5 of the Best Hybrid Synths: Analog Warmth Meets Digital Power
Get the best of both worlds with synthesizers from Behringer, Arturia, UDO Audio and more!
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Something special happens when you combine analog and digital in the same synthesizer. These are the best hybrid synths available now – and for all budgets.
All About Hybrid Synths
The Best Hybrid Synths
We tend to talk about synthesizers in binary terms: they’re either analog or digital. There’s a third category, though. Hybrid. This catch-all term includes instruments that combine elements of both types, often with digital oscillators and analog filters. This way you get the best of both types: clean and powerful oscillators, often with a variety of synthesis types including virtual analog, wavetable and FM, along with the creaminess and warmth that only real analog filters can provide.
Although hybrid synthesizers have existed for a long time, we’re in the midst of something of a hybrid renaissance right now, with stellar keyboards available at a variety of price points. With that in mind, today let’s explore five of the best hybrid synths currently on the market.
The Best Hybrid Synths: Behringer Wave
One of the original hybrid synths was the PPG Wave. First released in 1981, it combined wavetable oscillators with an analog filter and VCAs for a subtractive synthesis approach. This proved not only popular with musicians but also influential for synthesizer design, with later instruments copying its sample oscillator/analog filter design.
The original Wave is a collector’s piece now, but Behringer (as it is wont to do) has resurrected it as an affordable eight-voice synth also called Wave. You get the original wavetables plus user wavetable import, dual ADSR envelope control over the wavetables, filter and amplitude plus an additional AD envelope for pitch and wavetable position, LFO, a sub-oscillator section, and more, plus new arpeggiator and sequencer. And, as you might guess, being a Behringer product, it’s extremely affordable.
Behringer Wave is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
The Best Hybrid Synths: Arturia MiniFreak
Another one of the best hybrid synths available now has to be Arturia’s MiniFreak. A polyphonic upgrade of the very punky MicroFreak, the MiniFreak includes two layers of synth power, each with a multi-engine digital oscillator packed with modes sourced from Mutable Instruments’ Plaits along with many, many others. (The latest update allows user samples and wavetables!)
As the oscillators can get pretty digital-sounding, the wise developers at Arturia bestowed the MiniFreak with a beautiful analog filter. Inspired by the Oberheim SEM, it’s a 12dB/Oct multimode affair, with lowpass, bandpass and highpass modes – plus self-oscillation when you’ve had enough of being polite. Throw in a ton of modulation and stereo effects and you’ve got yourself a fun – and surprisingly beautiful – instrument.
Arturia MiniFreak is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
The Best Hybrid Synths: Novation Summit
Chris Huggett was not only a synthesizer pioneer, but he also championed hybrid architectures long before they were cool. Favoring digital oscillators with analog filters, his Wasp and OSCar instruments are bona fide hybrid classics. He also brought that know-how to Novation, where he helped develop many amazing synthesizers, including today’s recommendation, the Summit.
Built around two Peak synths, Summit is a two-part multitimbral and 16-voice behemoth, with three New Oxford Oscillators per voice. Those oscillators are FPGA-generated with virtual analog, wavetable and FM synthesis baked inside. On the analog side, you get dual analog multimode filters, analog VCAs and three stages of analog distortion – that’s pre- and post-filter plus post-VCA.
The Summit remains something of an underrated instrument but pretty much everyone who tries one falls in love. Maybe it’s time to reach for that summit.
Novation Summit is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
The Best Hybrid Synths: UDO Audio Super Gemini
When it comes to the best hybrid synthesizers, few have dominated the market like those of UDO Audio. And the king of their hybrid lineup has to be the Super Gemini, a 20-voice, bitimbral and binaural monster.
Inspired by their Super 6 but more than just two of them stuck together, Super Gemini gives you two layers of FPGA-powered digital oscillators with classic analog waveforms capable of cross and ring modulation, user-definable waveforms, sub-oscillator and hard sync, analog low- and highpass filters and VCAs, two LFOs, two envelope generators and an 8×8 mod matrix per layer, 24-bit stereo chorus and delay per layer, an arpeggiator and step sequencer (also per layer), and a true stereo signal path for binaural modulation and wild spatially enhanced patches.
UDO Audio Super Gemini is available from our affiliate partner Thomann*.
The Best Hybrid Synths: Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave
And so we come full circle. I started this story talking about the PPG Wave, a towering achievement of a hybrid synth, and now I’m going to do it again in the form of the 3rd Wave, a similarly hybrid instrument inspired by Wolfgang Palm’s famous instrument. Groove Synthesis’ instrument starts with those original Wave wavetables but also lets you work with modern wavetables, samples, analog waveforms and more, with a beautiful analog 2140 lowpass filter (designed by Dave Rossum, of course) with variable saturation and an additional digital 12dB/Oct state-variable filter to run it all through.
The 3rd Wave is one of my favorite synthesizers of the last 10 years because it just sounds so good. And while it does classic PPG wavetable sounds perfectly, it’s also a modern machine. Recent updates include user wavetables, sampling and even a shimmer reverb.
Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave is available from our affiliate partners Thomann* and Sweetwater*.
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