NAMM 2026: MusicRadar’s tech team pick their NAMM 2026 show highlights, including new gear from Korg, Ashun Sound Machines, Nord, Fender, Behringer, Akai and more.
After a strong return last year, NAMM 2026 was back at full force, with an impressive showing of exciting new synths, software, beat makers and studio gear.
MusicRadar’s Tech Editor Matt Mullen and Music Making Editor Andy Price have been on the ground in California getting hands-on with the latest new announcements and forthcoming releases. We caught up with them from the UK via high-tech video link up (ie a laptop) to quiz them on their highlights of this year’s show.
Check out our six highlights below, along with a selection of runners up that are also very much worth keeping an eye out for.
For more NAMM news, insights and oddities, head over to our rolling live blog.
NAMM 2026 music tech highlights
ASM Leviasynth
Expected price: From $1799
Due: February
This is it - arguably the big one at NAMM 2026. The synth that those who’ve been swimming through the rich waters of Hydrasynth by Ashun Sound Machines have been eagerly waiting for since 2020.
The question is, does Leviasynth deliver? Well, listen to our sound demo in the video above to hear for yourself.
Get a load of the density of those patches - that’s a multi-layered sound that’s built on a brand new synthesis engine, which brings 8 algorithmic oscillators per voice and the warmest analogue (and slick digital!) filters.
Modulation is vast, with multiple LFOs, envelopes and a dense modulation matrix that enables hyper-colourful sonic wrangling. All this sound design potential is playable via ASM’s well-regarded Polytouch (aka polyphonic aftertouch) keyboard while the desktop version features 16 Polytouch pads.
All these tech specs are all well and good, but the proof of the pudding is in the… listening.
We were treated to a sound demo of Leviasynth over at ASM’s booth at NAMM, and crikey – this thing has some heft.
16 voices of polyphony with bi-timbral split/layer modes mean you can easily re-design your sound from the ground up.It’s not long before you’re faced with massive-sounding cinematic breadth and density.
One of the key things to note with Leviasynth is that, although it builds on the recognisable control structure, feel and aesthetics of Hydrasynth, it’s really an instrument that’s aimed at those who are serious about sound design. Its FM-like architecture is quite different to Hydrasynth’s wavetable synthesis philosophy. This thing is big in every way.
The Leviasynth keyboard version is available to order now from retailers for $2499/3299€ while the desktop version’s RRP is $1799/2399€. We’re told they’ll be shipping in mid-Feb!
Korg Phase8
Expected price: $1149/£859
Due: April
In a synth world that can sometimes seem a little oversaturated with retro nostalgia, it’s always refreshing to see a major manufacturer exploring innovative new avenues for music creation.
Korg’s Phase8 is the brainchild of renowned engineer Tatsuya “Tats” Takahashi, best known for masterminding the hugely popular Minilogue and the Volca series, but where those instruments found mass appeal through accessibility and affordability, Phase8 takes a very different direction.
Described by Korg as an “acoustic synthesizer”, Phase8 is essentially a hybrid of a synth and an electric kalimba, bringing together acoustic sound generation with electronic control via synth-style sequencing and modulation.
At its heart are eight tuned steel resonators that are electromagnetically stimulated to produce sound – the resonators can also be physically touched, plucked or strummed, and Korg suggests that you place objects on the instrument to modify its timbre.
Though we admittedly found Phase8 a little baffling at first, after spending some quality time with this oddball of an instrument, we’re converted. Tinkering with its resonators while a sequence plays can produce a surprisingly diverse spectrum of timbres and textures – armed with a humble pebble and screw, we coaxed some truly unearthly sounds out of its tines that could easily soundtrack an arthouse horror movie. Phase8 is a stroke of genius, and easily the most innovative product we’ve tried at NAMM so far.
Stylophone Voice
Expected price: $50
Due: July
Now this is a great deal of fun. The new Stylophone Voice takes the classic pen-based concept and updates it with a Daft Punk-esque twist. Prompting you to record your voice (or anything you like, really) via the small ‘Sample’ button on the left-hand side of the machine (or via the aux input), the lightweight Stylophone Voice allows you to not only capture original audio, but to mash it up as much as you like!
12 onboard effects, spanning chorus, delay, reverb, filter and drive can completely mangle your sample, and experiment intuitively via the tactile stylus keyboard. A built-in sequencer and integrated drum sounds mean you can get a new idea going in minutes.
We entertained ourselves tinkering with this on the show floor, alongisde Stylophone’s other new release – the Stylophone On-The-Fly Performance Sequencer. More on that soon.
So speed and fun are the watchwords with Stylophone Voice. The best part is the price point – it’ll be launched at around the $50 mark sometime in July, we’re told. We’ll bring you more details and a full review soon.
Behringer JN-80
Expected price: $599
Due: Soon
The product catalogue of Behringer continues to grow at an exponential rate with another clone of another classic synthesizer delivered at a price point that nobody can argue with.
But this isn’t just any vintage synth, it’s the Roland Juno-60, a strong contender for one of the most beloved instruments in musical history – and while you’d do well to get a legit Juno for under $3,000, Behringer’s version comes in at $599.
Behringer tell us they went to great lengths to recreate the Juno-60’s signature sound, closely following the designs of the original oscillator and filter circuits and even crafting an analogue BBD chorus from the ground up to imitate the Juno’s rich and shimmering chorus effect. I
t’s not an exact replica, though, and despite staying true to the classic Juno tone, the JN-80 adds a host of modern conveniences that the original synth lacked while expanding the polyphony with two additional voices. JN-80 also features expanded modulation capabilities, channel aftertouch, full MIDI support and a selection of voice modes that let you creatively redistribute JN-80’s eight voices in poly, mono, unison and duo configurations.
The JN-80 is tons of fun, capturing all the things that made the Juno-60 a classic – the lush, warm analogue sound and the simple, intuitive interface – while bringing it into the 21st century with some well-placed tweaks and enhancements. As with any clone, purists will debate the authenticity of its sound, but it sounds pretty damn good to our ears – and at $599, we’re not complaining.
Fender Studio Pro
Price: $199
Due: Out now
The new rebranding of PreSonus’ Studio One into Fender Studio Pro was motivated in part by the drive to get away from a burnt-in perception of the Fender brand as purely guitar-oriented.
Instead, Fender has taken a significant chunk of the existing PreSonus’ music production catalogue and brought it in-line with a singular ‘eco-system’ based ‘Fender Studio’ branding ethos, the company explained to us at the NAMM Press Day.
Being Fender though, and it’s the guitar-angled additions to the Studio One-derived DAW that are the most substantial. In Fender Studio Pro, the new Fender Mustang Guitar and Rumble Bass plugins offer guitarists an extensive selection of 39 guitar amps and 18 bass amps alongside 125 modelled effects pedals.
The most impressive feature we’ve seen so far at the show is the new Chord Assistant, an intelligent songwriting tool that offers chord recommendations based on existing progressions, while a new AI-powered conversion tool transforms audio files into editable MIDI notes for creative rearrangement.
It was genuinely cool to see and hear it in action – at the press day, a guitarist inputted a wash of distorted guitar, which was instantly converted into a MIDI track. This output via a lush synth pad, which responded to every subtle chordal variation within the guitar audio. Colour us impressed.
UDO DMNO
Expected price: £2,499/$3,500
Due: 2026
Unveiled late last year, DMNO is the latest synth from UDO, joining the Super 6, Super 8 and Super Gemini in the company's line-up.
DMNO is a polyphonic, multitimbral and hybrid analogue/digital instrument made up of two fully independent four-voice synths, each with a dedicated set of front-panel controls.
Like UDO’s Super series, DMNO is a hybrid synth with FPGA-based digital oscillators and an analogue signal path and filter. Each of DMNO’s oscillators is made up of a central oscillator and six peripheral “sister” oscillators that can be dynamically dephased in the stereo field to create lush and wide timbres in the synth’s Super Mode.
Available waveshapes cover sine, saw, square, triangle and pulse, along with 3 user-assignable complex waveforms. Each synth engine is armed with two LFOs with 10 waveshapes (including 2 user-assignable shapes) that can be assigned to multiple destinations via the mod matrix. There’s cross-modulation and PWM onboard too.
DMNO is eight-voice polyphonic, dropping to four “super voices” when the synth’s Binaural Mode is engaged. Each of DMNO’s voices runs through a newly-designed Dynamic Multi-Core Stereo VCF with LP, HP, BP, all-pass and phase shifter modes, overdrive, keyboard tracking and multiple routing options. DMNO features a 32-bit DSP digital effects engine that covers delay, reverb, EQ, overdrive, distortion and chorus.
DMNO is equipped with a 44-key Fatar keybed with channel aftertouch and a two-axis bender, and can be programmed via its 64-step sequencer and multi-mode arpeggiator. The synth also boasts a high-contrast electroluminescent vacuum fluorescent display. DMNO is available in black and white editions, the latter giving off some unmistakable Oberheim Two Voice vibes.
DMNO features a selection of eight Play Modes that determine how the synth engines interact and how the 44-note keyboard interacts with them. These range from traditional options that allow patches to be layered or split across the keys to creative configurations such as Series mode, which goes semi-modular by routing one synth’s output into the other’s oscillator, and Chaos mode, which assigns notes randomly to either synth.
Also worth checking out…
Korg Kaoss Pad V
While most of the buzz at Korg’s booth was centred around its new Phase8 “acoustic synthesizer”, the long-established Japanese brand had plenty more on show for electronic music-makers, most notably a long-awaited update to its widely beloved Kaoss Pad effects unit and sampler.
Kaoss Pad V is the first full-size, traditional Kaoss Pad to be released since the KP3+ in 2013, and brings with it a host of new features and enhancements that make this effects-laden powerhouse an even more powerful tool for creative sound design and live performance.
The most distinctive feature of the Kaoss Pad has always been its XY touchscreen interface, which provides a rewardingly hands-on means of manipulating its ample catalogue of effects. Kaoss Pad V introduces dual-touch operation for the first time, allowing you to use two fingers to control two parameters at once to produce complex textures that leverage multiple effects.
These can range from the obvious – tweaking filter cutoff and resonance simultaneously, for example – to the wildly experimental, effectively doubling the real-time control that the Kaoss Pad can provide and considerably expanding its sonic scope.
The new Kaoss Pad V has been equipped with a newly-developed Voice FX engine for creative vocal processing, and while we were a little disappointed not to get the chance to test this out over at Korg’s booth, we had heaps of fun messing about with its delays and reverbs, and slicing and dicing a MicroKorg arpeggio with the V’s extensive selection of glitchy stutter effects. Well into its second decade, the Kaoss Pad remains as relevant as it ever was.
Akai MPC XL
Akai’s MPC XL is one of the biggest announcements at this year’s NAMM show in more ways than one - not only a significant release, it’s also absolutely massive, both larger and heavier than the MPC X that preceded it in Akai’s product line-up. That can be a benefit or a drawback, depending on what you’re looking for, but it’s clearly intended as more of a do-it-all studio centerpiece that’s going to remain in one place than a live performance instrument like the recently-released MPC Live III.
All that space means tons of room for controls, so you get way more hands-on control than you would on any MPC released before it, and that means less menu-diving – but even when you do reach for the menus, you’ll be navigating them via a gorgeous 10” touchscreen, which is especially useful for taking advantage of the XL’s sophisticated arrangement capabilities. They haven’t only supersized the interface, either, but they’ve maxed out the specs too, and you essentially get the power of a decent laptop in the XL with 16GB RAM, 256GB of storage and a Gen 2 8-core processor.
That’s all well and good, but what really impressed us about the XL was the expressive MPCe pads, which were introduced with the Live III. Each backlit, colour-coded pad is divided into four quadrants that can be assigned to different samples, so you’ve essentially got 64 pads here. There’s velocity sensitivity, aftertouch, and the pads can track your finger’s motion and use its position across an XY grid to control assigned parameters. (I was a bit disappointed to find out that this can’t currently be mapped to some instrument parameters, but we’re told this is coming in a future update.)
Akai has knocked it out of the park with this one: it’s safe to say that in terms of raw power, control and capability, the MPC XL is probably the most advanced piece of standalone music production hardware on the market.
Polyend Endless
AI has been a massive topic of conversation at this year’s NAMM Show, with its ubiquity in a range of software, DAWs and web-based generative platforms debated and mused upon.
But AI in… a guitar pedal is something we really didn’t expect to be reporting on.
Polyend Endless is a new open-source effects pedal that allows users to swap its internal sounds using either C++ coding or - for the less coding inclined - using a prompt-based interface, called Playground (currently in beta) wherin you can essentially describe what effect you want your Endless pedal to add, and the results can be easily exported to your hardware via a file.
In Polyend’s words, users can “describe an idea, download the file, and drop it into the pedal. Play it, suggest tweaks, ask for improvements, and get results without coding.”
Although this is unmistakbly AI at work here, Polyend is keen to avoid using that term.
To us, this feels like a solid example of AI as a ‘good thing’ as the application of the intelligently crafted, prompt-generated sound certainly lends itself to creativity and imagination.
The swappable front plates underline the concept in an eye-catching way. The pedals (and the wholly unique concept) certainly piqued interest at NAMM this year.
Although a community library of effects is free, Playground will use a system of tokens in order for users to purchase custom effects. When buying Endless, users will get $20 of Playground tokens.
Endless is available to preorder now, priced at $299/€299. The units are scheduled to start shipping February 22, 2026. Endless ships with a blank faceplate and $20 in Playground tokens.
Soundtoys SpaceBlender 2
Soundtoys is teasing a sequel to its SpaceBlender plugin at NAMM this year, an experimental reverb designed to create unreal and imaginary spaces: “shapes, textures and tones that are otherwise impossible in the real world”. It’s a powerful sound design tool that looks set to become even more capable in its second iteration.
SpaceBlender 2 is still a work in progress, but the Soundtoys team tell us that it will offer several additional reverb algorithms or “styles” (including the intriguingly named Bubble, Metronomic, and Synthi) and more in-depth control over texture and density, while opening up the ability to dial in independent reverbs across both left and right channels simultaneously for wide, spatial stereo effects.
Nord Electro 7
One of the most eye-catching new arrivals at NAMM this year, the Nord Electro 7 brings in a fully fledged synth section to proceedings, as well as a redesigned interface and dedicated per-section effects processing to this latest incarnation of a stage keyboard classic.
Nord says it’s the most versatile model in the Electro line to date (the last, Electro 6 was revealed way back in NAMM 2018 if you can believe it…) Although there’s numerous new additions to the Electro 7 - including a snazzy redesigned interface - it’s the new virtual analogue-powered synth section that is perhaps the most interesting development, filling out Electro 6’s sample-based synthesis with a virtual analogue synth section and some straightforward FM capabilities.
You can play it in either mono or legato, or if you really want to get performative you can use the glide mode. There’s dual ADR envelopes for amp, filter and FM amount, vibrato and a resonant low-pass filter.
Although our own time with it was a little compromised by the excessive noise of a band performing just next to the Nord rack (that’s NAMM in a nutshell) we can vouch for an impressive depth of sound and some lovely key action.
Nord Electro 7 comes in three editions: 61-key and 73-key versions with a semi-weighted waterfall keyboard and a 73-key edition with a triple-sensor Kawai Hammer Action Portable Keyboard, the Nord Electro 7 HP. Electro 7 61 is priced at £2299/$3299, Electro 7 73 is priced at £2499/$3599, and Electro 7 HP is priced at £2799/$3999
Neumann M 50 V
While everybody of course rushes to the synths, drum machines and playable toys at NAMM (us included, we admit) there’s also been some significant drops in the microphone department this year.
Chief among them was the Nuemann resurrection of the legendary M 50 - the tube microphone used on a wide range of film scores and orchestral recordings. The original has been a scarce rarity for years, coveted by those who own them. Now, the M 50 V carries the baton into a new era.
A noted mainstay in the orchestral world, the original M 50 - introduced to the world back in 1951 - was the microphone that was pivotal for birthing the renowned Decca Tree technique, something it was particularly adept at due to its highly unique polar pattern and transient response.
Although this new version is a faithful reproduction of the original acoustic concept which includes the small diapragm omni capsule mounted within a 40 mm sphere, the capsule type has been improved, now sporting a titanium K 33 Ti for extra durability. The noted realism and depth of the stereo image that the original M 50 brought to the table is preserved, and then some.
The M 50 V will be handmade to order by Neumann itself, with a limited production run to maintain the lofty standards that Neumann prides itself on. Orders can be placed now and shipping begins in Feb. The mic also comes with an NM V power supply and the classic yoke mount. You’ll need to start saving now if you want one - as the price is $12,500.
“This reissue is not just a microphone - it’s a piece of recording history reborn,” Medzid Veseli, Head of Neumann Service and Quality Control, stated at launch. “The production team and I take immense pride in crafting each unit by hand. Every component is meticulously inspected and assembled to deliver the legendary sound that professionals expect from Neumann.”
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.