Does anyone have a good list of small, handheld, battery powered mini synths, grooveboxes, effects and other noise-makers?
I've preordered a Dirtywave M8 which seems like an awesome piece of gear and it's got me really excited at the prospect of using interesting dedicated hardware machines that I can take to the park or mess with on the sofa.
The obvious ones I've come across so far are:
Korg Volca range
Roland mini synths and aira compact ranges
Teenage Engineering OP and POs
But these all seem a little uninteresting to me and just rehashed tiny versions of older gear and/or aimed at lo-fi producers.
Some less obvious ones that have my attention are:
Monome Norns
1010music lemondrop, fireball & razzmatazz (not battery powered but easily powered by a USB powerbank)
Bastl microgranny and kastl
Korg NTS-1
Korg Monotrons
Audiothingies Micromonsta 2 (again not battery powered but can be via powerbank)
I don’t know about the other stuff but the M8 is just mind blowingly great.
For portable versatile stuff like I think you’re looking for theres also the organelle, which seems awesome. Its another teensy based (I think?) beast that runs multiple Pure Data programs simultaneously. That means you can pretty much do anything.
The m8 though, it’s incredible. It’s such a full, polished product. It’s amazing how much power there is in that thing.