Sonicware expands its LIVEN series with the Evoke, a new ambient Synthesizer with a newly developed acoustronic flux oscillator and granular FX.
Update: Sonicware LIVEN is available now for 279€ at Thomann.
LIVEN from the young Japanese company Sonicware are portable synthesizers with creative, fun engines. I initially described them as bloated Korg Volcas, but they’ve since become powerful portable synths. Not only are they superior to the Volcas technically, but they are also superior in terms of numbers.
The Volcas are at a standstill, while the LIVEN lineup continues to grow. The latest addition to the Sonicware portable synths is the LIVEN Evoke, an ambient synth featuring a unique synthesis engine.
Sonicware LIVEN Evoke
The hardware is identical to that of the other LIVEN synthesizers, with the exception that the color has been adapted specifically for the synth. The development team around Dr Yu Endo came up with something special for the new synth.
Sonicware LIVEN Evoke is an ambient generator/synthesizer based on sound layering. Starting with a basic track created using its chord feature, layer sounds from other tracks, and apply in the end a granular effect processor to explore soothing and immersive sonorities.
The unique feature of the synth is its newly developed engine, which utilizes an acoustronic flux oscillator. What the f…? Yes, that’s what I also thought when reading the news. In simple terms, it synthesizes the beautiful transitions of sonority found in acoustic instruments.
In long and nerdy: first, the acoustronic flux oscillator slices the sounds of 34 built-in acoustic instruments into 256 time fragments. Then it uses a backtide modulation to reverse them like an ebbing tide and add an undulating motion.
Sonicware LIVEN Evoke also features a 22-wave sub-oscillator, each built on 128 harmonic tables. It can creatively blend the sounds into the AF oscillator and can be pitched over a +/- 2 octave range. In the subs, you can also find two types of generated white noise with different filters.
Chords + Musical Granular
Another essential part of the new Evoke Synthesizer is its chord engine, which comes with 16 chord styles, allowing you to play chords effortlessly with just one finger on any white key.
It offers chords in various scales, including diatonic chords, and also features chord-pad styles. They deliver pleasant progressions by simply tapping keys in sequence. This sounds like a straightforward and fun-to-play chord engine.
Once the sounds are layered in the desired way, they go into a sophisticated granular processor. Grain FX slices your phrases into micro-grains and transforms and reconstructs them in a variety of fascinating ways.
You can adjust the granular engine’s parameters to suit your needs, including grain shape, time warp, spatial position, and playback method. Additionally, the grain pitch can be harmonized using octaves, perfect fifths, and various musical scales, while buffer sizes from 8th notes to a full bar sync
Granular processors often tend to produce well-crafted more atonal drones and noisescapes. This appears to me to be a distinctly musical direction for a granular processor. Each track has its own grain FX send level. One plus point goes to the option that allows you to apply the effect to the stereo signal from the line input.
All these settings can be programmed and saved into 16 presets that can be controlled with two grain FX knobs. To add even more ambient sphere, it has 10 different reverb types, including a new “Mirage” algorithm. You can also combine the reverb and grain FX to achieve unique effects like shimmer reverbs.
Sonicware LIVEN Evoke also features the same 4-track sequencer as the Ambient Ø, allowing you to record both your performances and parameter changes.
Connectivity
Like the other Sonicware LIVEN synths, the I/O is on the interface. It offers 3.5mm stereo line inputs and outputs, a headphone socket, sync in/out, full DIN MIDI in/out, and a power supply input. Alternatively, you can power it with 6 AA batteries.
First Impression
The LIVEN Evoke is another exciting and fun portable Synthesizer designed for ambient soundscape generation. It’s sure to be a great companion to last year’s LIVEN Ambient Ø, which follows a similar direction.
It would have been interesting if you could swap out these built-in acoustic sounds and use custom timbres using the acoustronic synthesis.
Sonicware LIVEN Evoke is now available for pre-order at $ 239/€279, with the first batch of 100 units set to ship from June 30, 2025.
More information here: Sonicware
Available at my partner
Thomann
i love the japanese
This company gives real innovation to the gear world. The Ambient 0 was kind of different and this one is even more. AND all this for little money. Absolutely amazing!!!
I really want to love their devices, the Ambient 0 was gorgeous. But their adherence to sysex for everything is maddening! There’s a modern computer in there. It MUST be USB capable. Trying to download firmware updates or save samples at the speed of an early 80s tape based computer is a deal breaker for me.
i guess firmware updates are not that big of a deal :)…i understand saving samples,but still cant see it as dealbreaker.
Great device, great price. What else is there to say?
I really like this company’s products. I wish they would go a little further, like adding up to 37 or 32 keys to this type of device, with pitch bend and modulation wheel, just a little bigger, with a USB port just for power and saving projects, samples, patterns, etc.
With a multi-mode oscillator per track, based on what they’ve already done, a hi-fi sampler, a lofi sampler, this granular sampler, VA with wavefolder, PCM, FM, with much more RAM, more internal SSD memory for samples and PCM banks, and more live performance-oriented multi-effects like the SP404 and MACROS to control selected synth and sampler parameters on the fly with one hand, while the other controls the multi-effects, this would be one of the best and easiest-to-use grooveboxes ever made !
I bet they can do it foor just the double of the price !
lol you’re bonkers. That would cost the same price as a computer
I really wish he would let us swap out firmwares. Even if he sold them for like $50 or $75 on his website.
Got the Lofi 12, then the Lofi 12xt, now the Lofi 12 just sits. I’d pay to turn it into an Ambient0. Or if he doesn’t want to cannibalize new unit sales, release the older firmwares. Let me turn it into an XFM or Bass+Beats.
sounds good but can’t get past how terrible all their instruments look. Take their CyDrum for example…so cheap and ugly looking. Reminds me of a zip disk drive from the 90’s.
comparing this box to a Volca is nuts. I have both and this is light years beyond.
When the first LIVEN was released in 2020 or before, it was the time of the Volcas. The first looked to me like a oversized Volca
as they point to the same compact music making market. In the meantime, we know that hey are offer more than Volcas 😉