A new hardware instrument from Poland has been drawing attention since its July announcement. SinTH2, developed by a team of four led by Tomasz Rożek, is a large digital synthesizer with 60-voice polyphony, five oscillators, and a front panel covered in controls. For the MPE community the interesting question is not what it can do, but how it will respond to expression. The honest answer today is that nobody outside the team knows yet.
What has been announced
According to Synth Anatomy's coverage, the SinTH2 offers:
- Engine: digital, 60 voices, with three oscillator blocks totalling five oscillators, each able to use classic synthesis or sample content, plus a noise oscillator.
- Sound library: about 3 GB of internal sounds and waveforms.
- Filter: an 18 dB multimode filter (low-pass, band-pass, high-pass).
- Modulation: four voice LFOs, a global pitch LFO, and three ADSR envelopes.
- Effects: a multi-FX section with drive, ensemble, phaser, delay, reverb, and EQ, plus a stereo input.
- Sequencer: a 16-step polyphonic sequencer with motion recording for all knobs, and up to 1920 patch slots.
- Controls: 120 potentiometers, nine encoders, 36 buttons, four OLED displays, a joystick, and a Fatar keyboard.
- Connections: balanced XLR outputs, a stereo FX input, and 5-pin MIDI.
Pricing is listed as to be announced, and the maker says the synth is "coming soon" without a date. A desktop version is also in development, and buyers can discuss layout, colours, and software options with the team.
The MPE gap
Here is the important part: MPE support has not been mentioned. The coverage only says the keyboard has, in the author's words, "hopefully polyphonic aftertouch". That is speculation, not a feature list.
It is a distinction we come back to often. Polyphonic aftertouch and MPE solve related problems in different ways. Polyphonic aftertouch sends pressure per key on a single MIDI channel. MPE assigns each note its own channel, which also gives you per-note pitch bend and a slide dimension. Our explainer on why new synths ship without MPE goes into the details. A synth can support one and not the other.
A Fatar keybed is a respected, widely used choice, and many Fatar-based instruments ship with channel aftertouch only. Whether the SinTH2 keyboard reads pressure per key is a hardware question the maker has to answer.
Questions worth asking the maker
If you are tempted by an instrument of this ambition, ask before you commit:
- Does it receive MPE? That is, does it accept notes on multiple channels and apply pitch bend, pressure, and slide per note?
- Does the keyboard send polyphonic aftertouch or only channel pressure?
- Can the modulation matrix use per-voice pressure as a source, and can it be routed to filter, pitch, or amplitude?
- What happens to the 60 voices under MPE? Voice allocation matters when each note carries its own expression data.
The last point is easy to overlook. A high voice count is reassuring, but it is the way a synth handles note stealing and channel rotation that decides whether a dense expressive passage stays musical. Our guide to voice allocation and polyphony in MPE covers what to listen for.
Our take
The SinTH2 looks like a serious, hands-on instrument with a lot of sound-design depth. Its fate in the MPE world depends entirely on answers that have not been given. Follow the official site for updates, and treat any claim of MPE or polyphonic aftertouch as unconfirmed until the specifications say so.
Key takeaways: 60 voices and a rich feature set; price and release date unknown; MPE and polyphonic aftertouch not confirmed.
Sources: Synth Anatomy, SinTH2 official site.