Behringer DeepMind 12

The good:

The keybed is great, same keybed as the OB-6. Good feel even though I prefer the stiffer yamaha keybeds. Aftertouch has a controllable range.

Voice calibration is dead easy. VCF tuning may need occasional calibration if you use self-resonance for bell sounds, but this is a quick process.

There's very little menu diving. The most common controls are on the panel, and the most common options are on the first page of the menu. Lots of thought has gone into this and the result is easy to use.

Modulation is easy to set up. Hit mod button, pick mod slot, hold down mod button, nudge the source, nudge the destionation, adjust depth and done.

Envelopes have retrig. No note sequencer, but the arpeggiator is flexible and the control sequencer is useful. Control sequences can't be saved and shared across patches AFAIK, but arpeggio patterns can.

Preset management via the app is okay. Not the best, but far more convenient than faffing about with sysex.

The bad:

The second oscillator doesn't do a saw wave. In practice you can deal with this by using two voices in unison. This means the DM12 is definitely the one to get over the DM6, so you can still have six voice polyphony.

The volume of the patches is a bit all over the place, and you can't store main volume per patch, only VCA volume, which in turn changes the character of the sound. Volume can range 15dB or more between patches. Luckily the front panel volume knob is conveniently placed on the left hand control section.

The sound:

The bass sounds aren't the beefiest, you need to find a sweet spot to get truly nasty bass sounds. However, pads, arps and plucks are easy to make and sound great. Creating patches is a ton of fun and the sounds are inspiring. Most of the built-in patches are a bit naff, but if you know anything about subtractive synthesis it's dead easy to dive in and start building your own library.

There's really little to complain about DeepMind, for sub-1000 price, it's feature packed and exceptionally good quality. Even though it seems basic on the surface, it's actually extremely sophisticated, even if a bit convoluted, once you delve deep onto menus hidden behind edit buttons. My only gripe would be, that - in my opinion - designers focused a bit too much onto effect section, because with it shut off, it sounds dull and uninviting.

Pros:
True 12-voice polyphony, configurable as several unisono modes, several poly modes, sostenuto (think CS80) with dynamic panning. Rock solid, but still analog.
Deep modulation matrix with dozens of modulation sources and destinations.
Really nice sounding filter.
4-block effect processor.
Arpeggiator and step-sequencer.
Aftertouch.

Cons:
The second oscillator a bit finnicky and weird sounding - would trade waveshaper for PWM. Also: only two waveforms on the first.
Only two LFOs.
Menu- and page- driven interface, a lot of advanced functions are hidden and not readily visible. Main screen gimmicky and not helpful.

Overall it is a well featured poly synth, considering it's cost and you have a lot of options for shaping the sound.

Things I did not liked:
- using a 50 ohm Headphone I had a constant 5kHz. Using line output and an audio interface, setting the stage gain right this was not so evident.
- using the Network WIFI had a strange drone noise in the headphone. Using line output it was not so evident.
- the dynamic led lights on the mod and pitch made a static noise when they lit up (turning permanent on or off the light solved the noise).
- the pitch wheel had more than I am used to free play between the spring points.
- I had to tune it once a week

Pros:
- you can create a lot of sounds and apply modulation on those, and a huge array of triggering configurations
- it has 12 voices, so unison and detune sounds good
- Using effects with moderation adds great sounding
- The keys I found them decent (better than my old M-Audio midi controller) but there are some Midi Controllers with better keybed
- A dedicated Filter Envelope Controls (instead of switching between VCA and Filter) would be useful

I was a bit dubious about buying the Deepmind at first; It's my second hardware synth that I've bought. The first being the Crave! I was impressed by how good that was for the money, which is why I decided to go for the DeepMind as well.

If you're after a decent sounding poly then this is a great option in the price-range. Don't expect the deep, rich lows of a Moog or other more expensive synths, but for plucky leads, smooth pads this is just what you need. The FX is also very nice, especially the Juno-esq chorus and the reverbs.

I still have to properly delve into the App to create my own presets etc from scratch on the PC. The screen on the unit itself isn't amazing for this. One thing that is a bit of a pain is not being able to save more banks of sounds on the hardware. For example, I purchased some presets online but I can only save and open them on the PC App as opposed to the hardware, unless I wanted to overwrite the current banks. I didn't want to do that because, tbh the standard presets are amazing.