ASM’s Hydrasynth made a splash when it was introduced in September of 2019. The firm was recent face available on the market, nevertheless it included luminaries of the digital instrument world who labored on Akai’s MPC line and Arturia’s ‘Brute line. So there was understandably some hype. And consensus is that it is lived up to it. 

Now the corporate is taking its distinctive wavemorphing engine, a keybed with polyphonic aftertouch, plus its full raft of sound design instruments and placing them within the transportable, battery-powered and extra reasonably priced Hydrasynth Explorer. 

The Explorer has 37 semi-weighted, mid-sized keys. So it’s kind of extra beneficiant than your common mainstream synthesizer. And identical to it is large siblings — the $1,299 Hydrasynth and $799 Hydrasynth Desktop — it has eight voices of polyphony and three oscillators. It additionally has two “mutators” which may mangle oscillators one and two in varied methods from fairly commonplace (FM and pulse width modulation) to extra on the market (PhazDiff and harmonic sweep).

There’s additionally two filters that may be mixed in collection or parallel and 5 — sure 5 — LFOs and envelope mills. And these envelope mills aren’t your commonplace ADSR (assault, decay, maintain, launch) envelopes both. These are six-stage DAHDSR envelopes (delay, assault, maintain, decay, maintain, launch). There’s additionally built-in delay and reverb results, a 32-slot modulation matrix and a reasonably superior arpeggiator. 

All of that sound design power is available in an instrument that may be powered by eight AA batteries and prices simply $600. Granted at 7.5 kilos it is undoubtedly pushing the boundaries of “portable”. You’re undoubtedly not going to lug the Hydrasynth Explorer in your commute, nevertheless it’s not an excessive amount of of a trouble to pull it to an impromptu jam session or set up in a park for a day. 

Alongside the Explorer, ASM additionally introduced the Hydrasynth Deluxe which has 73 full-sized keys and bumps the voice depend as much as 16. Of course, it additionally comes at a premium with a value of $1,799.