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Comment by elihu | Hacker News Reader

I don't think hardware analogy synthesizers are going anywhere anytime soon. Moog is probably facing a lot of competition though, and they aren't very active in the Eurorack modular space where a lot of the interesting new stuff is happening. (In particular, a lot of their popular synths, including recently released ones, are being cloned by Behringer.)

It would be interesting to know if they were doing great but sold because the offer was too good to turn down, or if they were in a financially precarious position and looking for an exit.

Not sure what the situation is for the employee's union. If a company gets acquired, does the union remain?

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I suspect Moog saturated their own market. There are only so many people who want to pay $5000 for a new Minimoog, and most of them already had a reissue. Even fewer who want to pay $10k for an analog poly with mixed reviews and software issues.

We'll see what happens next. Given IM's history I would guess the Moog brand will be stuck on some generic mediocre products, and most of the US workers will be let go.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Especially when you can buy a Behringer Model-D with the 'same' circuitry for £225.

You have to be passionate about the specific sounds a synth offers to buy any synth at a $5k or $10k price tag. The OB-X8 from Sequential sounds fantastic but it still only gives you the palette of an analog polysynth for $5k. You have to be passionate about the Oberheim sound in order to pay that kind of money. Same with Moog or Gibson, you need some kind of passion for the brand in order to spend the money that they’re asking.

I think the recent clones of the moog studio3 devices must have been part of it. The clones are less than half the price of the originals, and are arguably better.

Behringer clones modular synth modules too. https://www.gearnews.com/behringer-abacus-lets-do-the-maths/

Compared to how original looked that's fucking improvement, original have indecipherable panel if you don't already know how it works.

But yeah, I wish that they at least tried to improve upon original instead of blatant copy

I would love it if they made some Eurorack modules. I have a DFAM and love it, but for most equipment I only consider Eurorack. The DFAM has to sit outside my case. The ergonomics of that are weird, and there’s only so much room for desktop equipment.

Couldn't you pull the DFAM and put it in a case? My Mother, at least, is Eurorack.

Yep, 8 screws and you'll need to supply the power cable (for anyone that doesn't know eurorack they're just a few dollars)

https://moogmusicsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000...

Isn't the DFAM eurorack compatable? I seem to recall being able to take it out of its case and plug a 12pin into it and it just works.

Yeah, but compared to their modules, it’s enormous. It would be a huge part of my case. And for the functionality it provides, it doesn’t really need to be that big. It has a great interface and it’s beautiful, but eurorack modules tend to pack their functionality into a tighter package. And I could imagine that if they put their minds to it, they could create smaller, more tightly focused modules than the semi-modular instruments that they tend to create.

It's kind of unfortunate that eurorack cases and power supplies tend to be so expensive. My approach is to use cheap Meanwell supplies (a pair of RS-35-12s wired in bipolar configuration rather than the more common RT-65b) and laser cut more racks out of birch ply when I need more space, but if I was paying full retail price for rack space I would probably be using much smaller modules, and fewer of them.

(This is my most recent design: http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/84hp-rack-2row-slantback.svg -- the parts are made by running two jobs on the same file, always cutting red and alternating between cutting purple and blue. Turns out 3mm screws work fine in plywood if you can get the hole size just right.)

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