Pictures have emerged of a brand new sampling/granular synthesizer from a French brand, Kiviak Instruments, that may or may not go by the name of WoFi, or Woofi?
It's not often that you get a product tease from an unknown company that reveals so much and so little at the same time. Needless to say, it's got us all excited.
The instrument in question appears to be a sampler keyboard with granular synthesis functionality and connectivity to the Cloud. Other than that there's little else we know, for now. We're not even sure of the name as 'WoFi' also appears to be a system developed by Kiviak Technologies (opens in new tab): the Cloud platform development arm of the music software and hardware design company of Kiviak Instruments.
Anyway, what we can tell you is that the keyboard can sample via an onboard microphone or via the line-in and allows you to "Color your sound with classic sampler emulations & player modes."
The controls include a two-octave keyboard (mini-keys) and 16-button sequencer, a Player section with sampling functionality and an ADSR/filter/amp envelope section, plus LFO.
There's a resonant low-pass filter with 24 dB and 12 dB options, while the Texturer section features controls for chaos, density, size and depth.
The central screen is part of the Manager action and features cart, wifi and cloud buttons.
Connectivity seems to cover most bases with stereo audio, MIDI, USB, CV, gate and clock I/O.
As well as sharing your patches with the mywo.fi Cloud platform it also looks like the machine could have interchangeable cartridges...
What is quite interesting is that it seems this synthesizer saw the light of day way back in the Summer of 2021 according to the Kiviak Instruments Instagram page and there's even a shot of founder, Romain Giannetti, sporting a t-shirt with the synth emblazoned across the front at Superbooth '21. We clearly missed that one.
Amazona.de (opens in new tab) reports that Kiviak Instruments intend to be at Superbooth '23 and that the synth should be available in the Autumn. Be sure to check back soon for more info.