NAMM 2026: It’s been long-rumoured (mildly leaked) and giddily anticipated for years, and today every sound design-minded synthesist's prayers were finally answered as Ashun Sound Machines’ Leviasynth finally washed ashore to dwarf its (brilliant, we might add) digital wavetable polysynth predecessor, the Hydrasynth in terms of size, breadth and creative potential.
With an eye-catching new teal colour scheme, Leviasynth is ASM’s all-new flagship hybrid algorithmic synthesizer, offering 16 voices with a whopping 8 oscillators per voice. Driving its rich sounds are an algorithmically-powered merger of analog and digital filters.
The Leviasynth takes the Hydrasynth aesthetic and attitude and looks like it's expanding on everything that was beloved about that latter-day legend.
Available in both keyboard and rackable desktop versions, the Leviasynth’s 8 oscillators can be manually organised into customized groups. Reffered to, as ‘algorithms’, this approach can significantly affect the sonic results in terms of how the oscillators affect each other. It's classic FM synthesis in principle, then, but ultra-modern in attitude.
Couple that with the new idea of ‘algorithmic morph’ (an idea that has seemingly taken its cues from Audio Cookbook’s creative Hydramorph software) and a ‘nearly unlimited’ number of configurations for these individual oscillators are opened-up. 144 preset algorithms are ready to go, all of which offer one additional algorithm that can also be customized per-patch.
All of this programming can be done natively, using an easy-to-navigate user interface, viewable via a snazzy multi-colour touch screen.
The keyboard version comes with a 61-note Polytouch polyphonic aftertouch keybed, with a lengthy 4-octave ribbon controller prompting users to sink into full intuitive control of the Leviasynth’s reactive aural results.
The Leviasynth is also MPE-compatible, and indications are that it has embraced the format in a much more well-rounded way than its rather limited predecessor. The portable desktop version, in contrast, features 16 Polytouch pads.
Back to the tech, and over 300 waveforms can be assigned to each oscillator, each of which have 7 independent oscillator modes to maximise the diversity of the timbral output. There's also 5 LFOs and 5 envelopes, as well as the effects package previously found within Hydrasynth.
The Leviasynth's onboard 3-track sequencer can capture macro information as well as note data. Hydrasynth’s vibrant arpeggiator was a real joy, and Leviasynth ups the ante with a new 'Entropy' function, which allows for realtime note manipulation, among other bells and whistles.
You can switch between Single or Multi modes to allow all 16 voices to be active per-patch, or to split the voices into two parts of 8 voices each, respectively. The additional ASM Patch Manager software for Mac and PC is on hand for more intricate control.
One of the great aspects of Hydrasynth - which we asserted as one of the best synths money can buy - was how easy it was to let the sound lead the way, and conjure impressive results without much menu-diving. The Leviasynth's front control panel builds on Hydrasynth's design philosophy and presents an easily-linked and self-explanatory overview of the routing in play.
The Leviasynth keyboard version is available to order now from retailers for $2499/3299€ while the desktop version's RRP is $1799/2399€.
We'll bring you more details once we’ve got up close and personal with it at this year’s NAMM Show where it’s making its debut. We’re excited to come face-to-face with this prospective new powerhouse.
Meanwhile, ASM has presented some audio demos of the Leviasynth in action. Needless to say, it sounds tasty!
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