2026 playlist(s)

[echorec]

new from EQD--

Towers Stereo Reverberant Filter (with 8 user presets)

https://www.earthquakerdevices.com/towers (features, audio tracks for guitar & bass)

...is this the successor to the Transmisser? I don't want to say tamer, but it seems maybe smoother with broader appeal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtoPs9Th-gQ

[Gone Fission]

New portable standalone-capable Akai MPC Sample was retailer leaked for $400: https://synthanatomy.com/2026/03/akai-m ... c3000.html

Interesting entry. Competing with a company’s own ghosts is tough, and there are competitors near in price with differences in features and one presumes workflow.

[dubkitty]

curious about the EQD...i seem to get along with their reverbs better than any other part of their line.

[dubkitty]

i'm generally pretty agnostic about reverbs/delays with lots of added effects because i generally prefer to keep things separate, but i have to say that this Harp Lady demo of the Pollinator delay has some really nice sounds. i particularly enjoyed the backwards delay + tremolo, which would be BoC-esque with the mix 100% wet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4INqteJFYIw

[dubkitty]

very curious what the MPC sounds like. sampling is a capability i don't have other than recording stuff to the DR-07 and then loading it onto the 1440 looper.

[Gone Fission]

I think the really paralyzing thing for a person not already steeped in samplers and related devices is that there are a bunch of workflows and use cases, and I'm just a dilettante. I get that the SP-404 mk.2 is much deeper and more powerful than the old SP-202 I've got around and can do more things standalone or connected to a DAW. But dilettante. That's a lot to learn. The Sample looks potentially shallow enough to grok while complete enough to be useful. But then there's the reticence--is this the right device/flow? Maybe not, but that's a pretty cheap thing to find out from.

And then I feel dumb for not just doing the dive in a DAW or soft sampler environment. But again, shallow dilettante in that lane. Maybe a $400 device that I can bring on my long RTO commute gets my feet wet in a more meaningful way. Dunno. Definitely will be watching the release, though.

[dubkitty]

i'm so not involved with synth technology that i can probably thrive using old cheap stuff in the same way that i do rack gear, because the capabilities of a typical 25-year-old device are still so much more than i can do now. i'm still getting mileage out of my Alesis HR-16 which was obsolete when i bought it in the early 90s, though the halving of tempos required to get a more realistic part requires waaaaaay too much scrolling in the tiny display window which is truly horrible, and the Behringer 606 clone. the manual for my Yamaha SPX900 is like fifty pages long without the 30 pages of MIDI setup shit, and as of yet i haven't even scratched the surface. if i was a Smart Guy i'd have gotten a sequencer ages ago so i could just punch stuff in, but i don't think i could get the kinds of granular, varying displacements needed to make a beat not feel artificial.