ESI Xsynth synthesiser

General

'Tis always a huge cringe for a synth nerd. Then you're finally free, and then you have to go on holiday (read: you have to go with me), and then you have to miss your synths for a week (or two). Laptop with software then? Well... actually, your phone is smart enough, so you'd rather leave that laptop at home. In short, as a synth nerd, what do you put your fingers on, all this time? You've seen that sand castle and those shells after a day, of course. Perhaps the ESI Xsynth might be a nice solution. It is a full-fledged ROMpler synth, which in terms of features really does go a long way with the rest.

Features of the ESI Xsynth

It is not a true studio workhorse, with a polyphony of ten, the Xsynth is modest. But this Xsynth was never intended to be a studio workhorse either; it's a nice portable device and you should look at it that way. You get three oscillators per voice, three LFOs, three envelopes, a 16-slot matrix and effects. There's an arpeggiator, there are encoders in terms of controlling your parameters. For "just" a nice portable synth, that's really quite decent. The icing on the cake, however, is the polyphonic aftertouch you get. The keyboard has thin/flat keys - in order to keep the device compact - and precisely that aftertouch gives a lot of expression possibilities. Not nearly every synth has polyphonic aftertouch, let alone at this price! And that it also includes an audio interface,and you get two entry-level DAWs with it.... for this money? How then!?!!