This was Superbooth’s tenth edition at FEZ Berlin, and it remains unlike anything else on the audio calendar. Founded by Peter Kirn and grown from the Musikmesse fringe scene into the industry’s most watched hardware showcase, the annual Berlin event has a character that trade shows in convention centers simply cannot replicate. The setting helps: a former East German youth center on the edge of a lake, with evening concerts running alongside the exhibitor halls and a persistent background atmosphere of bratwurst, cold beer, and synthesizer noise drifting through the trees. Close to 300 brands exhibited this year, from major manufacturers down to solo developers showing up with a prototype and a folding table. The range is the point.
The week started before the show floor opened.
Monday to Wednesday: MIDI 2.0
The first half of the week was given over to MIDI Association sessions at Ableton’s Berlin offices (Monday and Tuesday) and Native Instruments (Wednesday). The room was full of developers from across the music software industry, and the conversations made clear how much ground has and still needs to be covered before MIDI 2.0 lands consistently across platforms.
The most grounded talk came from Pete Brown of Microsoft, who covered the actual current state of MIDI 2.0 in Windows, including what’s shipping and what isn’t yet. Hearing it from someone building the implementation rather than documenting it makes a meaningful difference.
Wednesday evening, Orchestral Tools hosted a mixer in association with Sennheiser, useful for catching up with familiar faces in one room. One conversation stood out: a discussion with Justine Reverdell, CEO of Elk Audio, about the platform the company is building to give developers a path to target hardware products directly. The infrastructure angle is worth keeping an eye on for anyone thinking seriously about software-to-hardware workflows.
The Show Floor
We spent the weekend on the floor. Here’s some of what stood out for us.
Polyend Drums
Perhaps one of the biggest hardware announcement of the weekend. Polyend Drums is an eight-track instrument combining analog voice design, digital synthesis, and sample playback in a single-piece milled aluminum chassis. The hands-on layout makes clear from the first touch that this is not a device you navigate through menus; more than 50 synthesis algorithms span the tracks, covering drum-specific and synth-oriented sounds, and sub-mode variations push the total considerably further.
The analog side uses SSI chips with dual VCOs, a dedicated noise source, and a digital oscillator per voice for FM and layering. Worth noting for anyone who saw footage from the show floor: the pre-production unit shown at Superbooth did not yet have the analog circuitry populated. The final retail unit will.
The sequencer handles all three sound sources simultaneously: per-track probability, micro-timing, pattern chaining, generative tools, and parameter locking are all present. The decision to make effects sequenceable per track is a particularly smart call, treating them as part of the rhythm rather than something bolted on at the end of the signal chain.
Pre-orders are open at a refundable $500 deposit, with the retail price at €/$2,699 and shipping expected in three to four months. Available in Black or Silver.
UDO Domino
The DMNO had been doing the preview circuit for a while before Superbooth, but this was our first extended hands-on time with it, and it more than lives up to the anticipation. The short version: it sounds fantastic, it looks fantastic, and the architecture makes for a genuinely interesting instrument.
At its core, the DMNO is two complete independent synthesizers in one chassis. DMNO 1 and DMNO 2 each run a full 4-voice analog-hybrid engine, with dedicated front panel controls per synth. Anyone who’s played a two-voice Oberheim setup will recognize the conceptual territory: two distinct synthesis voices that can be layered, split, or configured in entirely different ways. UDO takes it further with eight selectable Play Modes that reconfigure how the two engines interact at the touch of a single control. Most are what you’d expect (layer, split, dual) but Series mode is the standout: DMNO 1’s audio output gets routed directly into DMNO 2’s oscillator mixer, effectively turning the first engine into a complex oscillator feeding the second. That one mode alone opens up a significant amount of sonic territory that a straightforward layer architecture wouldn’t reach.
The filter is UDO’s new Dynamic Multi-Core Stereo VCF, one per voice, with a reconfigurable voltage-controlled topology that can run in parallel, series, or stereo modes. Each configuration gives access to different filter types including low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, all-pass, and phase-shifter variants, all with a consistently warm and musical character. The oscillators are FPGA-based, running a super-wave architecture with a centroid oscillator and up to six detunable “sister” oscillators for width and thickness without needing multiple voices.
The screen deserves a mention too. It’s an electroluminescent glass vacuum fluorescent display (VFD), high-contrast and with an ultra-wide viewing angle. On a show floor with overhead lighting doing its worst, it was completely legible from an angle. It also has a warmth to it that you don’t get from a standard LCD. UDO describe it as the best screen they could find, and on the evidence it’s a reasonable claim.
Build quality is excellent throughout, with premium-feel controls and a solid chassis. Available in Black or White. Priced at $2,866 / £2,599 / €2,969.
Modal Element One
Modal Electronics is a name that went quiet for a while, so it’s good to see them back in the conversation and showing hardware that means something. The Element One is built on the same eight-voice engine as the Cobalt8, which is a solid foundation, but the design intention here is different. Where the Cobalt series rewards time spent with deep synthesis programming, the Element One is built explicitly for performance: immediate access, expressive control, and a layout that prioritizes playing over patching.
The 4-axis joystick carries over from the Cobalt8. Channel aftertouch is included. The 37-key keybed is compact but plays well, and the overall footprint is genuinely portable without sacrificing the build quality you’d want in a live rig. Sound-wise, the range on offer was wide, covering a lot of territory convincingly.
On the show floor, Modal also had an iPad companion app on display for patch management and deeper editing, which is a sensible call for an instrument positioned this way: keep the hardware controls focused on performance, push the detailed programming work to the screen you already carry.
Buchla Ziggy
Buchla’s Ziggy is the company’s most accessible instrument to date: a compact desktop synth built around complex oscillator architecture with no patch cables required. The complex oscillator is Buchla’s signature building block, pairing two oscillators where one can modulate the other through FM and waveshaping to produce the harmonically rich, organic timbres that define the West Coast synthesis approach. Wavefolding is central to the sound, and the timbral range runs from smooth and fundamental through to dense and overtone-heavy without ever tipping into the harsh end.
CV input is present for modular integration, it runs on MIDI and USB power, and it sits comfortably on a studio desk without displacing anything else.
The price is worth flagging directly: $999. Buchla instruments are not typically a casual purchase. The company’s modular systems routinely run into the tens of thousands, and even their smaller standalone units have historically sat well above four figures. Getting into genuine Buchla complex oscillator territory for under a thousand dollars, with no rack, no case, and no patch cables required, is a meaningful shift in accessibility for the brand. For anyone who has been interested in West Coast synthesis but unwilling to commit to a full modular system, this is the most straightforward on-ramp Buchla has ever offered.
GS Music Bree6
The Bree6 from GS Music is a four-octave version of the Argentine family-run manufacturer’s earlier synth, and we spent a good amount of time with it on the floor. It’s a fairly straightforward instrument at heart, but that’s part of what makes it so easy to just sit down and play. The controls are immediate, the learning curve is minimal, and the sound that comes back at you is considerably bigger and richer than the modest panel layout would suggest. The keybed feel was a genuine pleasure, and the build throughout was solid in a way that makes you forget you’re looking at hardware from a small independent workshop in Buenos Aires.
A family operation shipping instruments at this level of quality and finish is worth paying attention to.
Leviasynth
The Leviasynth is the follow-up to the Hydrasynth, and the sparkly paint finish is not a metaphor: it genuinely stood out in a hall where almost everything else was matte black. That got people to the booth. What kept them there was the synth itself.
The engine is FM-based, and speaking personally, FM synthesis is not where we live. Deep operator stacks and algorithm grids have historically been the kind of thing that sends us back to a subtractive filter with our tail between our legs. The Leviasynth made us reconsider that a little. The algorithm selection is broad, and the depth is there if you want it, but the architecture is laid out in a way that lets you start building sounds quickly without needing to fully understand what’s happening underneath. The path from “I want something brassy and evolving” to actually having it was shorter than we expected. It felt natural to program in a way that most FM instruments don’t, which is a harder thing to pull off than it sounds.
Waldorf Iridium MK2
Waldorf showed the Iridium MK2 with increased RAM and flash storage, a new “Seats” synthesis model that generates waves dynamically rather than drawing from static wavetables, a polyphonic arpeggiator, and four-layer operation. A collaboration with Aphex Twin introduced per-note parameter locks, which will get attention from anyone who found the original limiting there.
Korg Mystery Prototype
Korg had something wrapped in plastic and said nothing about it. Multiple LED screens, a larger keybed than their recent compact releases, clearly a synthesizer. It drew a crowd all weekend. Nothing to report until they decide to say something.
Nonlinear Labs C25
Nonlinear Labs previewed the C25, the follow-up to the C15 phase modulation synthesizer. Same engine, with an updated interface: fewer buttons, more knobs, a touch panel, and a more compact housing. The C15 built a dedicated following; the C25 looks likely to bring new people in.
Haken Audio Slim 21 Continuum
The Slim 21 is a more portable form factor of the Continuum Fingerboard. It was on the floor and playable, which is the only way to actually evaluate one of these instruments.
Effects and Modular
Chase Bliss Big Time
Chase Bliss Big Time is categorized as a delay pedal. In practice it’s better described as a performance device that processes audio through a delay engine. The chunky faders give it a hands-on quality most pedals don’t have, and pulling them in real time produces something closer to live manipulation than straight repeats. Looping, modulation, and textural effects come as naturally as traditional delay use. The sound leans warm, and it’s considerably more versatile than the pedal format suggests.
Chase Bliss are not a company that ships anything carelessly, and the Big Time reflects that. There’s clearly a lot of thinking behind both the hardware layout and the processing underneath it, and spending time with it on the floor made that clear quickly. It is priced at the premium end of the pedal market, which is worth knowing going in, but it’s also the kind of thing where you understand the number once you’ve played with it. For anyone working in ambient, experimental, or textural territory, it’s genuinely one of the more interesting things we encountered all weekend.
Erica Synths Resonant Filterbank
Erica Synths’ main launch was the Resonant Filterbank, a standalone unit built around ten bandpass filters. Used conventionally it functions as a filterbank; push the resonance and it becomes a sound source in its own right. Compact aluminum housing. €660 ex-VAT, shipping from May 18, 2026.
BoardBrain Exelon SL
The Xcelon SL from Boredbrain Music is an eight-channel analog performance mixer built specifically for electronic musicians, and it’s filling a gap that’s been genuinely underserved. There are performance mixers out there, but most either lean heavily toward DJ use or modular-only setups. The Xcelon SL is designed for any live rig: each channel takes stereo input via quarter-inch jacks, so whether you’re connecting a rack of synthesizers, a modular system, or a combination of both, it all plugs straight in. Boredbrain were running a modular breakout system alongside it on the show floor, which illustrated the integration neatly.
Per-channel features include an assignable performance filter with dual resonance controls, a compressor with sidechain (frequency, threshold, and decay adjustable), two stereo FX sends with sidechain-responsive returns, and a cue system with a high-powered headphone output. There’s also a balanced master output and a separate stereo recording output for capturing sets directly. The whole thing is fully analog signal path throughout, and the layout is compact enough to sit comfortably in a live rig without dominating the table.
It looks sharp, it’s clearly been thought through for actual stage use, and at $1,799 it’s not cheap, though that’s broadly where serious analog performance hardware tends to land. For anyone building a hardware live set who has been making do with a general-purpose mixer, this is a much more purposeful option.
u-he: Civilizations and Melt
Despite having just shipped Zebra 3, u-he had more on show. A firmware update for their CVilization Eurorack module was on display alongside a first proper look at Melt, an upcoming filter module for the format.
Melt is built around a ladder filter design with an input mixer and resonance compensation, but the detail that stands out is what u-he are calling the “Core Temperature” control. It governs saturation across the signal path, including asymmetric distortion, which means the filter’s character shifts depending on how hard you push it rather than applying a uniform saturation across the board. That kind of variable, asymmetric response is where ladder filters tend to get genuinely interesting, and to top it off, u-he have also added in resonance compensation!
It was playable at the booth and still listed as coming soon with no firm release date. Given u-he’s track record with their software filter designs, there’s reason to be patient.
Milton Music
One of the most technically specific things at the show. Milton Music is a spin-off from a French company with decades of background in vintage synthesizer repair, and their debut is a reconstruction of the Oberheim SEM. Not an approximation: a component-level re-engineering using the same circuit topology as the originals, with replacement knobs that are also compatible with vintage SEM units. The teardown display was the most detailed technical presentation we saw all weekend, and the sound confirmed what the engineering claimed. Ships with four modules. A strong debut from a team that clearly knows the hardware.
Software
The software presence at Superbooth is lighter than the hardware floor, but a few things were definitely worth the time.
Zebra 3 from u-he has been covered at length elsewhere and was on display here in context.
bleass was showing a spectral resonator plugin with independent left/right channel offset modulation. The stereo effects it produces are genuinely unusual. Adjustable FFT window size and live audio input for vocoder processing round it out. A niche tool with specific results.
We had closed-door previews of upcoming releases from both Arturia and UVI. Neither is announced yet. Both are interesting; more when embargoes lift.
Freqport was demoing their plugin version of their tube saturation unit, switchable between hardware and digital processing paths.
Bitwig had their latest on v6 the floor and drawing consistent attention. A genuine note of thanks to both Bitwig and u-he for hosting their annual Superbooth evening gathering, one of the better off-floor events of the week, even if the beer ran out earlier than anyone planned.
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Also Worth Mentioning
The Polyvera is an 80s-inflected digital synthesizer with a deliberately hard, aggressive character. Not warm, not flattering, and more interesting to play because of it. There’s a lot of hardware at a show like Superbooth that chases lushness and depth; the Polyvera goes in the opposite direction entirely, and it’s genuinely refreshing for it. We spent more time at this booth than we probably planned to, which is usually a reliable indicator of something. There’s a personality to the sound that’s difficult to pin down precisely but easy to respond to. Harsh in all the right ways, and oddly charming because of it rather than in spite of it.
The Koviaq Instruments WOFI LE is a slimmed-down version of the WOFI sampler, with the granular processing and unconventional features intact in a smaller, cheaper package. We spent some time with this one, and the honest first impression is that it takes a moment to orient yourself. The interface doesn’t follow the conventions you’d bring from other samplers, and the initial few minutes are spent less playing and more figuring out what it’s actually asking of you. Once that clicks, though, there’s something genuinely distinctive here. The granular processing has a character of its own, and the design decisions that seem odd at first start to feel purposeful. It’s the kind of instrument that rewards curiosity rather than pattern recognition, which puts it in fairly rare company at any price point.
The Cyma Forma RND earns a mention as the conceptual outlier of the show: a single-button synthesizer with no keys, knobs, or faders that generates a new sound on each press. Whether it qualifies as a synthesizer or a very specialized inspiration tool is a reasonable debate. It is very Superbooth.
The GRP A10 from Italian hand-builder GRP Synthesizer is at the opposite end of the spectrum: a semi-modular analog flagship with four oscillators, a BBD stereo delay, dual phaser, spring reverb, and a sequencer based on the R24. €10,000 ex-VAT. Not a casual purchase, but a serious instrument for anyone in that bracket.
Wrapping Up…
All in all, Berlin delivered. Interesting hardware, cold beer, bratwurst, and enough conversations to fill a month of follow-up emails. A particular thank you to the Superbooth team for putting it together again and for having us. Ten editions in, the show has lost none of what makes it worth the trip: the range, the atmosphere, the sense that music technology is still being made by people who are genuinely excited about it. For anyone with a serious interest in synthesizers and electronic music making, it remains one of the highlights of the calendar year, and we are already looking forward to being back.
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