I’ve preordered a Dirtywave M8 which seems like an awesome piece of gear and it’s got me really excited at the prospect of using interesting dedicated hardware machines that I can take to the park or mess with on the sofa.

The obvious ones I’ve come across so far are:

  • Korg Volca range
  • Roland mini synths and aira compact ranges
  • Teenage Engineering OP and POs

But these all seem a little uninteresting to me and just rehashed tiny versions of older gear and/or aimed at lo-fi producers.

Some less obvious ones that have my attention are:

  • Monome Norns
  • 1010music lemondrop, fireball & razzmatazz (not battery powered but easily powered by a USB powerbank)
  • Bastl microgranny and kastl
  • Korg NTS-1
  • Korg Monotrons
  • Audiothingies Micromonsta 2 (again not battery powered but can be via powerbank)

Are there any you know of that fit the bill?

EDIT: Will add more cool things as I find them

  • Zoom MS-70CDR - small, relatively cheap, battery powered stereo multi-FX pedal intended for guitars. Out of the box it only does time based effects like reverb, chorus and delay but there’s an easily searchable hack that lets you load any of the algorithms from any of the other digital FX pedals that Zoom makes which gives it distortion, compression, fuzz, amp modelling and loads more! (check this out for more info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG3KO1EbFd4)
  • segfault@waveform.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I love all-in-one portable grooveboxes and I think the M8 is my favorite of the ones I own.

    Ones I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

    • Synthstrom Deluge - Extremely flexible powerhouse and a pleasure to use now that it has been updated from a 7-segment display to an OLED display. Not tiny, but is about the length/width of a laptop and is battery powered.
    • Elektron Syntakt
    • dizzyOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I hear the Elektron products are very good once you get to grips with them and even have a bit of a cult following for their workflow. The Deluge also looks great with the new display (why the hell companies are still using 7-segment displays is mind boggling to me, even korg and roland on recent synths!)

      I think for both of these, there’s probably a little too much overlap with the M8 at the moment which hasn’t been shipped yet but it’s great food for thought! Thanks!