Ho, ho, ho, NAMM 2026

Posted on December 19, 2025 by pj

Time for a pre-holiday ramble. NAMM 2026 — also known as “Christmas in January” — is now one month away, January 20-24, 2026. Certainly, November and December product releases will be featured at NAMM 2026. So, dropping into stream of consciousness mode…

Behringer is great at stocking stuffers. The latest stuffer is the two DCO Behringer UB-1 Micro with replicas of the 3396 and 3397 chips once found in the Oberheim Matrix 6/1000. USA pre-order for about $71 USD. Shucks, might as well pony up another $40 and buy the three VCO Behringer UB-Xa Mini Analog Synthesizer at $109. After upgrade, the Mini is 5 voice and it has a 5-pin DIN MIDI input instead of a 3.5mm MIDI jack.

I also have a fondness for Sequential Circuits. The Behringer Pro VS Mini Hybrid Vector Synthesizer is a 4-voice hybrid vector synth, joystick built in for $119. All of these small format modules are much smaller and cheaper than the real deal and don’t take up as much space in a studio. Gosh, they aren’t more expensive than a good plug-in, too.

Sonicware continue to roll out new toys. The ELZ_1 play (now V2) is a small wavetable synth featuring the original Waldorf wavetables. The LIVEN series groove boxes cover a wide range of contemporary music styles. As to my own taste, I’m liking the LIVEN Ambient 0, LIVEN Evoke and LIVEN Lofi-12. Sonicware products are available in the USA through Amazon.

If you crave actual Waldorf tables and sound, check out the nicely-styled Waldorf Protein. The Protein has eight voice polyphony and is 4-part multitimbral. Even though it’s a new model, it just got its first update adding a 12dB filter option, more memory slots and 20 free patches by Kateryna Zavoloka. The USA price is $399 USD — quite reasonable. Eight voice poly is enough to be dangerous and I wish other developers would take note. Three or four voice polyphony ain’t enough for two-fisted pads.

Which brings me to the subject of tariffs. Yes, USA people, you are paying the tariffs. You are also waiting longer for product to arrive on these shores. Check Behringer pricing and you will see lower prices in Europe. Sonicware LIVEN used to be $199; they are now $259. Sonicware moved sales to Amazon because they got tired of chasing shifting tariff rules, especially cancellation of the de minimus exception.

In software-land, Steinberg are shipping new iOS plug-ins and apps. Cubasis gets a boost. iOS versions of the Verve and Etude character pianos join Iconica Sketch on iPad/iPhone. Verve is the Steinberg felt piano which lets you layer in atmospheric elements. Etude is a C3X which — to my ears — sounds more “played in” than the usual pristine Yamaha CFX samples.

Verve, Etude and Iconica Sketch can run standalone as well as AUv3 plug-ins. The new Verve and Etude are described as “designed for iPhone/iPad”. The introductory price is $15.99 (each). What’s the catch? The Verve download size is 19.8MBytes and the Etude download size is 18.8MByte. These are the sizes for the core apps — the full download will be much larger. I’m running Etude on a Mac Mini under HALion and that was an 18 Gigabyte download. (The Iconica Sketch core app is 20.4MB and the full download is 1.6 GBytes.)

Be sure to pick up Steinberg’s free HALion Sonic 7, Guitar Harmonics Essential, LoFi Piano, Novel Piano, Taped Vibes, etc. You can make a lot of music with Steinberg free stuff!

Audio Modeling always have new, innovative products (and holiday sales). SWAM instruments can get price-y, even on iOS. Thus, Audio Modeling have created the Discovery Series (“Explore. Invent. Discover.”) SWAM VariFlute is the first virtual instrument in the Discovery Series. VariFlute is an introduction to physical modeling letting you horse around with pipe length, diameter and material. If you’re missing Yamaha VL, VariFlute is for you. The introductory price is $9.99 and it’s only for iOS.

Too big for a stocking, but now more portable, there’s Arturia’s AstroLab 37. AstroLab is, essentially, AnalogLab in a box. The 37-key model is super light and alleviates my main concern about the 61-key model, that is, its weight. The trade-off, of course, is accepting mini-keys. The 37 is only $700 USD.

Speaking of mini-keys, I still find the Korg Microkey Air to have the most playable mini-keys. I’ve paired (literally!) the Microkey Air 49 with the 1010Music Tangerine via CME WIDI. CME has won me over for Bluetooth MIDI.

As to NAMM 2026 rumors and thoughts, I expect Korg to show up and show out. After dropping KRONOS 3 and miniKORG 700Sm, they haven’t brought much to the stage. Products like Kross need an update. Plus, Triton-based instruments like EK-50 and i3 need to move into the modern age. Can anyone tell me why i3 is more expensive than EK-50?

Yamaha USA Shop has a NAMM 2026 new gear page. The “Synthesizers and Keyboards” section has three new product slots. The first slot is MODX M. The other two slots say “Check back on on January 22, 2026” or some such. Yamaha punters will finally see the PSR-E483. The E483 will have a fraternal twin, too.

Pictures of an Akai MPC XL have leaked. Things looks massive and the rumored price is massive, too: $2,899 USD.

Yamaha STAGEPAS 100BTR mkII

Yamaha have updated the STAGEPAS 100 BTR. The mkII adds two USB Type-C ports: one port for your table/phone (USB 2.0 compatible) and a USB “power delivery” port. The mkII supports USB audio I/O and Bluetooth audio gets a bump to A2DP/HEP. The power delivery port replaces the 24V charging jack in the mkI models. Battery life, size/weight, and audio specs remain the same. MAP for the mkII is $400 USD.

I’m a committed STAGEPAS 100 (mkI) user. I have one at home (no battery) and take a battery-powered 100BTR to my church gig. The sound is clean and is loud enough for practice and personal monitor. The 24V power jack always seemed a little weird because it requires an external laptop-style brick. The mkII changes should make life easier for buskers.

Rather stingy, the instruction manual claims “This product does not come with a USB power adaptor or USB Type-C cable.” C’mon, man, these little STAGEPAS aren’t cheap. STAGEPAS 100 mkI models are on sale right now.

NAMM 2023: Pickin’ up the pieces

Posted on April 15, 2023 by pj

NAMM 2023 is a wrap with all of the major products rolled out. Here are a few items that might have escaped your attention and are worth checking out on-line.

Hammond 122H Heritage Leslie

You just can’t buy a new Hammond XK-4 and not connect its 11-pin speaker port to a new Hammond 122H Heritage Leslie. This new model comes out in August: solid-core wood cabinet, 40 Watts, new servo motors, independently controllable upper horn and lower rotor, switchable from a 122 to a 147. Projected price is $7,000 USD.

Artinoise re.corder

The Artinoise re.corder is not new, but it was at NAMM 2023. The re.corder is a wireless wind controller based on the classic soprano recorder. I took a look at the re.corder a few years ago and decided that it wasn’t quite mature enough. It’s time.

The re.corder comes in four colors (black, blue, red and white) and is 120g light. Sweetwater handles re.corder sales in the USA and they posted a NAMM 2023 video of the re.corder driving Audio Modeling SWAM Cello.

It’s only $199 USD. Cheap enough to try wind today!

Audio Modeling SWAM and Camelot

Speaking of SWAM, Audio Modeling announced upgrades to SWAM (now v.3.7.0) and Camelot (v.2.2.4). These are the full fat personal computer versions. The Camelot upgrade includes a Yamaha CK Smart Map. That was fast work.

I hope that many of the enhancements will eventually appear in the IOS versions of SWAM and Camelot. I would love to see SWAM ensembles, too.

Audio Modeling, BTW, have a partnership with our friends at ILIO.

Bastl Bestie

Bastl have kicked loose a new box: the Bastl Bestie. The Bestie looks like a Dude, but it’s nasty. Bestie is a 5-channel stereo mixer with stereo distortion and saturation. It can mix clean with distortion kicking in during boost (i.e., rotating past 12 o’clock). Leave Channel 3 unplugged and it feeds the output back to the input.

Like the Dude, Bestie operates on either USB power or four AA batteries. The Bestie is 180 Euro through the B Shop. I didn’t see the Dude in the B Shop, so Bestie may be the new Dude. North American retailers include Patchwerks in Seattle.

This beast could be fun as a key-top small mixer that adds grunge.

mki x es.EDU DIY System

No, I didn’t accidently lean on the QWERTY keyboard. That is the name of the series of educational DIY synth kits developed by Erica Synths and Moritz Klein.

C’mon, dudes. Try your new product names in the Google before branding. If customers can’t easily search on a name (like “re.corder”), they ain’t gonna find you.

Kits in the EDU DIY series include:

EDU DIY VCO $79
EDU DIY VCA $69
EDU DIY EG $69
EDU DIY Sequencer $79
EDU DIY VCF $84
EDU DIY Mixer
EDU DIY Noise/S&H
EDU DIY Output
EDU DIY Wavefolder $109

You’ll find them wherever fine modules are sold. 🙂

Whimsy

Yamaha took a lot of heat by using the word “breakthrough” in its NAMM 2023 (self-)promotion. To some, releasing a modestly priced keyboard like the CK is not “breakthrough” enough, though I see Yamaha selling scads of these.

I’ll close with a little bit of Yamaha whimsy. Thanks and a tip of the hat to the person who posted this link on Gearspace.

Audio Modeling: Camelot and SWAM Flute

Posted on November 29, 2022 by pj

I hope you took advantage of Audio Modeling’s Black Friday sale. I took the plunge and bought Camelot Pro and SWAM Flute for IOS. Why did I wait all these years? 🙂

Camelot Pro (IOS)

Obviously, I’ve only been working with Camelot Pro for a short time. However, I now get why many iPad musicians are into it. Camelot Pro is feature rich including an audio player, music score reader, etc. I’ll get into those features someday. My primary purpose now is a smart MIDI-routing host for software and hardware instruments.

My first experiment was a split and dual layer combi for the V3 Sound Yammex module. Camelot Pro comes with many pre-defined patch maps for popular instruments like the Yamaha MODX. Since the V3 Yammex is a niche product, Yammex ain’t lucky enough to have a pre-defined map. With a little menu digging, I found the Bank Select and Program Change parameters for each patch for the split and layer. With a little more menu digging, I found sliders for bread-and-butter patch parameters like cutoff and resonance, reverb send, and so forth.

My second experiment was a split and dual layer combi for SWAM Flute and Korg Module. Having the first experiment under my belt, it was much easier to set up the software instruments. Double-tapping a software instrument box gives access to patch selection.

I sometimes use a wired Arturia Keylab Essential and other times I play a Korg Microkey Air wireless. So, one needs to pay attention to the MIDI connection status icons in a layer in order to re-enable any missing connections. In the example above, please note the missing Microkey Air connection.

Not bad. My main quibble with Camelot Pro is Audio Modeling’s exaggerated claim of an intuitive interface that doesn’t need a manual. No, you do. At the very least, watch the Camelot introductory video and browse the on-line documentation.

No matter what your marketing people claim, don’t ever say your interface is so intuitive it doesn’t need documentation. This is the most idiotic remark a software engineer or vendor can make. I failed students for less…

In order to use Camelot Pro, you need to understand the structure and relationship of songs, scenes and layers — at the very least. You also need to know how to add instruments and change key ranges. Yep, the graphic controls are nicely done — once they are found and exposed.

Here’s another instance when the on-line documentation was helpful. I didn’t know that you could create your own user patch maps! If I continue to use Camelot with the V3 Sound Yammex XXL, I will surely create a map containing the twenty or so favorite Yammex patches. On the up-side, Camelot Pro has enough capability and parameter tweaking power to ditch my MIDI Designer user interface (UI) and just go Pro.

SWAM Flute (IOS)

If you want to get your Herbie Mann or Brian Jackson on, you need one of these. SWAM Flute comes up configured as a jazz flute and, wow, is this thing expressive.

Be sure to hit the PLAY icon and play the flute using SWAM’s on-screen controls. Swiping left/right and up/down are probably as close as us cheapskates will get to a Roli experience. 🙂 I like the articulation status display which indicates legato, detached, etc. It’s a good tool for learning on-screen gestures.

Then dive into the advanced parameters through the tabs. There are a number of fun toys hidden in these treasure boxes. Growl! Flutter! Falls! Oh, my gosh, this is sweet!

After all of that excitement, hooking up to the Arturia Keylab Essential felt like a let-down. The flute still sounds darned good — among the best one can find in a hardware synth. But, I misses all of the fun on-screen articulations. There is solace in the MOD wheel which adds spot-on vibrato. With the snow beginning to fly, it’s time to put those Arturia knobs and sliders to work…

The SWAM flute is a beautiful solo instrument. This is true of all current SWAM instruments. Ensembles are a DIY affair and, unfortunately, the individual solo instruments are pricey. Putting together a woodwind section will set you back a pretty penny. So, I will await SWAM ensembles because they are my primary need and I’m cheap.

On the other hand, if you need a few instruments for exposed solos, definitely give Audio Modeling SWAM a try. I don’t regret buying SWAM Flute (IOS) as it is fun to play and it opens the door for advanced, expressive control. WX-11?

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