Four days, 108,000 visitors, 2,400 exhibitors, 120 countries—this was another record year for Musikmesse, the world's biggest music tradeshow, held every March in Frankfurt, Germany. As always, attending Messe was overwhelming, but now that I've recovered somewhat, I'd like to share some of my favorite products—and people!—that I ran into this year.

(Please note that any prices are listed in Euros. At the time of this writing, the exchange rate was about $1.30 to the Euro.)

Arturia Origin Keyboard

At this year's NAMM show, Arturia introduced the Origin rackmount hardware synthesizer, based on the company's softsynth emulations of the Minimoog, Yamaha CS-80, ARP 2600, Moog Modular, and Sequential Circuits Prophet-VS. At Messe, Arturia announced a keyboard version of this interesting instrument, the Origin Keyboard. Not only can you play each synth model in its original configuration, you can also combine them into an "Origin" patch by connecting different modules from different synths, e.g., ARP oscillators with Minimoog filters and CS-80 envelopes.

Arturia's Origin virtual analog synth in a spiffy keyboard version. Note the 40cm ribbon controller above the bottom two octaves. The control panel folds flat for transport.

The Origin is a welcome alternative to a laptop-based stage setup, and the Origin Keyboard makes for a stage-ready, all-in-one package. The estimated shipment date for the Origin Keyboard is December 2007, and it will be priced at about 3,000 Euros.

John Bowen Synth Design Solaris

The synthesizer designer who, with Dave Smith, brought us the legendary Sequential Circuits Prophet, contributed to the Korg OASYS über-synth, and worked as a developer for Creamware, has presented a new synthesizer called Solaris based on his softsynth by the same name.

The Solaris sports a super-clean front panel layout as well as sounds designed by the man who programmed the classic Prophet-5.

Bowen told me this was the first time he could freely decide an instrument's feature set without being limited by restraints set by corporate management. Indeed, the Solaris truly looks to be a no-compromise instrument.

Sporting 40 knobs and six LCD panels showing the parameters and settings for each knob, the Solaris has the cleanest synth user interface I've seen in a long time. No more stepping through countless menu levels, guessing what a parameter is set to, or artifacts and controller jumps when moving a knob. Just direct, super-intuitive access to the sound's settings.

The sound engine is modular in that you can choose from a number of oscillator types like CEM (Curtis Electromusic), wavetable, or sample playback, and combine these with a number of filters, including Moog and CEM simulations. A few more buzzwords for the synth geeks out there: 96kHz signal processing throughout the synth engine, vector synthesis, eight envelopes, five LFOs, two AM sections, arpeggiator, pattern sequencer... But most important: The Solaris sounds awesome!

John Bowen (right) demonstrating his new synth to an interested member of the press.

The Solaris should ship by the end of the year and cost around 3,000 Euros, putting it up against the current cream of the virtual-analog crop like the Access Virus and Clavia's Nord Lead. Judging from what I saw and heard at Messe, the Solaris may very well give these established synths a run for their money.

Schneider's Büero

In case you're impressed by neither the Origin nor the Solaris, because, for you, only analog synths are real synths, then the Superbooth, presented by Schneider's Büero, will be more to your liking. Since 2000, Superbooth has been the place for smaller, less mainstream synth designers to show off their instruments, and it's easily the most geeky booth at Messe. If you can endure the cacophony resulting from countless modular synths stepping through their precisely machined sequences, you'll see products like Spectral Audio, Doepfer, Cwejman, and Vermona.

The wonders of analog synthesis at the Superbooth.

One of the main attractions was Doepfer's "wall of modules." The A-100 system isn't as massive as a Moog Modular, but it does have more creatively wacky modules than you can shake a pitch stick at!

A grown-up specimen of the Doepfer A-100 Analog Modular System.

For a complete list of the instruments presented at Superbooth, see the Werke-Liste.