Motorized bongos ??
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fixed gear?
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Not everyone likes screens to do everything on. Some don’t care about weight and price either. 
I don’t get the pollution part, this will have limited effect on a global scale vs everything else people use on a daily basis. More solid also depends on the quality of the components and if or how things can be repaired.
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The world scale is made of rungs, we are largely at the time when each rung counts, this is a rung.
A synth is already a luxury, filling it with options of this kind is not necessary, even repairable ones.
But that’s not the subject here, I just wanted to point out a detail that ultimately reveals more about the consumer than the manufacturer…
Dave Smith Instruments learned it the hard way with their Prophet '08. The original version had encoders only. People where so unhappy that they changed to potis in the next revision (PE edition) and also offered an upgrade kit to exchange the whole controls PCB with the PE edition.
In my own experience with the P08 and the Hypersynth Xenophone was, that having a synth with encoder only is equally bad as having a synth with just potis while working with presets. You just don’t see what the heck is going on. Of course there are other ways like the Hydrasynth or Elektron devices but they come with their own disadvantages.
Nobody really needs any hardware synth these days to make music. Software and samples are more than enough. (I’m ignoring the “analog fetishists” fraction of users here) It’s all about creating a workflow which boosts peoples creativity.
Beyond a reminder to be respectful of others, here are a couple threads for continuing a discussion that seems headed off-topic here.
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A sound only demo from Sonic State.
This video is a bit patched together, my guess is Jim Heywood had a limited amount of time with this synth – there is probably only one prototype, and a lot of demand at the show.
I hope they can limit the Kickstarter to the 500 part sets they have secured, rather than being overwhelmed by a huge first build. There is a lot of interest in this synth.
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Sooo curious as to the price. I know the line has been less than you’d expect, but considering what I expect it to be, less is still probably a lot more than I hope. No way this comes in under 2k, right?
Probably they will get an australian price tag. So its gonna be prohibitivly unobtainable for the rest of the world…
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It sounds pretty nice, but doesn’t really stand out as an amazing or unique synth. I also think those neon red keys are an eye sore.
I think the price tag will really be the deciding factor. If it’s affordable, why not try out a nice sounding desktop poly synth from a small company? If it’s expensive, why bother?
I know what you mean. I don’t really know why the led ring hasn’t caught on - it’s very easy to see what’s what when changing presets. I guess it’s more expensive than not doing it, but it’s just as good as a little screen above each control, which some synths are doing now.
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I see a lot of folks worrying about the price but drone motors really aren’t that expensive
Part of the reason they’re able to bring this to market now is the commercial viability of it.
I don’t expect it to be ‘cheap’, but it’s a 12 voice poly synth with analog circuitry and a lot of cool features (even ignoring the dope knobs) made by a small company so I’d expect it to be in the £1500 - £2000 range.
It’s a ladder filter wrapped around 3 interestingly thought out oscillators it can’t really not sound good.
Not sure if you watched the video but he makes the point that they have analog pot feel. That really matters, especially for important controls like Cutoff. It’s not just a motor, it’s a simulated pot.
I love my Digi boxes but I hate working with filters live on those endless encoders. Even elektron put dedicated knobs on the Analog Heat where they can because they know they’re better.
Edit: This comment could age really well or really badly…
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Under 2k USD would be a win here imo, hope you’re right about the price!
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Me too 
I agree with this completely.
I don’t need the NINA, but knobs persistently corresponding to actual settings across patch changes and morphing is something I truly appreciate. I mentioned this in response to @Jukka at the Iridium Keyboard thread, whose screen-based UI does a pretty clever job of providing persistent feedback of what you want to be seeing at that moment.
LED rings around every knob would do it, but I guess there’s just not enough demand. The one synth I use that does have LED rings (Hydrasynth) somehow doesn’t even need them because it shows you so much of that info on the screens. Also, the knobs seem to always block the view of the LED ring anyway. Someone should invent a cheap knob that embeds a light ring around the top of the button’s perimeter.
Or how about some kind of electrostatic knob that you can touch (not alter) so that the screen immediately shows you that entire module’s buttons’ settings without having to catch the setting. Sequential has the “show” button, which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn’t speed up the flow nearly as much as the NINA will.
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But like my Analog Heat example above it still has dedicated knobs for the all important filter - because knobs are better than encoders.
Motoriosed knobs are a best of both worlds, and a luxury the high end fader people have enjoyed for decades.
If I understand what you mean this is how the Push 2 knobs work
Norand did a pretty good job with their backlit knobs. Admittedly, you don’t get a very accurate picture of the values, but it’s nonetheless quite helpful to see more or less where you are, esp. with modulated parameters, this for all the parameters at once!
not sure it’s been mentioned/asked already but i’m wondering what’s going to happen to those parameters being modulated by an LFO? will the encoders move accordingly? 
what about the noise coming from the motors?
Do you mean audio noise, or electronic ( interference ) noise ?
Audio noise, it’s been said in several videos that there is none.
Electronic noise, well that’s a good question, but there should be damn near none if they did their engineering right.
Wouldn’t make sense to me if the knobs would move by applying an LFO to that parameter. Even when plugins do show LFO modulations on the knob, the knob itself always still have a fixed position.
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