I was looking to get into sound design for a while, but moving around knobs with a mousepad in a VST isn't exactly inspiring, so when the second lockdown came, I decided to invest into an actual synth. After some research, I went for the DeepMind 6 because of the amount of options that you get from the Mod Matrix.
Pros:
- The potential of this thing is amazing. You get sweet retro vibes right of the bat, reminiscent of the Juno-106, but you can get really deep into sound design with the Mod Matrix
- It looks and feels inspiring. The feeling of sitting down and using all the knobs and sliders to get sounds is incredible.
- The knobs and sliders are high quality and feel good to use
Cons:
- You run out of voices easily; when playing 7ths or 9ths chords in Pads while running in Unison-2, you have to get creative with your chord voicings because you can only play 3 notes at the same time.
- The keyboard is a bit small at times
- The controls aren't super intuitive. Without reading the manual, you're going to struggle quite a bit.
Overall I'm really happy with it so far, despite the drawbacks – especially with the amount of voices, it does force you to be creative sometimes. Also if you're looking to emulate retro sounds, this is going to create a more genuine feel.