Superbooth 2025: Mad Sound Factory Drop, a wild patchable analog Synthesizer/groovebox with banana plugs, is available now.
At Superbooth, you don’t always wonder if there’s something new, but also whether a recently announced synth is now finished. In many cases, that’s the case. Mad Sound Factory is no exception.
The Armenian company introduced the Drop last year at Superbooth 2024 an analog groovebox controlled by banana cables. Drop is available now for $825/750€ + shipping from the official website and retailers like Perfect Circuit for $949.99.
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Article from May 22, 2024
Superbooth 24: Mad Sound Factory has introduced Drop, a new wild, patchable analog Synthesizer/groovebox with banana plugs.
I’m probably repeating myself, but there were tons of new synthesizers and other musical instruments at Superbooth 24, with classic and experimental ideas.
Mad Sound Factory, with their all-new Drop groovebox, is certainly one of the latter
Mad Sound Factory Drop
Drop is the name of a new fascinating, wild analog Synthesizer/groovebox. Thanks to the special analog engine, it can be many things: a Synthesizer, a banging techno groovebox, an ambient drone generator…
Visually, the instrument is beautiful and very eye-catching. The silver knobs harmonize perfectly with the black case with the drawings. Inside the synth, it is just as playful.
The Drop’s analog core consists of a tone and a noise part. The tone part has an analog oscillator with an FM option and a 2-octave sub-oscillator. There is also a click oscillator for percussive sounds.
A decay envelope is routed to the FM and VCA. Mad Sound Factory promises that the VCA is an old-style, extra-punchy VCA.
Then, the noise part hosts six types of analog noise/harmonics generators with FM paired with a built-in punchy decay envelope. The VCA in the noise section has an extra portion of craziness with its Mad VCA feedback mode.
A mixer brings all four signals together. You can further shape the signals from here using an old-school soft lowpass filter with adaptive resonance and analog saturation. The latter is the “Ordinary Magic Bee Jelly Tech” designed by Zvukofor Sounds Labs.
Do you need more crunchy sounds? No problem! The output section includes discrete germanium NOS transistors for an extra analog touch.
No Traditional Clock/Sequencer
A special feature of the Mad Sound Factory Drop is that it has neither a traditional clock nor a sequencer. There are two LFOs. The first does the job. It works as a clock oscillator with a divider for triggering up to audio rates.
LFO2 also handles audio rate frequencies, has triangle and pulse waveforms, and can be used in three frequency ranges. The great fun begins with patching Drop. Not in the Eurorack way but with Banana cables. A bit of fresh synth air to the main Eurorack semi-modular synths.
The front panel has a variety of inputs and outputs. You can find independent outputs for the clock divisions, frequency modulation for the LFO, and more.
On the back side, you get a USB-C port to power the unit, also with a power bank, an on/off switch, a headphones socket, a line out, and more.
First Impression
For me, it’s certainly one of the highlights of the Superbooth 24. Mad Sound Factory has created a very fascinating, crazy analog groovebox with which you awaken your inner experimental desire I dig the user interface of it. It looks super tasty. Great job.
Mad Sound Factory Drop will be available in +/- 3 months for 750€ (estimated) with tax.
More information here: Mad Sound Factory (MSF)
