At Knobcon 2025, held Sept 5-7 in the Chicagoland area, muSonics previewed their latest creation, the Four Voice polyphonic synthesizer in MU format.
The muSonics Four Voice is a fully-modular system, with internal normalization. It builds on the company’s previously introduced Vanilla Synth, a MU format synth, inspired by classic Tom Oberheim designs.
The Four Voice essentially combines four Vanilla Synth voices in a single case, with a few additional models to handle polyphonic control.
Like the Oberheim Four Voice that it takes inspiration from, the muSonics Four Voice 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 slight variations, creating a very rich and interesting sound.
It also means that you can configure the voices with distinct sounds and use the system as four multi-timbral voices and in other combinations.
Unlike the Oberheim Four Voice, the muSonics Four Voice is fully modular, and made up of individual MU modules. This means that you can treat it as four individual modular synthesizers, expanding the sonic possibilities immensely.
And you can treat the system as a large modular system, using modules from multiple voices to create complex patches to expand your sound design options.
The muSonic Four Voice is a dotcom-style Moog format design, meaning it offers the traditional look and usability of ‘man-size’ modules, but with modern power and CV/Gate standards and connectivity.
Large controls let you precisely dial in sounds. Clear layout makes it easy to understand the signal flow. And knobs are sized hierarchically, with the largest knobs reserved for parameters that you’re more likely to want to adjust in performance.
It’s clear that muSonic’s Suit and Tie Guy has put a tremendous amount of thought into the design. All this would be meaningless, though, if it didn’t sound great – which it does.
Here’s a video overview, via CatSynthTV, with muSonic’s Matt Baxley:
The system that muSonics introduced at Knobcon is a prototype and the format may change. We talked with Suit, and he said that he’s considering reducing the width of the case and making the system a little taller, so that all controls are in easy reach of one hand.
Details on pricing and availability are still to come at the muSonics site.
It’s a very estethical, musically inspired wall of electronics, but also overly complex to deal with..
There are more practical solutions to have 4 monophonic synths behave as one 4 voice polysynth. To have 4 voices that are slightly different (or completely identical) is probably cheaper to do and easier to maintain with 4 distinct and presettable monosynths, than this pleasing, yet outdated way of working.
So I guess this will be for the wealthy with lots of time, and no desire to be able to reproduce anything they made later on.
But very, very visually and as we may expect audibly attractive !
Good points but if you ever owned or played a 4-voice Oberheim, you would understand the desire to own one.
and if you played one you will notice it takes forever to tune 8 osc and envelopes without release time aren’t that great.
This type of attitude is a little ignorant.
What type of professional musician is NOT investing at least $5-10k in their instruments?
In the world of classical music, pro instruments basically start around 10K. Classical violin bows alone can cost $10k.
Keyboard players in the worlds of rock and jazz are likely to have instruments like a Rhodes or a B3, and they are right in that $5-10k range now.
Why do we have gatekeepers in the world of electronic music saying pro instruments are for the ‘wealthy with lots of time’? Many of us have built up modular systems that would be valued in this range or have a keyboard or two that we’ve saved up for over the years.
Have people like New Ignis never met a serious musician before? Do they think synthesists aren’t real musicians or something?
And you can also do a lot with a lot less $. Millions of people couldn’t tell the difference enough to care between a $69 instrument vs a $10,000,000 instrument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd40IQaLAzE&list=RDBd40IQaLAzE&start_radio=1
It sounds like you think making music is all about doing more with less, and trying to please other people.
The point was/is that you don’t have to be wealthy and have expensive instruments to make music.
Millions of people would listen to a song and couldn’t tell nor care if the synth used was $20,000 or a free /$0.00 soft-synth.
@New Ignis,
Absolutely and totally agree with your comment 🙂
Thanks for the shout-out, and great seeing you at Knobcon ???
meow :3
“Overly complex?” Its a modular synthesizer. Complex is the point. Even a small Modal or Korg is quite detailed internally. If you’re not prepared for the nature of a synthesizer, get a kazoo! Its a simple one-voice instrument. Stick it in your gob and hum. Beauty!
The ‘Overly complex’ comment seems pretty ignorant, when you consider that the Four Voice is internally normalized, there’s a knob for every parameter, and the front panel represents the signal flow.
This would be a great tool for learning synthesis on, since the signal flow is so obvious.
There were a lot of cool new synths at Knobcon this year. This was probably the narrowest in terms of sonic range – because the other new synths have wavetable oscillators and are digital. But it was also the best-sounding, within what it does, and nicest to use.
It really sounds and feels amazing.
When I played this, it felt like a more powerful alternative to a vintage Four Voice, and completely in the ‘dream synth’ territory of things like the Schmidt polyphonic synth and the Colossus modular synth. This is the only one of the bunch, though, that you could build over time.