Schmidt Vi: The $25,000 Super Synth Is Coming to Your DAW
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Want to own a Schmidt Eightvoice but don’t have $25K to spare? Schmidt Vi will be a virtual version made in collaboration with UJAM. There’s a mystery player called Deck too.
Schmidt Vi
Synthesizers can certainly get expensive. And not just big modulars, which you expect to be eye-wateringly pricey. Traditional keyboard synthesizers can get up there. The Moog Minimoog, Groove Synthesis’ flagship 3rd Wave, the KORG PS-3300… all of these require some serious cash. But they pale in comparison to the Schmidt Eightvoice, which sells for around $25,000. Granted, these are premium instruments and hand-made, but that’s still a lot of moolah.
Good news! You may soon be able to buy one without having to sell any major organs. Schmidt, the company behind the Eightvoice, is partnering with UJAM to create Vi, a virtual Eightvoice that is “sonically on par with the original Schmidt hardware,” according to the company.
“The legendary Schmidt synthesizer has been on the market for 12 years now and is used by many prominent musicians and studios,” Schmidt says. “After a year of development, we are excited to present the Schmidt Vi, the Schmidt synthesizer as a digital plugin, at Superbooth 26.”
Schmidt Vi: Sonically on Par
What will Schmidt Vi be recreating, exactly? The original Eightvoice is an eight-voice polyphonic synthesizer with unison and multitimbral modes based entirely on discrete circuitry. It has an analog signal path and digital control (although this won’t matter once it becomes a plugin).
As for parameters, it includes four oscillators, two parallel signal paths, each with complex filter sections, including a 24dB Moog-style Ladder filter and two 12dB multimode filters. There’s also a third VCF plus a wide variety of modulation sources, including LFOs, envelopes, and ramp generators. “Each section features dedicated LFOs and/or envelopes,” says Schmidt. “No modulation matrix required – and still as flexible as a fully-fledged modular system!”
I’m curious how this will translate to a plugin. Schmidt hasn’t released much information yet, but UJAM is primarily known for its sample-based instruments, although it does feature VA in the Usynth line. It’s quite possible that Schmidt Vi will be a hybrid soft synth with some samples as well as VA to flesh it out.
Schmidt Vi: All Hands on deck
The other virtual instrument announced alongside Schmidt Vi is deck. We know very little about this, just that it will allow you to play sounds created on the Schmidt, with simple, Minimoog-style controls. Now this sounds like a sample-based player, something that UJAM does very well and much like it did with the Bob Moog Foundation Vox Humana last year.
Note that this announcement image makes deck look like a physical instrument, but it most definitely is not.
Schmidt Vi and deck: Pricing and Availability
I’m extremely curious to find out more about these and to hear Schmidt Vi in action.
Both Vi and deck will be available in mid-2026 in VST3, AU, and AAX formats. Prices have yet to be announced, but I’ll bet they’re significantly lower than $25,000.
More Information
- Schmidt homepage
- More about synthesizers
- Buy synthesizers at Thomann*
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