Sirius

Back in 1998, this groovebox captured the raw energy of late-90s rave scenes with its DTE synthesis engine, blending sampled waveforms into punchy techno leads, dirty basses, and thumping percussion that still cuts through modern mixes.

It's a 49-key keyboard workstation packing 28-voice polyphony across 7 multitimbral parts, including three polyphonic synth tracks, a dedicated drum section with 20 kits, and an 11-band vocoder that routes internal carriers or external mic input via XLR. Each part draws from 128 waveforms per oscillator—think sync saws, spectral pads, TB-303 styles, and noise—shaped by per-track 24dB or 12dB low-pass filters with resonance, overdrive, a syncable LFO, envelope macros, and dedicated faders for levels, pans, and FX sends to dual processors (reverb/delay plus chorus/flanger). Hands-on control shines with 70 switches, 24 knobs for real-time tweaks, a pattern/song sequencer, programmable arpeggiator/gate, and tap-tempo for instant grooves, all backed by 384 patches (288 preset, 96 user) and velocity sensitivity.

Players love its workflow for electronica and dance, praising the sequencer and vocoder for full track-building, though some note quirks from its era like occasional bugs that add character to vintage hunts.