Make Noise Strega review | Engadget

But, I think even many skeptics will be convinced if they give this little steel box of weirdness a chance.All sounds in this demo are coming directly from the Strega:At the heart of the Strega is a single oscillator that morphs as you turn the “Tones” knob from a simple triangle wave, to a saw, to a much more complex folded waveform. Unlike other synths, the soul of the Strega isn’t in its sound generator. While there is a blend knob that allows you to mix the raw sound of the oscillator with the results of the delay and filter, Rolando and Cortini actually suggested recently in an interview with Engadget that there’s almost no reason to use the Strega in anything other than 100-percent wet mode. And the Activation Interference control (the unlabeled knob directly above activation) introduces crackles, dropouts and other touches of unpredictability to the tone.But, as much as the Strega feels like a drone machine, it’s capable of much more. Now obviously pads, strings and organs all demand polyphony, but you can kinda fake it with the decay on the delay cranked up high.All sounds in this short demo track originate from the Strega. For example, you can use a guitar to control the playback of the Strega and blend the two sounds together to play a simple dreamy melody over a drone that reacts dynamically to your playing.In this demo the input of a guitar is being used to drive the Strega synth engine before eventually being blended in to play on top of the resulting drone:Things get even more interesting if you have an instrument that has CV outputs, like the Microfreak. The somewhat cold, digital sounds of the Microfreak are warmed up nicely by the Strega’s preamp and lo-fi delay. Nothing else sounds like the Strega.