I bought a new thing. When I say new, you might think of one of the brand-new products that seem to be announced every week now it feels like, recently hyped by all the synthfluencers and replacing last year’s model, making that one feel obsolete. But no, I bought a Synthstrom Audio Deluge. It is a combination of step sequencer for its internal synth, samples, CV and MIDI, and a few other goodies.
It was originally released in 2017 and is still getting regular updates, and in 2022 they even came out with a new screen for it. So the new model has the new screen, but existing users can retrofit the screen to their unit. In 2023 they even decided to open source the firmware so now the community is implementing new features.
Some of you may know that I have a bit of a bad relationship with, and many thoughts on, how the modern media landscape like YouTube is pushing people into becoming synthfluencers, hyping up new products to drive over-consumption etc. To be clear I mean no shame to the individual people (seriously!), but I don’t love how the “system” is pushing us in this direction.
I even made a video about it.
BUT on the other hand maybe it’s okay to hype a small company that sells one product and just tries to get the absolute max out of that product. Much closer to how I would love to see the rest of the electronic music field go.
So maybe it’s okay to synthfluence a little bit when you feel like you can back the company. Too many thoughts on the topic for this post. Maybe I need to write a dedicated post on products vs techniques.
Anyway! I told my friend and studio partner Jørgen that I had ordered a Deluge, and he is actually one of the people who have been using his since 2017. His response was that we should make a video where we see how long it would take me, from opening the package to getting sound out of the Deluge.
So that is what we did. Here is the video of me trying out the Deluge for the very first time! I hope you enjoy it, I think it is much more about two friends having fun in the studio than trying to advertise a product.
Originally posted in 1080p on Jørgen’s YouTube channel. Go over there and give him a comment, or on his Mastodon post.