Misynformation: synth reviews in the post-truth world

The term post-truth (or post-fact) was coined by Steve Tesich in the early 1990s in his essay The Nation. It has been widely used in political sphere, denoting a situation where not the factual details matter. Instead, one appeals to emotions, and there is, as a key characteristic, rejection of factual comebacks.

One would not expect to see the same shift from facts to a post-factual discourse in something as technological and inherently objective as the world of engineering specifications for electronics and within that, electronic instruments.

However, a recent trend is that not only manufacturers, but also reputable synth technology-related media have shifted to a surprisingly post-factual style.

Marketing was always about overstatements, let's face it. Whether that comes from the manufacturer or secondary forums that have a vested interest in promoting / selling the products, is not a key distinction.  They are information sources for prospective buyers / users, therefore they all have quite a responsibility.

However, one could see the intentional eroding of even fundamental instrument categories, mechanically repeated by thought-to-be technically informed and reputable media. One could see sensationalist headlines along the lines of "is this the future of...?" when they reviewed products with features running more than a decade behind the times.

It seems in synth world, too, the increasing  hype and sometimes desperate overcompensation from some manufacturers, in an attempt to hide the lack of actual ideas, is being parroted by even specialist media without even a quick comparative look at specifications.

Countless social media debates then promptly denaturate into typical post-factual discourse: if some come with an objective point based on glaring technical facts in the product specification or its real-life use, such comments are attracting the "fake news" type instant dismissal.

It is rather interesting to see this phenomenon in the sphere of electronic music technology.

Examples abound... but a note in advance: many terms here are considered to be known based on long-standing, even historic, definitions. To use analogy based on the Blackadder comedy series of yesteryear, Baldrick's hilarious "cat = not a dog" definition does not detail what a dog is, if latter is well-defined and well-knownm and 2 seconds in Google can provide it :)... But back to a (slightly) more serious look of sometimes hilarious synth reviews...

Before going to glaring and monstrous examples of media mis-stating fundamental aspects of new products, a more subtle (and in need of erudition) case is that of the recently released and exciting Mostro FM synth.

Even SynthAnatomy chose a headline that is shockingly unaware of signal processing fundamentals and of actual synthesizer history, seeing more than 2 FM operators as "DX7 backstory" that the reviewed product has none of.

Why can any DSP person say this is shocking lack of awareness of signal processing fundamentals? Well, the "DX7 backstory" (or lack of, in this case) is not actually a DX7 backstory.

It is fundamental mathematical reason stemming from Dr. Chowning's revolutionary paper on FM synthesis. DX7 did not chose to have more than 2 operators on a whim, but because it is necessary for sufficiently complex audio spectra.

Not having more than 2 operators in an FM synth is not a plus... for very fundamental reasons. Again, the more than 2 operator FM synthesis is not a "DX7 back story", it is fundamental need for complex spectral changes in FM synthesis.

One can ask, how can such reputable synth media make such headlines and completely side-step not only mathematical but also synth history facts?

Regardless of subjective preferences for brands, a notable misinformation case was that of Yamaha Montage. It was accurately marketed as a synthesizer, not as a workstation, by Yamaha. However, countless very reputable and usually serious/informed media wrote about it as "flagship workstation"  or "best workstation synth", to quote just a few examples.

This got even more tragicomical when its cut-down repackaged version, the MODX, was written about even by SynthAnatomy as "workstation".

It was and remains factually and fundamentally incorrect to categorise it as a workstation, kudos for even Yamaha accurately stating the correct category for these instruments.

One of the very few serious synth and studio technology reviewers that emphasised from the start the key difference was, as usual, Sound On Sound, who have re-stated several times the distinction.

The post-factual furore was at full swing in social media, from YouTube to Facebook groups and so on. Correcting this huge misnomer attracted endless subjective furore, exactly as certain factually wrong or self-contradicting political tweets or articles do...

This particular example is merely about overcompensation for long-established pre-existing features lacking in these products, whilst those features are actually central to the instrument category definitions themselves...

However, similar eloquent cases can be found when manufacturer over-uses the word "new" - and even reputable media mechanically repeats this, proving the fact that even simple comparative look at specifications, informed by instrument and technology history, has not been done.

Such case is the very recent launch of Roland's Fantom workstation.

The fact, that the manufacturer hyped the product, is understandable and forgivable to an extent. However, in the era of post-factual media, it is more important to note how automatically the factually incorrect claims have been repeated by even serious synth review sites and retailers.

Andertons are asking: is this the future of workstations?...  A simple look at the specs, even before getting hands on with the new product, would have eminently told one that this is the past of workstations, if one considers e.g. synth engines and sampler parts. Why not be honest about the novel UI and the performance capabilities, instead of putting "new" where there is none - and even old feature is more limited.

Others even labeled it "the ultimate workstation", again forgetting the simple fact that it has series of missing features and considerably more limited or lower-performance features compared to long before existed workstations out there. Others introduce it as "all new" in their first sentence, whilst is has many merely repackaged and long before existed elements and subsystems.

Not only it repackages long-existed synth engines (e.g. from XV family of synths), but it actually lacks key features that existed for long time in other synth workstations with several times higher specifications.

For example, the sampling ability is shockingly limited both in functionality and capability, if one does a very quick comparison with e.g. the long-existed Kronos. Even OASYS had several times more synth engines integrated with a single user interface front-end.

The "seamless transitions" do not exist for Fantom programs and effects, even the review video has clear and not seamless transitions... They only and only work for the so-called scenes, whilst other long-existed workstations can make seamless transitions between programs, combinations of programs, with entire effect chain transitions.

The problem is not that manufacturer, repackaging pre-existing elements into a new product, the real problem is the overstating the "novelty" element.

The bigger problem is how end users can be subjected to many synth reviews and demos that, without basic specification checks, repeat falsehoods or hype the product without realising that long before existed products had the same, and better performing features.

In the sphere of social psychology, it would be quite an interesting topic to dig deeper into this trend, where post-factual rhetoric is permeating even formerly technical facts-based discourse.

Within the world of synths, as end users or technology aficionados, one has to wonder how we can actually end up here.

There seems to be a strong correlation between endlessly repackaged pre-existing technology and the hype overstating novelty, even when it is glaringly missing in specifications - let alone in terms of factual synthesizer history. 

This may exacerbate over time, and social media with typical post-factual treatment of objective comments is making it increasingly easier to drown out factual discourse.

As the late Umberto Eco postulated, in the hyper-real world fakes can seem more real than the real thing. And that seems to go for synth review claims, too.

Fifty switched-on years: Wendy Carlos, a modular Moog... and Bach

The 1968 original cover

In October 1968, the seminal album Switched-On Bach was released. Wendy Carlos, using an era-defining Moog synthesizer, has surprised audiences with pioneering electronic renditions of selected Bach compositions.

In 2018, this may sound absolutely banale - even if in 1968 none other than the legendary pianist Glenn Gould held the ground-breaking performances in the highest regard. We are  nowadays taking electronic instruments for granted, and synthesizer reworkings of classical pieces have been ubiquitous...

One really needs to put Wendy Carlos's unprecedented achievement in technical, musical, and also cultural context.

Electronic instruments, even with the arrival of Robert Moog's classic synthesizer, have been laboratory curiosities until then. Even if some electronic works so-to-speak escaped into the popular realm well before 1968, synthesized sound has not truly exploded into popular consciousness until then.

The technical challenges were numerous, and one can get an insight into this by consulting countless notes and interviews done with Carlos and others. The list is quasi-endless, from notoriously unstable tuning to the often overlooked fact that the synth on which Carlos performed the Bach pieces was essentially monophonic - i.e. it could produce sound for one note at a time. Custom "chord generators" had to be made, with chained-together oscillators, such that Bach's chord structures could also take shape.

We must not forget, this was Bach actually played on the Moog - no automation or programming of any sort has taken place. A revolutionary touch-sensitive keyboard allowed very articulated performances. Still, it necessitated an almost superhuman way of playing when faced with a monophonic keyboard - something that Carlos modestly called "detached" playing, as each key had to be activated on its own. Try and keep an eminently fluid and spirited performance going, playing on such an instrument...

These technical difficulties, heroically overcome by Carlos, lead us to the musical achievement.

This may well be a switched-on and fully electronic Bach, but it is very switched-on from musical performance perspective, too. As much as some voices denigrated the results, even "serious" musicians, like the aforementioned Glenn Gould, and the unexpectedly numerous public embraced it.

Even now, half a century later, Carlos's performances (including the particularly superb choices made in terms of the arrangements, i.e. synthesized timbres) range from eminently subtle to joyously bouncy.

The cultural impact and its effect on the public's perception of the new electronic instruments have been immense.

The first cohesive and large work, with truly world-wide popular success, recorded entirely with synthesizers was not a stereotypical pop or rock tune (like Telstar in 1962). It was an entire album of popular works by J. S. Bach... as a result of a stunningly audacious adventure centred around a synthesizer monster that was just about emerging from its laboratory environment...

Wendy Carlos in 1968

Have all negative preconceptions, by now simply anachronistic prejudices, related to electronic instruments been put to rest during the fifty years that followed?

Yes and no.

Both utterly high-brow and utterly popular music widely employs synthesizers, and so does pretty much everything in-between... Very often, the artificial delimitation line between non-electronic and electronic instruments is entirely blurred or non-existent, as audiences may not even be able to tell the difference between some samplers and the instruments they sampled. Also, often complex processing of traditional instruments' sounds makes those sound eminently electronic when they are not...

However, some still see electronic instruments as tools for creating "sterile", "not human", "machine" etc. music. Some sub-genres of electronic music, which heavily rely on robotic rhythms or entirely intentional robotic aesthetics, certainly do not help in shifting these out-dated misperceptions.

Even within the Berlin School of electronic music, e.g. Kraftwerk represents a diametrically opposite aesthetic and artistic intent compared to e.g. Tangerine Dream. Former had a specific message centred on technology, whilst latter explicitly used technology as merely a creative tool and never let it take over. See Kraftwerk standing immobile with their laptops, and see Tangerine Dream still, 50+ years on, jamming in lengthy live improvised sets... The concept and the intent behind their respective art is vastly different - and the resulting music also shows the radically different, even opposite, approaches to synthesizers.

The great Romantic passion in works by Vangelis are quite different from the energies unleashed by any of the trance or techno acts, and comparisons are unfair to make - as there are no valid comparisons between eminently different musical intentions and aesthetics.

However, one could say that views that consider electronic music to be "sterile" have been conceptually wrong from the very beginning.

Even in 1968, people looking at (as some never listened or wanted to listen to) Wendy Carlos's monster Moog synth as a tool for "machine" music were committing a fundamental error.

Not because of subjective pros and cons and tastes... but because it is an (intentional or not) confusion of three different things: instrument, medium, and content.

Synthesizers, as obvious it may seem when rationally thinking about them, are merely instruments... One can make, and has made ,sterile or cerebral music with a flute, too...

As the late, unparalleled Isao Tomita said once, synth-made electronic sound is as natural as the sound of thunder made by nature's electric discharges... After all, what creates the sound doesn't matter - the boundaries and preconceptions are in our minds only...

From oxygen to outer space - Jean-Michel Jarre at 70

Photo: AFP

Jean-Michel Jarre, perhaps the most prominent post-avant-garde names of the French School of electronic music, turned 70 today.

Whilst he was already a prolific experimental and soundtrack composer before the 1976 release of his landmark album Oxygène, the latter has really projected his name onto the firmament of both popular and critically acclaimed electronic music.

Even in 2018, the album sounds futuristic, timeless and perfectly at home with state-of-the-art current space rock and ambient electronic albums - a fluid, bubbling and seamlessly flowing electronic symphony that still continues to hold many lessons for budding electronic musicians who choose to compose with intent a descriptive and emotionally involving sub-genre of electronica.

As they say, the rest is history...

Whilst Jarre has become perhaps even more known for the record-breaking gigantic concerts, where audiences were in their millions (absolute record was 3.5 million people) and the stage could often be an entire city even, his imaginative musical creations cannot be ignored.

His music was seen by some regimes as ideologically clean and "safe", the music of a technological future - hence it is not an accident, that he was the first Western musician officially invited to give live performances in post-Mao China.

While Jarre established himself as an unparalleled visionary when it came to live performances, with hugely innovative multimedia technology at work alongside his futuristic electronica, his use of innovative new musical instruments was also remarkable.

Cities in Concert - Live in Houston, TX

Fairlight, the pioneering sampler that completely changed music across countless genres, was mostly used even by luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Art of Noise and Kate Bush as a digital instrument capable of playing back sound samples.

Then Jarre released the to this day astonishing album Zoolook, where he has taken the Fairlight to an unprecedented level, projecting us into a never before heard sonic Universe.

His use of sound processing and alteration via the new instrument sounds simply stunning even today - and all this was not done in a purely academic manner, making Zoolook actually enjoyable by the masses.

Whilst he ventured very happily into the realm of chirpy, dancey, highly trendy electronica, too, we cannot forget the fact that he also composed vast, almost cosmic requiem-sounding suites like Rendez-Vous, and ventured into "pure" electronic ambient music, too (the epic length title track on Waiting for Cousteau).

Even under the surface of sometimes very pop-sounding electronica, he often managed to hide complex musical ideas. A simple example would be Equinoxe, his second album, where the most popular track has employed time signatures that one is challenged to find in any chart-topping creation...

Even in 2018, even at 70, he is not only keeping up with the absolute latest greatest technological advances in sound synthesis, processing and music production, but he remains an influencer and a shaper of sound technology.

His latest studio double opus, the Electronica Vol. I and II., shows how he can collaborate with numerous electronic musicians who come from vastly different musical and technological backgrounds.

The tracks composed with the biggest names, ranging from Vince Clarke to Hans Zimmer to the late Edgar Froese (founder of the veritable Berlin School institution that is Tangerine Dream), show that Jarre's artistic range and sensitivity is able to integrate myriad musical ideas and sources into a coherent concept.

In ways that transcend particular subjective tastes and electronic music preferences, Jarre's trailblazing efforts in the field have left their mark on countless facets of music technology, including creative tools and approaches to the vast world of synthesizers.

His music is also testament to the fact that the most high-tech instruments are mere instruments, and the human using those instruments remains the key factor in the creative process... making the resulting music sometimes unashamedly romantic even, whilst created with (the still often misperceived as "cold") electronics.

Clone wars and compromises

Behringer's Moog Model D clone

Last year's (in)famous announcement by Behringer, that it sets out to clone the legendary MiniMoog Model D, has driven social and specialist media into overdrive.

Purists, retro enthusiasts, gear heads, and countless other categories of people involved in any way in electronic instruments and electronic music have vented pros/cons (sometimes on the rational side) and everything from joy to outrage (on the emotional side).

This was followed by a "fake news" hiccup, when Behringer website announced a whole range of legendary synth clones, promptly taken off the website and, according to Behringer, it was merely a technical hiccup rather than an intentional marketing stunt.

Cue social and specialist media overdrive... again.

Now that we are counting the days until NAMM 2018, which undoubtedly will have its fair (or again overblown) share of retro technology in new robes as the nostalgy market is driving this insatiably, Behringer makes another announcement.

While the Model D clone is yet to turn up in shops, but pre-orders are made, the company announces not just an Oberheim OB-Xa clone, but also its estimated timeline.

Behringer UB-Xa clone of Oberheim OB-Xa

Cue social and specialist media overdrive... yet again. The OB-Xa's characteristic sound was present on myriad albums of artists ranging from Mike Oldfield to Jean-Michel Jarre to Depeche Mode and Gary Numan, to name just a few.

The repeated furore could be grouped essentially around the following topics:

• How dare they clone the legends, making considerably cheaper versions?
• The clones will not sound "good enough" compared to the originals
• The quality will be worse compared to the originals.

Well, while everything in life is a compromise, above main threads have one huge elephant in the room, as uncomfortable it may be.

The price point, objectively, to anyone in the electronics business who is not subjectively swayed by nostalgia, is not a scandalous one for Behringer, it is actually a scandalous one for the likes of Moog.

The production of Model D in today's world, even with using the retro components that were reportedly in short supply (if we believe the classic marketing stunt), is a fraction of what it was back then.

The price point, regardless of individual synth musicians' pocket sizes (and the snobbish threads that ensued due to this, discussing affordability and who would spend what on what), is an unrealistic one - the real central driver is the name, the legend and the emotional capital factored into it. Full stop.

The "good enough" sound is a perhaps eternal topic. Again, it comes down to motivations, priorities and... compromises.

Even if the clones approximate the originals, they are expected to be "better" than virtual analogue reincarnations of the originals. The elusive (and often subjective) difference may not matter in the final mix, and would not be (even in case of virtual analogue) detectable by vast numbers of people listening to the final mix on whatever sound equipment they have.

However, this just brings the traditional battle between virtual analogue and true analogue to another level, it is a battle between hearing the differences between true analogue original and clone.

The original and legendary Oberheim OB-Xa

Naturally, as with all such discussions, the central question remains whether the certain differences matter or not to the audience.

Famously, when Daft Punk recorded a track's narration with three different microphones belonging to three different eras talked about in the track, somebody asked: who will hear the difference? The sound engineer replied: Daft Punk will.

But then the big question is, if only the artist hears it, does it matter... and then we land in a stormy sea of heated debates that ultimately start regurgitating tenets of subjective vs. objective reality from age-old philosophy trends.

Regarding compromise, a certain difference then becomes also a matter of price difference vs. audible difference. This then becomes even more personal and tuned to the specifics of the music project. Therefore generalising takes on this lose all meaning, no matter how purists start sizzling in social media threads.

The quality point is also a self-defeating one. Sure, fundamentally it has to be "decent". Even at the price point of the clones, nobody wants it to fall apart within months or a few years. Considering how latest greatest offering from some of the biggest names is suffering of frankly outrageous quality issues nowadays, and there is a clear trend toward the negative, the picture is again a bit foggy.

A lot of anger was vented in threads about Behringer quality, endless sarcastic memes and posts circulated for months - but again the authors miss the central point.

Exactly as a hand-stitched leather seat in an Aston Martin does not alter the engine performance and "oomph" we feel driving it, in the same way the price-inflating claims of Moog about lovingly and individually hand-crafted parts do not alter the sound.

They may contribute to an overall feel of uniqueness and "made just for you" with a serial number we end up framing on the wall, but... the central logical phallacy in such takes is that the overall feel is not in any way related to the specific detail or difference in detail that is being argued.

It is impossible, due to human nature, to avoid such phallacies and their pitfalls when it comes to these topics. Especially when many look at their synths as things that define them as musicians instead of mere tools in their creative work.

However all purist thinking is by definition a deplorably self-limiting one. It is not a problem that one ends up limiting one's own choices (including the creative ones), but it is also human nature that the same psychology makes its possessor feel a desperate need to tell others to have the same self-limiting approaches to their creative processes and choices.

So instead, let's herald the superb OB-Xa reincarnation, if Behringer does produce it (frankly, credibility has taken a huge beating lately and some marketing or involuntary actions backfired).

As with the Model D clone, the UB-Xa (as it will be called) will naturally find its way into categories of sound designers and musicians' work places as Model D clone and virtual analogue imitations of true analogue originals have.

Everything is a compromise, and all synths are instruments - mere instruments in realising an imagined sound world.

How that instrument is used and whether it is "good enough" is down to, and only to, that creative musician.

As soon as the instrument becomes a tool for self-definition and therefore inevitably snobbery, it and its discussions are dead ends for the purists.

The passing of a visionary

Ikutaro Kakehashi has passed away at the age of 87.

One wonders what other opening sentences can be written... Yes, he was the founder of the absolute legend that is Roland Corporation, the inventor and maker of an astonishing number of instruments that not only shaped, but also created, entire musical genres. 

If one says TR-808 or TR-909, then one means the birth of hip-hop and Detroit techno. If one says Juno or JP-8000, well, not sure where to even begin to enumerate the impact of these keyboards. If one says Jupiter-8, then one is basically lost for words. 

But then... he was also one of the two godfathers of MIDI, the standard for the way in which musical instruments and computers can digitally talk to each other. 

So much quasi-sensationalist and utterly tendentious (plus ill-informed) press has asked the question: is MIDI out of date, is MIDI limited...

MIDI was and still is an absolutely breathtaking future-proofed invention of a standard interface that outlasted countless others, and it is still going strong.

There was the invention of sound recording, which we take for granted now without realizing what it meant to be able to take music from the performer into the homes and hands of countless people who maybe never ever had the chance to see or hear that performer....

Then there was the birth of MIDI... 

How many of us can truly realize nowadays what it meant to be able, for the first time, to record an improvisation - not in sounds, but in actual  musical score terms of what was played, and then be able to change and layer on top of it, building up vast arrangements? 

How many nowadays truly realize what MIDI allowed suddenly, in unprecedented ways, in terms of capturing the details of a performance and then giving the musician the ability to edit all the musical information it captured, all the keyboard and controller events during playing?

Also, in terms of an interface, it is the genius of future-proofing. Since the decades of its inception, and the decades since it was turned into practical reality by the likes of Ikutaro Kakehashi, MIDI has managed to allow vastly different instrument of vastly different core technology to talk to each other seamlessly. 

The evolution of electronic instruments, studio gear and music software has been mind-boggling since MIDI was born, and it still allows all these immensely different gadgets to talk to each other in a standardized way.

A technical Grammy award given to him and Dave Smith is just the tip of the iceberg of significance and recognition... 

Entire musical genres would not have been possible without Kakehashi-san and his immeasurable contribution to musical instruments. 

Active to his very last years,he never stopped thinking about music, musical instruments, and musicians... "I Believe in Music" one of his book titles says... very, very few people can say that apparent cliche to be actually true and not only an expression, but also a living proof of one's life's body of work...

Rest in peace, Kakehashi-san...

In the aftermath of NAMM 2017

NAMM 2017 has finished recently, and although it is always far from just an electronic instrument show, it has further emphasized a very solid trend among big and small synth manufacturers alike.

If one questions the countless retro and retro-emulating gear being paraded again by the the big and small names, and the scarcity of truly innovative thoughts, well, this is merely a response to a demand.

Synthesizers are, fundamentally and by definition, unique instruments in their ability to create and shape old and new sounds. Also, they can bridge the sonic and temporal gap between many centuries' and many distant realms' musical tradition - they can produce an often-thought-to-be impossible sonic world that can be, at the same time, ancient and contemporary, even futuristic, in the right hands.

However, while they had been the vehicles and, no pun intended, instruments of sonic and musical innovation for decades, the present shows a different direction.

Unprecedented technological advances created an everyday and increasingly affordable reality in which, to quote a recent line from Klaus Schulze, one can only be limited by one's imagination and not the instrument's capabilities.

Is then electronic music of today marked by unprecedented sonic innovation? Are the newer and newer synth and studio gadgets forward looking innovations to facilitate this sonic progress?

Occasionally, and increasingly rarely, yes.

Occasionally, there are leaps in sound-making and sound-shaping ability - think of samplers, FM synthesis, granular synthesis, variphase processing, morphing filters...

Occasionally, even if underlying mathematics and technology are relying on pre-existing concepts, the instruments themselves represent leaps in how a musician can unleash his/her creative powers. Think of compact affordable modular synths, or the astounding music workstations like the M1 and its successors, or the vast sample libraries shaped further by complex processing plugins and/or sampler keyboards.

However, as the latest NAMM also demonstrated, a heavy trend is filling rooms with... recycled history.

Some are caught in a loop of releasing endless remakes and variations of their glorious classics from the past decades, others add more polyphony to previous classic models and/or architectures.

Certainly, there is a demographic element that creates insatiable demand for such retro gems being recycled endlessly. The blogger is part of that demographic, but hopefully not yet caught in this mental loop.

As it happened with motorcycles, there is an age group that once dreamed about those beasts, but now can afford them in much beefed-up versions. There are entire new genres established that are nostalgically re-creating past trends in electronic music, or in general, of music that was predominantly relying on electronic instruments.

Beyond this demographic phenomenon, there are new generation musicians who reach for the retro sounds and retro instruments' recreated or souped-up versions with an aim to add a certain special flavor to established mainstream electronic music sub-genres.

But... in many ways, we are witnessing a polarisation of electronic music.

Apart from the still purely academic ventures in the vein of IRCAM experiments, in the accessible electronic music there are extremely few names who truly make use of these instruments' unique capabilities.

The rest are using eminently unconventional instruments in extremely conventional manner - and when innovation is celebrated because it sounds exactly like a sequencer-laden track from 40+ years ago, then something is very warped in our perception.

To return to NAMM, one of the highlights was the Arturia Matrixbrute - and an otherwise superb demo showed the sequencer capabilities... heralded as a major sensation and as an innovative beast of an instrument, whilst the produced music sounded exactly like Tangerine Dream's Ricochet from 1975. Yes, it was 42 years ago.

The time warp could not be more complete nor more obvious.

Nobody can produce quantum leaps in musical instruments every year, but perceptions of what is innovation are being distorted by mere addition of more polyphony, more sampling disc space, more pre-existing synth engines crammed under a single bonnet, more step sequencer buttons now affordably bolted on top of some otherwise unremarkable analog engine.

While this perception distortion is occurring in the market, it is then also occurring in the music that is produced with these "innovative" instruments.

With notable exceptions, some popular trends in electronic music are re-tracing their steps or someone else's steps, and media heralds them as "new voices" while they are faithfully reproducing decades-old sounds (in widest sense).

There have been and there are some extremely popular electronic musicians in mainstream genres, who could blend the dance music of their era with gregorian choir passages... or high-octane EDM with sounds of the '50s, or with sounds of distant musical cultures.

However, while even media perception is warped by the retro "innovations", there is a danger that the most imaginative and boundless instruments are predominantly becoming mere tools to clear or smooth some beaten paths or widen them a little bit.

If our expectations of what sonic exploration is does not get out of the grip of retrospective loops, then we must not blame manufacturers for coming up with endlessly regurgitated history,

They are running a business and they are responding to demand that does not seem to decay any time soon.