Melbourne Instruments Delia: The amazing hybrid is Now Available!
4,6 / 5,0 | 
One of the standout synths of Superbooth24, the amazing Melbourne Instruments Delia is now available to buy!
[12 June 2024] This year’s Superbooth was ridiculous with so many incredible-sounding synths on offer. One of the absolute best was Melbourne Instruments Delia, a keyboard instrument from the team behind the Nina – you know, the one with the motorized knobs.
Delia has the same drone motor-infused knobs as Nina but offers a different synth engine. I won’t get too deep into the specifics (you can read about them below) but in short, it’s a six-voice hybrid polyphonic synth with four digital oscillators per voice (including virtual analog, wavetable, and more), analog lowpass Ladder filter with 12 and 24db/Oct slopes per voice, stereo VCA, lots of modulation and two stereo effects processors. And it sounds amazing. I swear, these are the days of the hybrid poly.
Melbourne Instruments Delia is now available from Thomann*.
Melbourne Instruments Delia Is More Exciting Than We Hoped
[17 May 2024] Earlier this week I posted about a leak on Instagram showing a new keyboard synth from Melbourne Instruments (below). We now have confirmation that it is indeed called Delia. It’s related to Nina, the company’s tabletop synth with the famous motorized knobs. While Delia shares some similarities with Nina, it most definitely is not just a Nina with a 49-key Fatar keybed.
4 Digital Oscillators, Analogue, and Digital Filters
Delia is bi-timbral with four digital oscillators per voice. These include virtual analogue modelled VCOs, wavetable, and noise/XOR/external audio. There are six analogue voice circuits with a 12-note mode that retains four oscillators per voice (but maxes out filters at six).
The filter section is rather unique. It starts with an analogue low-pass Ladder filter with selectable 12dB and 24dB slopes plus a three-stage analogue overdrive. There’s also a VA high-pass Ladder filter. Both high- and low-pass filters are resonant with separate controls, meaning you can dial in bandpass-like vowel sounds. In fact, you can link the two together for bandpass and even notch filter control.
Analogue VCA and Wild Modulation
The VCAs are 4-Quadrant Analog (carried over from Nina), with three LFOs (sine, triangle, square, ramp up, ramp down, random) and three envelopes (VCA, VCF, aux).
Delia also has a MOD Mode which works in concert with the moving knobs, motorizing the modulation matrix setup. “As you move between the 20 modulation sources, every knob changes position to display its modulation amount,” the product site says. “No need to tweak the panel every time you switch sources or destinations, no matter how many modulations or slots are active.”
Mighty Morphing Delia
Delia also has a Morph function (like Nina), which lets you sweep between two different parameters. Additionally, Morph can be a mod destination, giving you control over the change via aftertouch, mod wheel and expression. Neat!
Other features include two digital effects processors with delay, chorus and reverb which can be run in series or parallel. There’s also sequencer phrase looping and overdubbing.
It doesn’t seem to have polyphonic aftertouch/MPE, unfortunately, but it does look really cool. It sounds nice too – check out the video below.
- Delia product page
[11 May 2024] Yesterday we told you about Delia, an upcoming synth that showed up on maker Melbourne Instruments’ Instagram Stories. Today we have some more information on Delia, this time from Tonelab.
“Here we have a new Nina-like synth but, this time, with Fatar Keybed… and a new engine too!” Tonelab said on their Instagram.
According to the post, Delia will have not three oscillators like Nina but four. Whether they will all be analogue or partly wavetable is not mentioned. As for polyphony, it’s set to have six voices “with (a) 12-voice option via analog filter circuits,” the post says.
Other features mentioned are optical rotary knobs with recall, true analogue filters and stereo VCA, three LFOs, three envelopes and the 49-key Fatar keybed. Also: “the ‘Morph’ knob, found on the Nina, makes a return!” Yay!
No mention of MPE/polyphonic aftertouch but hopefully all will be revealed at Superbooth.
Melbourne Instruments Delia
[10 May 2024] Ahead of Superbooth24, Melbourne Instruments have teased the Delia. It showed up on the company’s Instagram Stories with a little audio and text saying it would be at Superbooth Berlin.
While there’s no real information at this time, the smart money is on Delia being a keyboard version of Nina (which also appears in the rear of the video). Nina, as you may know, is the desktop synth with the motorized knobs. It wowed us at NAMM in 2022 – and now Delia looks to do the same at Superbooth later this month.
What’s Different From Nina?
Nina is a 12-voice hybrid polysynth with two analogue oscillators and a wavetable one. It’s mostly famous for its proprietary, motorized knobs, which are based on drone technology.
Looking at the photo of Delia (named after Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, perhaps?), we can see that there are fewer potentiometers than on Nina. It could be that Melbourne Instruments has reduced the amount of hands-on control to bring down the price. Nina is not cheap and adding a four-octave keyboard and larger chassis would certainly increase costs. It’s possible there could be some menu diving involved.
Will It Have Polyphonic Aftertouch?
Nina supports MPE. Adding a keybed implies that Delia could feature polyphonic aftertouch. Considering that Nina is about as famous for its rich sound as it is for having spinning knobs, MPE would be a cool thing to have.
Unfortunately, there are more questions than answers right now. Hopefully, all will be revealed at Superbooth24 on May 16. We’ll have boots on the ground there so come back for updates. I for one can’t wait to hear how Delia sounds.
More about the Melbourne Instruments Delia:
- Melbourne Instruments home page
- All about synthesizers
*This post about the Melbourne Instruments Delia contains affiliate links and/or widgets. When you buy a product via our affiliate partner, we receive a small commission that helps support what we do. Don’t worry, you pay the same price. Thanks for your support!
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