There’s something fantastically totally different about SuperBooth.
The primary time I got here right here was again in 2019, and I had such a marvellous time that I went house and informed each gear firm I knew, “It’s a must to go to this.” Then, naturally, everybody began coming, and one way or the other I didn’t make it again for years. So strolling as much as SuperBooth 2026 felt reasonably particular.
This isn’t NAMM. This isn’t a large company commerce present filled with huge cubicles and blinding LED partitions. That is Berlin. You wander round and discover boutique synth makers, cable firms, legendary professional audio designers, guitar pedal geniuses, headphone specialists, and folks fairly actually constructing the way forward for digital music on a desk in entrance of you.
That’s the magic of it.
One minute you might be speaking to Heat Audio a few new reamper with Cinemag transformers, silent amp recording as much as 50 watts, and intelligent routing between line degree, guitar pedals, amps, and studio gear. The following minute you’re looking at stereo DI packing containers, 87-style entry-level microphones, fuzz pedals with NOS transistors, and a phaser that makes you instantly wish to get one again to the studio.
The Mutation Phasor II significantly stood out. Wealthy, chewy, classic modulation with all of the motion and musicality you need from a correct analogue phaser.
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Then you definitely flip a nook and there’s Audeze.
I’ve used LCD-X headphones for years, and so they have all the time been a type of instruments I can put on for hours with out feeling like the highest finish is taking my head off. Nevertheless, the brand new LCD-5S felt like a distinct form of critical. Lighter, extra open within the midrange, and with that little bit of additional presence across the snare and vocal space that mastering engineers usually appear to like. They don’t seem to be cheap at $4,500, nevertheless they’re additionally competing with the fact of high-end screens, room therapy, and the area wanted to make all of that work correctly.
Audeze additionally had the LCD-S20, which I’ve been utilizing as a alternative for the previous Sony 7506 kind of workflow. Closed again, sensible, a little bit extra ahead, nice for monitoring and filming, and rather more snug sonically than the same old “session headphone that bites your head off” state of affairs. For these of us filming with microphones open within the room, that basically issues.
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One of many large highlights was Chase Bliss and Digital Audio Experiments. The brand new Chase Bliss Massive Time is a splendidly mad Automatone delay impressed by Eighties rack delays, full with motorised sliders, presets, preamp color, compression, limiting, saturation, stereo widening, diffusion, and a few fantastically damaged behaviour. The entire idea is good, as an alternative of simply copying an Echoplex or one other tape delay, it leans into the rack world, Lexicon PCM42 model weirdness, miscalibrated limiters, pumping repeats, crunchy suggestions paths, and delays that really feel alive beneath your fingers.
That’s all the time what I like about pedals like this. You play one thing easy, two notes, possibly a chord, and immediately it appears like a report.
Digital Audio Experiments additionally had some unbelievable pedals of their very own. The Halberd was loud, clear, uncooked, and never making an attempt to be a Tube Screamer, Bluesbreaker, Rat, or anything apparent. The Prismatic Wall was significantly inspiring, basically the previous studio trick of utilizing a grand piano as a resonant reverb tank, changed into a pedal. Fallacious in all the precise methods. I like a little bit of wrongness.
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API Audio introduced the small-format console world into the SuperBooth ambiance with the BOX console. Eight basic API mic pres, 16 channels of analogue summing, a centre part, compression based mostly round linked 527-style circuits, inserts, talkback, auxes, and 500 sequence slots. It’s a correct API workflow in a smaller footprint.
I’ve a protracted historical past with API. We minimize an enormous quantity of The Fray’s second album on one of many early 1608 consoles, and what all the time struck me was how logical every part felt. Some consoles make you combat them. API layouts have all the time made sense to me. When you perceive one channel, you perceive the entire thing. That could be a large deal when you’re transferring quick and making an attempt to maintain the artistic vitality within the room.
Then got here Groove Synthesis, which was a type of “SuperBooth solely” moments the place you immediately end up standing in entrance of one thing that appears like a number of devices without delay.
The place to begin is the PPG Wave, that glassy, barely odd, fantastically digital sound that outlined a lot music. Depeche Mode, Propaganda, these fantastic 80s textures that also really feel futuristic. Nevertheless, Groove Synthesis have taken that idea far past nostalgia. Traditional analogue waveforms, PPG-style wavetables, fashionable high-resolution wavetables, sampling, modulation between the totally different engines, sequencing, results, a number of outputs, and an MPC-style sequencer.
What I cherished was the reason of why the PPG sounded the best way it did. Not simply “aliasing” as a catch-all phrase, nevertheless the imaging created by the constraints of the unique reminiscence and playback system. Stunning rubbish on the prime, harmonically associated to the observe, and completely a part of the magic.
Groove Synthesis third Wave Wavetable Synth: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/enNK3D
Groove Synthesis third Wave Desktop: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/X4NY04
Groove Synthesis third Wave 8m Synth: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/n4yLro
That’s the spirit of SuperBooth. You don’t simply hear the sound, you get the story behind why the sound exists.
Little Labs have been there too, and Jonathan Little was displaying one thing very thrilling: a Nineteen Seventies hi-fi impressed EQ. That instantly hit me as a result of, like so many people, I grew up with these previous receivers, the loudness button pushed in, the tone controls cranked, and data sounding bigger than life. Bodily Graffiti by means of a 70s hi-fi with the loudness button on just isn’t the identical expertise as listening completely flat on a contemporary system.
Jonathan has taken inspiration from these previous Japanese receiver EQ circuits, the Baxandall tone stacks, variable loudness controls, inductor-based midrange, excessive and low cross filters, and turned it into one thing for the studio. Correct relay bypass, detailed analogue design, through-hole elements the place it issues, and the same old Little Labs consideration to element. It’s precisely the form of concept that makes you surprise why extra folks haven’t carried out it already.
There have been additionally splendidly area of interest discoveries in all places. Janko Design Keyboard Undertaking have been displaying their fashionable tackle the Jankó keyboard structure, the place chords and scales retain the identical form in each key, very similar to transferring a barre chord on guitar. As a guitarist, that makes speedy sense. It takes a minute to your mind to regulate visually, nevertheless as soon as it clicks, it feels extremely logical. For music concept, schooling, and ergonomic enjoying, it’s a fascinating thought.
Then there have been the makers behind the makers. Davall Gears, who make knobs and management elements for firms like SSL and Allen & Heath. KMK Options with low-profile, heavy-duty cables and intelligent connectors. These are the types of firms you would possibly by no means usually see at an enormous commerce present, nevertheless they’re a part of the rationale our favorite gear feels the best way it feels.
Sifam Controls: https://www.sifam.co.uk/
That’s what I like about SuperBooth.
It isn’t simply the completed product. It’s the ecosystem. The inventors. The small firms. The obsessive particulars. The folks making the knobs, the cables, the connectors, the unusual new devices, the pedals that sound a little bit damaged in precisely the precise means.
We additionally ran into associates, talked synths, Mellotrons, 808s, previous touring nightmares, Berlin, Hansa Studios, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, and the enjoyment of devices that truly keep in tune. There’s something fantastic about listening to individuals who have lived by means of all of that historical past getting enthusiastic about new gear that also has a little bit of the previous insanity in it.
SuperBooth 2026 jogged my memory why I cherished it the primary time.
It’s artistic, nerdy, musical, barely chaotic, and full of people that care deeply about sound. Not simply specs. Not simply options. Sound.
And that, finally, is why we do that.
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing.
