In issue 308, we brought our synth history right up to date with several new sample packs celebrating C21. Here we choose the hard and soft options Having dealt with synths past and present in previous issues, in July we turned to the ghost of ‘Synthmass Future’ with these two sample packs

GEAR USED Sequential Prophet REV2 Korg Monologue Moog Mother 32 Roland TR-8 Soma Lyra-8 Moog Moogerfooger LPFOld Blood Noise Endeavors Expression Ramper

C21 Hard Synths

Oli from Groove Criminals detail his two synth packs which were neatly divided by hardware and software…

“We’ve concentrated on a few synths that we love: Korg Volcas, TE Pocket Operators, Behringer reissues, Arturia Microfreak, to name a few.

“Sadly the Prophet Rev 2 is only on loan to us but it’s a lovely modern polysynth with a proud history. We love the ease of modulating any of the controls: everything from spiky rhythmic percussion sequences to lush moving pads. We love the Mother 32 and Monologue monosynths for their powerful sound and quirky nature. The Mother 32 with its extensive semi-modular patchbay easily talks to our Eurorack/CV setup. For modern synths there’s our Soma Lyra-8: eight voices, paired in four groups of two and played using touch contacts rather than a keyboard, it’s a drone/ noise/strange texture machine and we love it. We’ve also included a few textures fed through a Moogerfooger LPF with various expression inputs being controlled by the OBNE Expression ramper.”