daHornet

Dash Synthesis seem to have found a winning formula - at least from my perspective. They follow one of the all-time great rules, which is "Keep it simple." They have small, but fun synths at very reasonable prices.

This synth, daHornet, is all kinds of funky. Loading it up and playing the first few notes, I suddenly found myself in the world of Logan's Run - and all the other sci-fi movies from that era. It's not restricted to that, though. A little playing around got me a respectable accordion sound. That may not sound like a good thing to some, but the point is that it's not as limited a synth as one might think.

Where this thing really shines, however, is the in the way-out wacky sounds. A lot of those are towards the end of the presets, but they're really not hard to dial up yourself. Check out "Man in a hive."

daHornet is laid out nicely, with a logical flow to the buttons. Right-clicking on the logo brings up a menu that has some options you might want to check out. I found that the volume level was a little too high for Cubase and a number of the presets were clipping. A quick trip to this menu and I set the volume to "soft" - perfect! There are also four different randoms, each of which can be assigned to the numbers 1-4 on your keyboard. A nice touch, indeed.

I have no complaints with daHornet. Sorry. It's a niche synth, but it's a very well-executed one. It's easy to download and check out. It's fun to play with. It's easy and cheap to buy. And the support from Dash Synthesis is second to none.Read Review