EMW, the Brazilian synth maker, has shown the S-8000, a compact hardware sample synthesizer that plays single samples and multi-samples from a microSD card. The company announced it on Instagram on 18 September and has not given a price or a ship date.

Sample playback

Samples are loaded as WAV files from the card, and each can be set for tuning, gain, root key, start point and loop points, so multi-sampled instruments can be assembled on the unit. Synth Anatomy reports several playback modes that change the character of the source material, which EMW describes as running from clean and transparent to rawer textures drawn from older digital samplers. There is no granular or spectral processing; the S-8000 does sample playback only.

Filter, effects and connections

A resonant filter with cutoff and resonance controls has its own ADSR envelope, with a second ADSR for the VCA. A multi-wave LFO can be driven by velocity, the mod wheel and aftertouch. The effects section carries chorus, phaser, delay, reverb, bloom and stereo spread with adjustable parameters.

Connections are a DC input, 5-pin MIDI in and thru, and stereo output on a pair of 6.3 mm mono jacks, and the synth responds to MIDI CC across its parameters. The front panel is a volume knob, an endless encoder for menu navigation and a display.

The S-8000 follows a run of small desktop instruments from EMW: the DX7000 and DX5000 FM synths and the VPOLY-6X virtual analog, which the company lists at $365, $449 and $385. The S-8000 is not yet listed on EMW's own synthesizers page.

Via Synth Anatomy. EMW's synthesizers are here.