Moog One - 16

Top of the class…….at a price

It fabulous, it sounds amazing and it’s surprisingly easy to use. However, the keyboard isn’t good for a synth at this price, and there are lots of bangs and pops when it’s been warming through over the first couple of weeks. I will refer to these as growing pains, but at £7K, it’s was a bit scary until I read on Moog One forums others had experienced similar. There really isn’t anything else near to this in my opinion, but at this price there really shouldn’t be. It will definitely fulfil all your analogue needs but pairing it up with a Waldorf Iridium makes it sparkle. Out of the box, presets are pretty average but there are some extremely good ones that can be picked up on line to get one started if programming is a chore, which it really shouldn’t be!!!

Would I buy it again, an absolute resounding yes but, it’s expensive and one could buy some really interesting synths for this money so bear this in mind.

Strong blend of classic and modern, but not ready for release

If I put aside my gear lust and emotions around particular classic synths (CS-80, Jupiter-8, MemoryMoog, etc.) and think about what I really want from a synth in 2019, it would be something like:

- Warm analogue sound, but stable tuning

- At least two different layered sounds at once

- Highly flexible filter architecture

- Studio-quality effects which can be recalled as part of presets

- A modern UI for naming patches and accessing details

- Lots of knobs to control the main synthesis parameters

- Easy starting on a new sound, but an ability to add lots of detail/modulation as the patch progresses

The Moog One can sound warm, classic, complexity, gritty or downright chaotic as you wish. The filter options (including adjusting the spacing of the two SVF 'halves') are excellent.

BUT I've had serious tuning issues. Some voices a semitone or more out of tune. Just loading a patch could leave all future patches out of tune, requiring a reboot. Moog Support seemed interested initially, but after a week's silence and proving that a beta firmware release does not fix the problems, I've had enough.

BUT