I want is a plan old VST host in ELK for raspberry pi – if you could just turn any vst into a HW synth on the cheap….. man that would rock.

    1. it is a version of it yes also leaving this comment earlier got me thinking fresh about this again and I realised that I could probably just add a frequency shifter to the feedback loop on my echophon to get pretty close 🙂

    1. Thor as hardware would probably come with a price that would make you UNhappy. Its a beautiful beast, but every added knob or slider piles on the expense. I’d love to see one at a less-than-ionospheric price; I’ll be impressed if they pull it off, ’cause its a good go-to synth.

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