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  • Electronic Musician

    Novation Circuit Tracks

    May 18, 2021 6 minutes
    By Si Truss

    $500 novation.com

    Strengths

    + The new MIDI tracks are an excellent addition

    + Hardware is now lighter, more portable and better-equipped

    + MicroSD card makes it far easier to swap out sounds

    Limitations

    - 4hr battery life is fairly short

    - Finding and recalling patches without a screen can be tricky

    Back in 2015 when Novation released the original Circuit, we were immediately impressed. For a battery-powered instrument priced at just $330, this digital groovebox was remarkably well-equipped, boasting two independent polysynths, a four-track sampled drum machine, send effects and a nifty step-sequencing workflow. It’s a credit to Novation that, even given this strong starting point, Circuit has only improved since through a steady stream of firmware updates.

    What reservations we had at launch mostly focussed on areas where Circuit felt a little shallow; synth design was limited to adjusting unlabeled macro knobs, and there was no user sample upload. Both of these issues were rectified with the roll-out of Novation’s browser-based Components app, which includes a full editor for the synth and sample

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