One of the most common questions I receive is about finding a good starter analog synthesizer for either beginning synthesists or those who already use digital hardware synths or virtual synth plug-ins and want to add some real analog oscillators, an analog filter, and an analog amplifier to their sonic toolbox. The qualities that I look for are easy to carry, easy to learn, and easy to make musically usable as well as otherworldly sounds. The new Dreadbox Typhon analog synthesizer by Dreadbox is my current recommendation because it checks all of those boxes.
First, it’s easy to carry, being about the size of a thick diary. And it’s easy to power as it can use any powered USB source, such as a phone charger, your computer, or even a little portable phone charger battery. And since it has a 1/8″ stereo headphone jack and standard 1/4″ left and right output jacks, you really can tweak on it anywhere at any time. Typhon can be played with any MIDI controller keys or pads that have a standard 5-pin MIDI out jack.
And it’s easy to learn because of the very clever arrangement of front-panel knobs and sliders. The main knob in the middle (Wave) brilliantly sweeps among different combinations of waveshapes as well as several synthesis types. It’s also simultaneously sweeping through different volume blends and the signal routing of its two analog oscillators. But you don’t have to understand any of that at first — just slowly sweep the Wave knob until you get a sound that you like, and you’re on your way. Other common parameters, such as filter cutoff, filter resonance, EG level, and volume, each have their own dedicated knob that behaves just as you’d expect. And then there are three more knobs with very clever behaviors. The Tune 2 knob can offset the pitch of the second oscillator with either slight detunings or precise half-step intervals. This allows you to quickly dial in musical intervals while also letting you precisely detune either unison or 2-octave intervals. The Amp Time and Filter Time knobs cleverly allow you to shorten or lengthen all of their envelope times with a single twist. But if you want to precisely tweak each ADSR segment of your filter or amp envelope, then you can use the vertical sliders. These controls alone are enough to get you started on your synthesis explorations, but there’s so much more.
When you’re ready to seriously dive in, the encoder knob at the top right gives you access to three modulators, each of which can be an LFO (with choices of rate, waveshapes, fade time, and the destination and level), an additional envelope, a random generator, or a step sequencer to rhythmically step through a parameter’s values. That screen also lets you choose up to three high-quality (32-bit/96kHz) digital effects, developed by Sinevibes, including distortion, bit crush, chorus, ensemble, flanger, delay, stereo ping-pong, and stereo reverb. A built-in 32-note sequencer (per preset) lets you use both hands for tweaking and experimenting, and each sequence can be transposed in real time with a MIDI keyboard, which really helps expand the complexity of your song’s form.
None of this, of course, is important unless the synthesizer sounds really good. And that’s where Typhon truly shines. A simple twist of the Wave knob provides a plethora of studio-quality sonic palettes. And once you create your dream sounds, you’ll appreciate that you have up to 256 preset slots to store them. Typhon comes with 128 factory sounds and 128 slots for your own sounds, but you can use all 256 slots for your creations when you’re ready. The 1/8″ audio input jack allows you to bring an external sound source (such as a guitar, horn, vocal, or other synth) into the mix so that you can process it with the filter, amp, and effects.
Typhon will make a great gift for your favorite musicians and experimenters, or just to yourself. If this sounds interesting to you, please check out our Typhon demo videos and product page. Or just contact your Sweetwater Sales Engineer.
