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Synth Waves: Polyeight, MiniFreak 49 and Year-End Polysynths

Behringer's Polyeight goes on preorder, Arturia ships the MiniFreak 49, and Waldorf and UDO add compact polysynths: what each offers before year-end.

November 1, 20265 min readMusic. Culture. Creation.

Synth Waves is our column about synthesizers, sound design and the people who make electronic music. Each edition looks at what's new in the synth world and what it means for producers.

Last time we looked inside five live rigs and promised a round-up of the polysynths arriving before the end of the year. October delivered more than expected: a five-year-old Behringer project finally went on preorder, Arturia moved its hybrid engine onto a bigger keyboard, Waldorf built a compact machine for strings and pads, and UDO announced a desktop version of its newest synth.

Here is what each one offers, what it costs where a price has been published, and who it is for.

Analog and hybrid keyboards

Behringer Polyeight

Behringer first showed the Polyeight as a prototype in April 2021. In October 2026 it published the finished product page, and preorders opened on October 28. It is an eight-voice analog polysynth based on the Korg Polysix from 1981, which had six voices.

According to Behringer, each voice keeps the Polysix structure: one VCO with saw, square and pulse-width waveforms, a sub-oscillator, and a 2044-style lowpass filter. The chorus, phaser and ensemble BBD effects sit in the signal path, as they did on the original. New additions include:

Unison, double and poly modes, for eight-VCO leads, four-voice layered sounds or eight single-VCO voices.
A 49-key semi-weighted keyboard, an arpeggiator, chord memory and polyphonic portamento.
An eight-slot modulation matrix, a noise generator, 256 program memories and an LCD with encoder.

One detail to check before ordering: Behringer's page lists channel aftertouch, while MusicRadar and some other early reports describe it as polyphonic. MusicRadar gives the price as £429 / $699, and Synth Anatomy reports a Thomann preorder price of €519. No shipping date has been published.

Arturia MiniFreak 49

Arturia released the MiniFreak 49 on October 20. The voice architecture is the same as the 37-key MiniFreak: six voices, two digital engines with 31 oscillator modes, and an analog filter on every voice. The larger body adds features the original does not have:

49 full-size semi-weighted keys with velocity and aftertouch, plus aluminium pitch and mod wheels.
A pressure-sensitive XYZ touch matrix for modulation, macros and preset browsing.
Audio-rate filter FM from either oscillator, and voice panning to spread the six voices across the stereo field.

Arturia lists it at $849, against $649 for the 37-key model. Its comparison table also shows fewer factory presets (350 against 420), with compatibility for existing MiniFreak presets.

Desktop and compact

Waldorf Crema

Waldorf released Crema at the end of October, as reported by Sonicstate on October 29. It builds on the Streichfett string machine and has two engines:

Texture, with 24 sound types across strings, 17 Waldorf wavetables and six FM types. Strings mode is fully polyphonic; the wavetable and FM modes play 12 voices.
Lines, an eight-voice virtual-analog engine with two detunable oscillators, based on the Streichfett Solo section.

Every sound passes through the Streichfett Ensemble, followed by a dual effects section with a shimmer reverb. Crema supports MPE, runs on USB-C power, offers 360 preset slots and weighs 0.9 kg. Waldorf's shop lists it at €345.45 including German VAT.

UDO DMNO ON

UDO Audio announced the DMNO ON, a desktop version of its DMNO synthesizer, in early October. It has eight voices and is two-part multitimbral, with two complete engines that combine FPGA digital oscillators with UDO's analog stereo filter.

Its Play Modes decide how the two engines work together: alongside split and layer, there are Random, Chaos and Cascade modes. The unit has a 24-bit USB audio interface, CV/gate and an external audio input with an envelope follower. Two optional modules, ONM-1 and ONM-2, add hands-on synth and effects control. Synthtopia reports a price of $2,850, with availability "soon".

Hampshire Electronics Janus and Apollo

For Eurorack users, Synth News covered two digital polyphonic modules from Hampshire Electronics in mid-October. Janus (10 HP) and Apollo (19 HP, with MIDI) each have two independent eight-voice engines, twelve synthesis types, a chord engine and an arpeggiator. Launch prices were £219 and £329 for the first 25 units, and both showed as sold out at the time of that report.

Voice counts and status as published by the makers and by Synth News, Synthtopia and Sonicstate, October 2026.

And the Boutique side

We covered Roland's JUPITER-08 in October. As a reminder: it defaults to the original's eight voices and can be expanded to 32, and it comes with the K-25m keyboard dock. Roland's Japanese press release gives November 7, 2026 as the release date in Japan, while US coverage lists it as available now at $549.99. Its sibling n/vision, the first wavetable synth in the Boutique range, featured in our granular and wavetable edition.

What this means for producers

Eight voices has become the common baseline. Five of the six instruments in the table have eight voices in at least one engine or mode, and the budget end now includes an analog eight-voice keyboard. The differences lie elsewhere:

Character or flexibility. The Polyeight follows one classic circuit closely. The MiniFreak 49 and DMNO ON give you two engines that can process or interrupt each other.
Pads as their own category. Crema is not trying to be a general polysynth. It does strings and pads, and leaves leads to the Lines engine.
Expression costs extra. The MiniFreak 49 costs $200 more than its 37-key version, mostly for the keyboard, the touch matrix and filter FM.

Before buying, check that sound demos and reviews match the spec sheet. On the Polyeight in particular, wait for confirmation of which type of aftertouch the production units have.

Coming up in Synth Waves

Next time we will look at Behringer's open-firmware hardware, including the Kick sampler, and what it means when manufacturers invite users to rewrite their instruments. Tell us what you are waiting for at @xdripiawaves.

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