yeah I was talking with my friends earlier today about what matrix brute has as competition or comparison... I brought up the MS20 as well and the pro2... very different but closer than just a voyager . voyager XL gets a bit closer ... the dual filter aspects of the Pro2 really are awesome (so wish that was in my P12) and the CV aspects of the pro2 are such a great selling point. so in these regards the matrix brute gets a bit closer. but the form factors are so different that lets be honest, someone in the market for one certainly might not be in the market for the other.
Sure. It basically comes down to what one is aiming for sonically (after all, a Voyager, a Pro 2, and a MatrixBrute all sound different), and whether the analog vs digital debate plays any role.
so here is a question I posed to my buddies earlier today that I will ask here. Sure there are things that are a bit boutique like the Vermona and the Dominion... but what is the future holding for really ambitious mono synths like the matrix brute? with the Midas Deepmind 12 on the horizon and Korgs large format poly on the way, with certainly more companies to follow (does system 8 not count because its digital? I think it might count considering the reactions at knobcon) .... affordably KNOBY poly is on the rise. will there be a world for such mono synths in the future?
also with the massive influx of poly competition... will this force DSI to really challenge the norm once again to come up with a design really groundbreaking? I see a whole new design style on the horizon.
Generally, I'd say - and I think the somewhat saturated market shows that - that the synthesizer has reached a point, where its history is basically written, just like an electric guitar or other now classic instruments. There is still a bit space for a couple of refined designs and more esoteric enhancements, innovations that mostly take place in the realm of software and Eurorack, but all in all I'd say that this is basically it. Everything else is rather a matter of recombinations or permutations to speak in mathematical terms. I do believe, though, that the market is still open for alternative input devices, such as the Linnstrument, the ROLI stuff, or the Continuum, until the keyboard eventually becomes one input source amongst many others and gradually loses its particular significance.
Whether a complex and self-contained (despite CV connectivity) unit like the MatrixBrute will be successful highly depends on how flexible a customer wants it, and how much he or she is willing to spend. Self-contained modular systems like the Pro 2 or the MatrixBrute definitely come in handy from the perspective of pricing alone, because the Eurorack equivalent of those kind of instruments would certainly be a tad more expensive, if not at least twice as much. If money plays no role, the only advantage left may be a handful of input devices that come with the unit, but that's about it I think, since a once assembled Eurorack system is not any less self-contained than everything else. It only has the advantage to be reconfigured at any time in the future. On the other hand it has to be said that it takes a lot of time to fully explore every little detail and option on a synth like the Pro 2 for example. One doesn't necessarily have to speak of lifetime puchases, but if someone gets bored with such synths after a year, something is seriously going wrong in the approach towards it.
I'm not sure whether affordable knoby poly synths are on the rise, as particular one unit, the Prophet '08, has been around for at least eight years by now, which is also why I don't get the hype around the Behringer synth. DSI simply did it before and the Prophet '08 is still a strong competitor next to the DeepMind - at least in terms of modulation options and sonic flexibility. The same counts for the System-8, where the real novelty is the advanced modelling of analog circuit behaviour and of course the option to load other synth models into the dedicated hardware.
Whether the introduction of more and more poly synths will affect DSI in some shape or form will have to be seen. But I don't see many problems for them, as they positioned themselves in the higher midrange price market by now with companies like Modal Electronics being one step higher on the pricing ladder. In general, it makes not much sense for DSI to even try to compete with companies like Korg or Behringer for reasons of production resources alone, so they better keep on focusing on an audience that is willing to pay a little more than the big budget driven manufacturers. I see no problem in doing so, but then I also don't see a huge possibility for developing anything truly groundbreaking anymore (see above), which could really harm a company like DSI. It's rather the opposite situation in my opinion, since an instrument like the Prophet 12 is certainly more adventurous in terms of sound design possibilities than a System-8, which almost exclusively benefits from a lingering nostalgic fever and the fact that the typical Roland sound of the 1970s and 1980s hasn't been around for a while - at least not in an affordable format.
All in all I'd say that the space that's left for innovation with regard to poly synths lies within offering something different, not necessarily by inventing a new sort of technology. One option could be to offer a more west coast inspired architecture within the poly synth format, like something that leaves the traditional subtractive architecture behind completely. For example, a poly synth could offer complex wave generators, wave folders, and spectral analyzers instead of VCOs and filters, and so on.
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