Minilogue XD : Great!

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.