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The retro styling looks great.

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Fashions come, fashions go. As computer processing speeds increase and more soft synths and effects plugins hit the shelves every day at lower prices, the natural course of events would suggest that before long we’ll be using all the tools we need from within a power-house Mac or PC.

But there's still a place for hardware. Whether it’s because a growing number of users are disappointed by the comparative lack of weight of sound in some soft synths, or perhaps because synths were designed to be played rather than mouse-operated, there are clearly those who feel tempted to start filling their studios with boxes again.

Helping hardware fans get their fix is Dave Smith, the erstwhile brain of Sequential Circuits who's been developing his Evolver range of instruments for some time. So, what does the Mono Evolver Keyboard bring to the table?

Sexy

The Evolver is a stereo monosynth festooned with front-panel knobs in classic retro synth tradition. It joins the Poly Evolver and the Evolver Rack in Dave Smith’s product list and can be ‘chained’ to be compatible with both.

The man himself speaks enthusiastically on his website about the inspiration behind Evolver and of his collaboration with Roger Linn (on the Adrenalinn) that rekindled his desire to start building hardware again. It seems that this, coupled with hundreds of requests for him to remake his Sequential Circuits classics for the 21st century, finally persuaded him to get back in the lab.

And you'll be glad he did. Any hardware synth designed to play one note at a time in this day and age has got to have a pretty decent sound engine up its sleeve, and the Evolver doesn’t disappoint. You’ll find it stacked with 512 onboard synth programs that ooze charm and seem to manage to be retro and futuristic at the same time. The leads cut through any mix, the basses range from warm to solid to speaker-busting, and the arpeggiated sounds bubble and sparkle and wibble and wobble. If you’re a synth purist, this is one for your notebook. So how is it all put together?

Oscillators

At a glance, it’s clear that the Evolver keyboard is made from traditional subtractive synthesis elements. A quick scan of the front panel reveals dedicated oscillator, filter and amplifier sections, the latter two of which house their own envelope controls.

Alongside all of this, the LFO section seems immediately generous, with four separate modulators lying in wait here. However, this is merely an overview. While the Evolver Keyboard is a true monosynth, it features four oscillators per voice: two analogue, two digital. The analogue waveforms draw from a pool of sawtooth, triangle and pulse (PWM) waveforms, with a fourth providing a mix of sawtooth and triangle. Oscillators three and four are digital and act as waveshapers.