Ask any vintage synthesizer owner why they love their gear so much and you'll be sure to get a lot of different answers. However, usually what it boils down to is the imperfections and quirks in the sound that give it that unique sound.

Thanks to the internet we have begun taking it for granted that whatever information we need will always be just a few clicks away. There are millions of YouTube tutorials for everything from learning an instrument to working with a DAW.

Half the fun of synthesizers, vintage or otherwise, is simply owning one or two and playing around with them for personal enjoyment. A lot of owners never even get around to composing a full song, let alone an album, but that is satisfying enough for them.

If you have racks full of expensive dynamic compressors and found that they do not end up as part of your creative process, then you are not alone. Stefano Sorrentino found himself in the same position, which is why he founded SUONOBUONO, a new Swedish music instruments manufacturer.

In the first part of our article we took a look at some unusual and innovative MIDI controllers, such as the Buchla Thunder, AlphaSphere, MI-MU Gloves and Crystal Ball.

Thanks to software synthesizers, it has become easier and more convenient than ever before to create your own music. However, to make the most out of your chosen DAW and VST plugins, it is still better to make use of some type of MIDI controller.

The great thing about synthesizers is that they are not only capable of producing beautiful sounds, but many of them also feature very stylish designs. Naturally, this has inspired a lot of synth enthusiasts to show off what their synths sound like as well as how they look.

Novation has revealed the latest offer for members of its Sound Collective community: the availability of UJAM’s Beatmaker EDEN plugin for free, and a 30% discount off the Hiphop-Bundle (Beatmaker Hustle and Beatmaker Dope) from 6 June to 1 August.

In the first part of our article about hardware synths based on retro console hardware, we took a look at the numerous options that are available for fans of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It wasn't just eighties movies that featured synthesizers very prominently in their soundtracks, this trend was also common amongst television shows of that era.

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.

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.

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.

The Greek composer, Iannis Xenakis, is credited as being the inventor of the granular synthesis technique, although it was the Canadian composer, Barry Truax, who implemented real-time versions of this technique first.

Vintage synth enthusiasts who grew up during the eighties and nineties should be very familiar with the programmable sound generator chips that was used for computer, arcade and console games during those years. A number of brands, including General Instruments, Texas Instruments and Yamaha made these types of chips, which gave the games of that era a very distinctive sound.