Korg Minilogue XD

My first analog synth, and it's great!
First of all - the build is solid, metal plated, doesn't give too much to pressure and all. The keys feel good and even with my sausage fingers are comfortable to use. Sometimes, in some places, a little hard to fit in to hit the white key between the black keys when playing on the top of the keys. But doesn't bother me much. Response is good and stable.

The amount of sounds is amazing, with around 200 factory presets demonstrating a lot of things it can do out of the box. Each can be taken and extended upon.

Very much enjoying the depth and ease of access of the sequencer. The feature of the motion tracks in the sequencer (used to record changes on almost all of the available controls) opens up a whole universe of sounds. The filter allows for a wide range of frequency control, supposedly sharing its design with the Prologue. Primarily, the synth excels at pad sounds, however, is great in other territories aswell.
The onboard post effects (reverbs, delays, modulation) are a great package to make it a complete standalone instrument. Honestly, when playing in my headphones, I probably orgasm every now and again from the sounds it can do :D

A separate big YES for the 3rd, user extendable digital oscillator, which allows you to get even more sounds that aren't available from out of the box. There are plenty of user oscillators and post effects (the post effect section is also extendable) out there to delve into. Both paid and free. I advise to look into Tim Shoebridge's page for some quality ones, but there are plenty more.
Process of installing those, and updating firmware (which gets periodical updates) is fairly easy and straightforward.

My only couple of gripes with it:
- I'd wish for a bigger immediate range of octaves (3 gets quite limiting when learning to play some pieces sometimes, when playing both hands). I realize that this can't be fixed at the price range though... Still, it allows to connect to a separate midi keyboard if needed, so technically can be extended. Or you can get just the synth module and a separate keyboard to begin with.
- Some options (albeit veeery little compared to many other devices) do require some menu diving. The menu diving is pretty simple though and is very shallow in it's structure. But there are still some things that I'd wish were available at the surface to be switchable quickly. But again, a question of price range ofcourse.

Beeing a total hardware head but following the trends of using VST's its hard to surprise me in terms of sound nowadays, but this synth did.
I was hooked, inspired again and forgot about days/nights/mornings/evenings playing with it after unboxing. Great sound, fat, warm, easily fits into a mix, additional effects are exeptional, presets are massive, just tweak some and off you go.
Its my nowadays favorite synthesizer along with small, tiny Arturia microfreak. People, just forget about VST's for some time, get back to tactile feelings of creating music and not just clicking with your mouse on your screens. Vst's are like rubber woman or beer without alcohol:) Peace to all of you.

Where can I start with this beast of a synth? If someone told me about the features of this synth I would say the price would go over €1500 but at €500 it is a steal for everything this synth does, aimed at various electronic genres this synth will find itself both in writing futuristic score for films or ambient/IDM all the way to Techno.
The sounds available are pretty good but I did end up buying more, the price range of these third party patches can go anywhere between €3 to €50 or more, depending what you are looking for.
It's third digital oscillator is a thing of beauty and developers are springing everywhere, although some are pricey you can still go on and design your own but that would take some programing knowledge therefore purchasing them would still make more sense.
You won't be disapointed with this synth, in fact you wished you bought it earlier.
This synth has convinced me to look into the whole range of small form factor by Korg.
You just won't go wrong with this one.

Korg Minilogue XD is a 4 Voice hybrid polysynth with Unison, Chord and a powerful arpeggiator. There are 2 analogue oscillators with saw, triangle and square waveforms, and a digital oscillator with 3 modes called multi-engine. It was three modes of operation, noise, vpn (which are phase-modulated classic digital waveforms) and user, which can house up to 16 free, open source or commerical user oscillators. There is and ADSR amp envelope, and an AD envelope which can be routed to all pitches, only OSC2 pitch, or the filter cuttoff. Said filter is a digital low pass filter with resonance. The multi-engine can either be modulated by the EG or bypass it entirely. There is a single LFO with free-form, tempo and 1-shot modes, trig, square and saw waveforms which can be routed to waveshape, pitch or cutoff. The LFO can target either all oscilators, just the multi engine, or any combo of the analog oscillators. Finally, there is a decent digital filter stack with plenty of options for Reverb, Delay and other common effects such as Chorus and Ensemble. You can also add user effects just as you can add digital oscillators. Finally there is a single track 4 voice 16 step sequencer with 4 slots for motion sequencing: ANY parameter is mappable, including the multi-engine oscillator type or arp-uni-poly modes, which can open up the basic sequencer to some pretty powerful options, which could make some combinations make it seem more powerful than it actually appears on the surface.

The build quality is great, with a metal front panel, smooth yet stable knobs and clicky or springy levers. The side and back faux(?) wood finish looks and feels great. The keys are ok, coming fron a piano background i always feel a bit underwhelmed by synth keyboards but they are cenrtainly playable. The only gripe i have is that the knob on the mod-stick comes loose pretty easily, but you can just pop it back in no problem. The second issue is the tuning: it having an analogue component, it requires tuning, but the time alotted by the firmware for this process is NOT sufficient. That results in it sometimes sounding detuned, especially in the higher pitches. If you leave enough time for the components to reach their final operating temperature and tune again, then it stabilizes nicely, but that process is slow and may take up to 5 minutes until you have a reliably tuned instrument.

Using the synth as a sound design or performance instrument is easy, intuitive and fun. There are some functions buried in the menus, but there are never more than 2 levels of diving to reach anything. Plentiful shift functions and shortcuts do exist, so reading the manual would open you up to functions that are not immediately obvious, such as multiplying the LFO waveform by -1 (making the saw a ramp, or the triangle a dip for example) and many many other tricks, such as Dry/Wet control for the reverb depth.

Programming the synth is as easy as you might expect with two minor flaws: the MIDI implementation of the sequencer is a little weird and the gate times of the notes played by the sequencer are not transmitted properly but somehow only communicated as impulses, therefore using the onboard sequencer with a DAW either requires some MAX or MIDI wizardry. Personally, I tend to use the DAW sequencer when integrating it with a computer, so that's not really a problem for me.
The second problem is sadly insurmountable in some cases: while most of the times program change is instantaneous and you can switch from one sound to another in real time, switching between complex programs does take a bit of time and that has limited me somewhat.

The most important part though, other than the technical shortcomings is sound: and it is rich, creamy, wide and extensible. For an electrical engineer like me, the openness of the multi engine and the ability to hack custom effects and oscillators is a dream. There is also a healthy marketplace of both commercial and free or OSS options.

This instrument has opened me up to a whole new world of music. It is beginner friendly, as a was a total noob in the world of synthesis before it and the learning curve was definitely manageable. However, coming from a technical background which allows me to peer into how these devices are designed and what they do in terms of actual signal processing, there is a lot of potential in this device if you want to dive really deep.

Would. Definitely. Recommend.

Definitely a very fun synth, that you can use without computer, have fun with it, with tons of useful presets to learn from and to use right away in your mixes.

2 analog oscillators + one digital, almost a knob-per-function, and possibility to program your own instruments for the digit. oscillator - and effects. One of the best all-rounder analog synths on the market.

Sound is also powerful and beautiful for its price range.



Would love a longer sequencer, but well - 16 is good enough.

Its a kind of Jack of All trades, master of most for any synth setup in my oppinon.

The Minilogue XD is quickly becoming one of the most iconic modern synths. With two analogue + one digital oscillator, the possibilities are infinite, it sounds bigger than it looks.

It offers everything you need on a synth, including different play modes (arps, unison, mono, etc.), an LFO, an extra envelope, a sequencer with motion recording, etc. However, all these features are also limited. You are limited to a single LFO, the extra envelope only offers attack and decay, the sequencer is limited to 16 steps. And not less important, only 4 voice polyphony.

Where the Minilogue XD stands against its competition is with the addition of custom oscillators and effects, which can be either found for free or purchased.

I wish that Korg gave a bit more love to the Minilogue XD, providing more preset packs and more custom FX and Oscillators, but at least the community is there to provide them.

Overall, a unique synth that can fill the needs with both newbies and experts. A future classic that I will never sell.