Dave Smith Mopho Keyboard review part one
By Rob Sandall
| Posted in Music Technology
When Dave Smith Instruments’ Mopho Keyboard came up in conversation with a colleague, I was waxing somewhat lyrical about how I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one. “What are you talking about Rob,” he said, “there’s one downstairs.”
Around six minutes later I had my jacket on, had grabbed my keys and managed to shout gottogoseeyouguyslateron before pelting back home and getting down to business. In the time it took my girlfriend to say ‘I thought you were going to pick up dinner for us’, I had everything set up through a decent-enough keyboard amp, and was ready to go.
For those who haven’t been consumed by the huge buzz surrounding this product, let’s take a look at what all the fuss is about. Part of the excitement is born of the similarities and differences to its award-winning veteran stablemate the Prophet 08, and indeed Dave Smith describes it as “architecture similar to a single voice of the Prophet, but with a couple of twists”. I suppose the real question, then, is whether it’s simply a watered down halfway house or something a little more unique, and that’s what we’ll be finding out under play-tests in part two.
At its core, then, the Mopho is a monophonic analog synth. It’s packing two oscillators, two sub-octave generators, selectable two- or four-pole low-pass filters, and feedbacking capabilities. On top of that, it’s also blessed with a huge number of modulation options – three envelope generators, four LFOs, and a 16×4 step sequencer. It may be only small, then, but there’s a lot more on offer than those looking at the modest price might have expected. It’s also notably more in the excellent mad-professor camp than another compact synth that has recently appeared on the market. That’s not to say it won’t be accessible to all, but I suspect a solid knowledge and appreciation of synths is going to be very much needed here to get the best out of this little guy.
There are options to buy the Mopho with or without keyboard. If you go with the former, you get 32 semi-weighted and full-sized keys with after touch and pitch and modulation wheels beside them. While this is an analog synth and the front panel has been designed as fully programmable as a standalone, there’s also editing software included that I’ll be trying out tomorrow.
That’s hooked up through the USB connection, and in terms of further compatibility things are looking bright – you can take external audio to feed through the synth, and you can expand your polyphony using the Poly Chain feature – hook it up to other DSI brethren and bump up your voices a you need. Excellent.
This is a serious package even before you take into account the shocker of a low price, then, and I’ll be keen to see if any major compromises have been made to bring it in at such a healthy cost. Come find me tomorrow and we’ll take a look at the finer detail of the very-possibly-mighty Dave Smith Morpho Keyboard.
Tags: dave smith mopho, mopho synth, new dave smith keyboard