There is no doubt that a large part of the appeal of chiptune music is nostalgia. If you are one of the people who grew up playing games during the early era of consoles and computers, then chances are that there are some tunes that will forever be memorable to you. A lot of retro hardware had their own distinct sounds, quirks and limitations, which made it even more impressive when talent musicians were able to work around these to create beautiful melodies.

In the first part of our article we took a look at synthesizer projects, such as the Magus Modular Synthesizer Toolkit, Eowave Quadrantid Swarm, Nonoloop, RAVEN and Shrolca Digital Wavecycle Synthesizer. They were all projects that launched on Kickstarter and managed to attain their funding goals. In this article we will cover a few more synth related projects that found an audience on Kickstarter.

Early last year we took a look at some of the synthesizers that were successfully backed on the crowd funding website, Kickstarter. These included gear like the hybrid synthesizer, HANSY101, the Parva Polyphonic Analog Synthesizer, and the Ants! Analog Semi-modular Synthesizer amongst others. Since it is exactly a year later, we decided to take another look at Kickstarter to see what has been happening with the synth related projects that have been posted. 

If you are a synthesizer enthusiast with a collection of instruments, then the chances are good that you have been told how your hobby is a waste of money. Whether it is spouses, family members or even friends, it is hard to explain to those outside of the hobby why you spend as much time and money on what many see as dusty relics from the past.

The latest firmware update for Bass Station II adds five powerful and innovative new features to Novation’s hugely popular monosynth, all of them developed in response to user feedback and requests, one of those users being particularly noteworthy…