I don’t have it yet but I’m sure the miniKORG 700 FS is magical.
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+1. It’s so appealing. Familiar yet otherworldly; flexible, fun, retro-futuristic; it has that Moog sound that’s present but not overpowering, papery, tickly… The stereo signal path is quite unusual too and the delay’s delightful.
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If I can have a second vote, then I will also throw in for the Matriarch.
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A lot of good suggestions here. I will throw in deckards dream or one of the other black corporation synths. I have never owned one but was really close to buying a kijimi.
I find lots of magic in the two Ciat-Lonbarde instruments I have (the Cocoquantus and the Plumbutter, though all Ciat-Lonbarde stuff is quite magical). I think the magic comes from the fact that they were imagined and created by one guy, Peter Blasser, and he really let himself indulge in his vision for what his instruments could be.
As a few examples:
- Some of his panel designs mirror major US cities and influence where he places certain functions.
- Some of his patch points are gender neutral, meaning they can function as either inputs or outputs.
- Some of the noisemakers in his machine behave in intentionally mysterious ways, like “this drum responds to a trigger at its own pace.”
Obviously if you don’t like how these machines sound, then they aren’t for you. But if you like venturing into abstract systems and interacting with an instrument that will surprise and challenge you, Ciat-Lonbarde stuff is incredible.
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This is just my opinion… but the for synth’s that have stood out to me recently as just magic like you say, other then sequential… everything they do is incredible to me… you can’t go wrong there… but others are:
- Vector, the little blue one with the touch screen… OMG… TO ME THAT THING SOUNDS EPIC… I really want one and for some reason just sounds way better then anything else like it…
- Music Easel… there is a reason it is so expensive and imitated… and nothing quite sounds like it… probably my favorite period…
- Microvolt 3900, this thing has is own sound that you would not expect… can go many way different places and always sounds good.
4.Solar 50… being Russian it might be hard to get now, but it sounds like a cs80 in a box… really emotional analog but still raw and beautiful… limited, it mainly is good at big blade runner stuff and weird drunk sound effects… but it is good…
That’s just all my opinion though… those seem to have some magic in them… to me at least.
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The Akai AX60 is one of the most magical for me sub-Jupiter tier, but it punches above its weight!
Akai seriously started a spec war with the Roland Juno. Pitch mod, unison, VCO/VCF mod, among other!
For me, just magical sounds. Clean AX60. Brilliant.
Clean Chords:
Unison:
VCO/VCF Mod:
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God, I will definitely will own one someday! lol
- Virus TI: it has been around, but people keep buying them because they are very, very good.
- TR-8s: All of the Roland TR boxes in one place, with a good x0x sequencer. There are more powerful drum machines out there, but the 8s always sounds good.
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I never thought I’d be saying this before I bought one for myself but the Virus TI just sounds good with very little programming, even before any effects are applied the raw oscillators and filters are most definitely what I’d classify as magical, it’s just one of those synths that sounds really good immediately then once you do apply a little of the effects it just sounds immediately polished.
I had a huge biased against the virus for years after hearing so many “vIrUs tI iS tHe bEsT sYnTh oF aLL tIMe” posts and then hearing demos that were mostly pretty unimpressive coupled with my limited experience with the virus C and the hoards and hoards of preset players tha praise the thing I was like meh fuck that synth.
But after actually diving into one I immediately set out and bought a TI polar and I fell in love.
As mentioned before the Moog grandmother is magical in that it just has THAT sound.
I always say it has ‘the sauce’ some synths just have the sauce they just hit right immediately. To me I noticed a lot of the synths that have the sauce happen to be discreet analog but then it begs the question of what kinda sauce your looking for, the virus has THE sauce, as does the grandmother and also surprising to me the Korg minilouge XD has it too.
Without a doubt the new Oberhiem stuff has it, I’ve got mixed feelings about the DSI/sequential stuff though. I have (and kive) the pro 3 but it most definitely does not have the sauce. You have to really program that mother fucker to get it sweet but when it gets there it’s quite nice.
Nothing else (new or easily attainable) comes to mind at least not until you get into the Eurorack world but that’s a whole giver conversation.
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My cousin has a Juno 60 he lent me for a bit. At first I was grinning - I plugged it into my Quadraverb, and I could dial in all these mid 90s Warp sounds without breaking a sweat and it just nailed them. Then I realized I was just tumbling over cliche after cliche and I was actually finding it hard to avoid them, and I couldn’t handle it.
TL;DR - I learned I prefer a synth that requires a touch of elbow grease and does not give up the goods immediately.
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My most magical synths are the Moog Matriarch, Korg Minikorg 700fs, Syntrx and MnM.
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“Magical” with synths has two levels to me: magic during the honeymoon period and magic when I actually know a synth. The latter is more rare and therefore more precious to me, and even then it’s usually about happy accidents. Synths that have felt magical at first include OB-6, Prophet 6, Perfourmer mk2, Digitone, Dreadbox Nyx v1, Lyra-8, Matriarch and Subharmonicon. I’ve since sold most of them, mostly because I’ve had too much stuff to really learn most of them. Out of those I’ve only had continued magical moments with the Subharmonicon and Matriarch.
On the other hand, Machinedrum and Monomachine sounded nice right from the start but felt a bit too complex to be magical right away. During the 2,5 years I’ve had them, I’ve built a strong bond with both and often get sounds that I like but also keep on getting those happy accidents.
One more thing: Although I certainly know from experience that feeling the “magic” often makes me think where I can get more of that same yet slightly different kind of magic, buying more synths may also end up making you feel “numb” to the magic. The dopamine high just probably won’t be as high the next time around.
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Digitone is my magical synth. Instant gratification, and also deep enough to keep giving and giving and giving. It does need something external (heat, oto box(es)) to really shine, but at the price, amazing.
That said, I’ve never tried any of the big eye watering synths. But I agree with @korpinen, to be magical it has to be a long term thing.
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I wonder how much of this ‘magic’ holds up in a blind test.
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Definitely none. The Matriarch is all about the colour scheme.
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There’s a pretty good video on Youtube where someone has a blind A/B of 30 patches between the Peak with the OB-6. Two completely different synths, with very different oscillators, different filter design, etc, right?
Blind test: OB6 or Peak? - YouTube
The average score is 14 correct guesses (N = 1341). I.e. people might as well be flipping a coin.
The magic was inside of you all along 
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It’s a bit disingenuous to say that synths aren’t different because they’re capable of making the same sounds. There’s plenty of sounds the OB-6 can make that the peak might struggle with and vice versa.
Most 2 or 3 oscillator subtractive synths should have a lot of common ground, sound wise, but it’s what’s at the edges (and how you use it) that makes the magic.
My magic synth is my Polivoks, because it sounds like the magic in my dreams.
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Polybrute is so malleable and subtle that it belongs somewhere on the magical scale.
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I like what @Fin25 says. I further think that a sounds-only “blind test” is unfair. A big part of the magic is how the musician feels whilst playing it. You might be able to get a Peak to sound like an OB-6, but did you enjoy making it happen? If you choose to do a blind test on other people, you’re not making music so you’ll behave differently and accept different levels of frustration, and have different success criteria for your process.
A better test would be to lend the same couple of instruments to 100 people and invite them to make stuff, then tell you which they liked more.
(Disclaimer: I’ve not used either a Peak or an OB-6. I considered both whilst shopping for a mega poly, but ended up with a Rev2… which I like a lot but don’t feel has magic.).
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