Best Music Tech 2024: Top Synths & Production Gear Reviewed
Hardware synths dominated 2024 with generative sequencing as the defining feature, from Moog's Labyrinth to Elektron's Digitakt II and Logic Pro 11's AI.
Hardware Synths Reclaim 2024 as Generative Sequencing Becomes the Year's Defining Feature
Hardware releases dominated 2024's innovation cycle, with generative sequencing emerging as the year's unifying design principle. Moog's Labyrinth anchored the trend at £519, pairing two generative quantisable sequencers with West Coast-style filtering—a feature set that rippled across price brackets. The £799 Korg multi/poly scaled multi-timbral architecture to 60 voices, while UDO's Super Gemini pushed 20-voice polyphony to £3,388, bracketing the year's ambition from accessible to flagship.
Elektron's Digitakt II doubled the original's eight-track limit to sixteen, narrowing the capability gap with the Octatrack and intensifying speculation around the long-overdue Octatrack III. Teenage Engineering's OP-XY compressed a 64-step sequencer, multiple synth engines, sampler, and effects into a portable form factor with integrated monitoring—representative of 2024's density-over-simplicity ethos.
Even software reflected the sequencing pivot: Logic Pro 11's AI additions—Stem Splitter, Session Players, chord arranging—positioned generative assistance as workflow infrastructure rather than novelty, mirroring hardware's embrace of algorithmic composition at the pattern level.
Why This Year's Gear Matters More Than the AI Panic Suggests
AI's 2024 integration mirrors sampling's 1980s trajectory: feared as displacement, ultimately generative of new production methods. Apple Logic Pro 11 delivered the year's most concrete implementation—Stem Splitter and Session Players function as assistive tools rather than replacement technologies, echoing how samplers expanded rather than eliminated session work. Caribou's use of AI-written vocals on Honey represents a creative endpoint, not a production mandate.
The hardware market's emphasis on generative sequencing suggests designers prioritized human-machine collaboration over automation. Elektron's Digitakt II doubling track count to 16 and Teenage Engineering's OP-XY embedding a 64-step sequencer both expand real-time performance capability. This aligns with multi-timbral expansion across the price spectrum—where generative routing matters more than voice count alone.
The panic conflates automation with elimination. Session Players generate MIDI sketches, not finished arrangements. Stem separation accelerates remixing workflows without replacing mixing decisions. Tools compound creative capacity when they reduce technical friction rather than impose aesthetic outcomes.
