Musician Andrew Huang today shared several images of a new synthesizer from Moog Music.
There has not been an official announcement on the new Moog synth yet, but it appears that this is an ‘official leak’ or sneak preview, via Huang.
“Thanks, Moog Music, for giving me some early play time with it. Excited to share more when it launches,” notes Huang, adding, “I think people are gonna flip over this!”
The synth appears to be a new polyphonic synthesizer. It features a ‘Unison’ mode, which is used to create rich monophonic leads, by using multiple voices to play a single note.
The new Moog keyboard also features a Chord mode feature, as show in in the image below:
This will be the first new Moog synth hardware since their acquisition by InMusic, 8 months ago. Based on the complexity of the instrument, though, this was in the works well before InMusic took over.
There have been rumors over the last year about two possible new synths from Moog: the Moog Mirror and the Moog Labrynth. Both are names that the company has trademarked or is in the process of trademarking. Speculation about the Mirror has been that it would use software to ‘mirror’ earlier hardware products, and that the Labrynth would be a new synth in the Taurus family.
Check out the images and share your thoughts on the new Moog keyboard in the comments!
The hardware reminds me of my Voyager.
I’m hoping that this will be a more reasonably priced polyphonic synth than the Moog One.
If they did an 8-voice in the $3-4k range, they’d sell a lot more synths than they have with the One. Not very many people can afford an $8500 synth, and even fewer would be willing to play it on stage.
I hope this MOOG will be closer to 2K so that MOOG can challenge Behringer Novation and Dave Smiths synths. etc. MOOGs new owners know how to manufacture good products cheap in asia,
InMusic owns AKAI, and in the last few years they’ve released some of the best MPCs in decades. So I’m optimistic about how they’ll manage Moog.
I can’t see Moog trying to compete with Behringer, though. Behringer is doing some decent synths now and certainly great deals, but none of them feels half as nice as a Sequential synth, a Novation Summit or a Voyager.
I’m thinking that this will be a poly somewhere between the price of a Summit and a Prophet, and be the Moog take on a performance poly.
Did they really though? InMusic bought Akai in 2005, released the MPC live in 2017.
Is the MPC live really that good? Personally I never liked it. The GUI looks out of date since it came out and the workflow is irritating. It looks cheapish and no fun imo. Also why is everyone making the same boring hiphop beats for decades on these things? Is it because of the marketing or because it’s no inspirational device for other types of music? I’ll bet that if Jack wasn’t so low and welcomed Roger to the team we would’ve seen way more interesting stuff coming from Akai.
Just take a look at their ‘new’ MPC Key 37. Such a lazy design and low on specs.
Thankfully though I think this Moog will hardly have anything to do with InMusic and was already in the making way before the company got sold to InMusic. (besides money going in their direction) So if anyone is interested in the last Moog ever from the States this will be it. They’re not getting my money though.
Seriously?
Is there anybody but a retro purist that would rate an old-school MPC higher than what they’ve got in their current lineup?
CV/Gate connectivity alone is huge to me.
The new ones just run circles around anything that has come before. You might mock the MPC Key 37, but it costs $900 and can do anything that any MPC has ever done, but better. What’s a better workstation/groovebox/sequencer for keyboardists? I liked the Analog Keys, but it’s out of production.
I still use an MPC1000 and I’m no “retro purist,” I use whatever instrument that has the right features for the job. I also own a Live II. Solid machine, if not burdened by bloat, but it still can’t do what a 1000 can. It’s very difficult for me to understand why Akai won’t implement all of the JJOS features.
The MPC 1000 and 2500 was always my favorites, them and my older Roland S760 can stil achieve great productions. they make the new mpc look like toys anyways lol
I picked up an S760 for the first time a couple of months ago. Absolutely a “where have you been my whole life” machine.
I have a full blown MPC1000 that I have had for 20 years without it loosing a single midi note in all that time.
With a midi to cv device I use the thing to control over 45 different synths.
Very solid.
I’d take a 4000 any day if you want tight midi timing. If you want a new MPC to play a slightly crap piano VST then go for it.
I would guess that the “same old boring beats” actually comes down to the people using it/staleness of the genre and not the product itself. I own both a Live II and X and I`m not making hip hop or rap or whatever you want to call it.
Even 3/4k is high if you’re trying to market to the masses, maybe around 2k,also I have the MPC one plus standalone and it’s miles better than Live and more up to date features and sounds,you can actually play synthetic and keys that are built in or load your own expansions and connect a key controller, so don’t sleep on it,under $600
I would just hope they support it better than the moog one. I mean, I love and hate mine literally _every time_ I turn it on. And I would like to simply love it more and hate it less.
What do you hate about the Moog One?
I’ve heard some complaints about the fan being loud and vague comments about bugginess or missing features, but I’ve also seen lots of people raving about it and sharing performances on Youtube where it sounds fantastic.
Does it have significant problems that should make people (who can afford it) think twice about buying it?
Moog one is Ok for studio use but id never use it live way too buggy, since i unfortunately have had two of them break down in a live situation (main synth + backup synth) As for the fan that can be switched out for a better one, original fan can get so noisy it gets picked up on mics.
FanS. 4x of them (really poor design). Swapped mine 5 years ago for Noctuas, problem solved permanently.
Agreed with above, it’s terribly glitchy and buggy, and Moog dropped the ball on the software. The software architecture is a disaster (it’s a bad Unix machine). Everything is a bit sluggish, takes forever to boot. Basically it feels like a bad early software synth (doesn’t sound like one thankfully) instead of giving us the immediacy and dependability of a hardware synth (Sequential…). That really kills the appeal of long soundcrafting sessions, you know that you will hit a bug. And we are talking about fundamental things, like voice allocation bugs in unison where some keys retrigger others, crashes, or parameters corruption. And still not in tune despite all the various clumsy software fixes to get there.
Not unhappy but I was really hoping it would finally be the plubic release of the Spectravox (still hoping).
Forgot about the Spectravox!
There was also the BFAM, but I think the DFAM is like the BFAM on steroids.
BFAM was a mother 32 with an analog sequencer and no midi I believe
This looks gorgeous, from the pictures!
I’m guessing that this is going to be a ‘baby Moog One’, with voices based on the Moog One architecture, but without the One’s additional capabilities.
If Moog does a polysynth to compete with synths from companies like Dave Smith, Novation and Arturia, it will need to be 6-8 voices and in the $2-4k range.
It will be tricky for them to do this without cannibalizing Moog One sales.
Appears to not have a screen; this could automatically mean lower price point which is good.
Buttons and layout looks similar to a Juno/Deep Mind architecture.
It has a screen.
Ah, I see it now. Well…it’s certainly a small screen. 😉
There’s a screen above the sequencer.
Moog will keep to their recent theme of giving their synths stupid names. I hear this one will be called the “Uncle Dad”.
Their names are great.
Mmmm, 5 octaves…. 😛 That’s a welcome sight in a world of so many 3 and 4-octave synths. That makes it seem as ‘serious’ to me as anything else we can see so far. I hope its a good player’s synth that keeps a few of the remaining Moog people employed.
What’s with the little triangular buttons in the conrer of each synth section I wonder? Perhaps a neat UI idea but custom components like that drive the price way up.
Probably similar to what they did with the same buttons in the One; they lead to deeper settings that might not warrant a dedicated control.
That is Moog Mirror 8 – an eight voice poly version of Matriarch.
Homie just making stuff up over here. Not called that, not related to the ‘Mother’ Line at all.
Good try though
He’s right. Details have been leaked elsewhere. You insulted him for nothing
Thanks G 🙂 That wasn’t much of an insult, however.
A good choice, to be among these 3500,- synth range. It’s where people with money look mostly (I’d buy two in those range, instead of 8000,- for a singke synth). Not sure if I’d want this though. A Moog still sounds like a Moog, and my Subsequent fills that iconic ladder filter sound gap. If it had variable waveforms, among a few other things I need, it might have teased me away from the Kijimi MK2.
Ah well, guess it’s gonna make plenty of people happy!! 🙂
i’m guessing a 6 or 8 voice true poly with mostly the same features as the Matriarch, which would be a fantastic synth. because the Matriarch is around 2K, this might come in around 3 to 4K but anything more than that i think would be a major stretch.
No need to guess anymore, the basic info is already available: an 8-voice matriarch with presets and effects. Would have prefered a Patriarich over Mirror, though!
Come on Moog, leak the pic yourself.
If the name it that I’ll buy based on name alone.
I don’t want to buy a synthesizer that leaks.
Every instrument leaks at some time. Were it not for that we would not have any music or audio from them.
I’ll call it now: I bet that it’ll have a name that is a descendent of the Moog One. The most obvious choice is to call it the Two but I’d be in favour of a hipper name like what was mentioned in the article above. More importantly, I hope it’s at least a 6 voice instrument though 8 voices would be preferable. I hope it’s at least bitimbral for live use.
Two oscillators per voice with a square wave sub osc like the OB-6 would be great for that added fatness. Some of the sliders remind me of the Opus 3 which I like.
I can’t wait to see more about this.
Specs are ticking all the boxes for me!
8 is the magic number for analog polys and it beeing 2x multitimbral is the icing on the cake. Sequencer AND onboard effects like they should be on any new synthesizer.
5 octaves is one octave more then i prefer personally but more is better.
The inerface seems good even tho you cannot see much on the teaser screens.
Sound wise moog never dissapointed me so im pretty confident it will Sing!
Normally i do not discuss pricing but i am in the market for an 6 – 8 voice poly so here is how i will react to different price ranges:
~ 2K or below: no brainer
~ 2K to 3K: well worth it
~ 3K to 4K: expensive but still attractive
~ 4K or more: overpriced
Cannot wait for presentations and reviews!
I’m sorry but I don’t want to buy anything Andrew Huang is promoting. This age of influencer-driven social media hype is insufferable.
Labyrinth implies minotaur, connect that with mirrors and clearly the uniting principle is the mystical universe of Jorge Luis Borges. Expect tricky time manipulation, transcendent patterns, strange loops, and forking paths.
Love it, I will be getting one for my studio.