Lava Music caused a glitch in the Matrix a few years back with an oddball carbon-fiber acoustic guitar rocking built-in digital effects. Now the company is looking to reshape the amplification landscape with “the world’s most advanced amp.”
The Lava Studio follows the company’s Genie music maker onto Kickstarter, and was revealed back in July but only went live earlier this month. “With Lava Studio, we wanted to redefine what a desktop amp can be,” said company founder, Louis Lu. “To do so, we built in features to make it more than just a great-sounding amp – it’s a complete creative ecosystem for musicians of all levels. Whether you’re jamming, writing, or just enjoying music, everything you need is right here.”
It kind of combines a desktop guitar amp with digital modelers and multiFX units, along with an interactive learning platform, a recording studio, looper and jam box, and a whole lot more. We have seen similar before from the likes of Orange and Positive Grid, but this one can work all on its own – without you needing to plug in peripherals or squint at your smartphone.
Lava Music
The Studio’s Mac-like magnesium-alloy-clad chassis is home to a 2.1 sound system comprising a 1-inch carbon-fiber woofer and dual tweeters, plus low-latency audio processing thanks to an 800-MHz DSP. There’s an instrument input to the front, which sits next to a headphone jack for private practice, and should you wish to send the output to external gear, stereo line-out ports are included around back.
Things start to break away from your regular desktop modeling amp at the top, where you’ll find a 13.3-inch tablet-like display interface that pivots from flat to angled over 80 degrees for ease of use. The unit runs a proprietary operating system, and has 64 GB of onboard storage that holds the sounds, presets, patches and saved stuff. There’s no microSD expansion here, but we’d assume that the USB-C port could accommodate external SSD storage if needed.
Out of the box, the system boasts more than 30 amp models courtesy of the company’s own lavaAI neural brains –”each trained using advanced algorithms that replicate the tonal nuances of iconic vintage and modern amplifiers, cabinets, and effect pedals with over 99.9% accuracy.”
Lava Music
Musicians can also choose from over 40 effects – from overdrives, distortion/fuzz, analog and stereo delay modules, tremolo and filter wobble, chorus and reverb ambience and more. These virtual stomps and rack-mounts are designed to be tweaked like their real-world counterparts, and up to eight effects can be daisy chained in one go, with easy drag-and-drop repositioning.
If you find yourself needing some backing to get your creative juices flowing, an 8-track looper is included for layering rhythms and melodies. Lava has also baked in hundreds of backing tracks and drum patterns for jamming along to. And when you need to capture your genius, a multi-track digital audio workstation is on hand for your recording and mixing pleasure. The onboard AI can also split instrument and vocal stems from audio files.
Whether you’re new to guitar or just want to brush up your technique or theory, the Studio provides access to video tutorials from top-notch expert instructors as well as Guitar Pro-like interactive tab. Students can loop sections of a song to nail chops before moving on to conquer complete songs, the playback speed can be adjusted to suit, and a metronome is available to ensure you keep time.
This Lava Lesson platform is a subscription service but Kickstarter backers will get US$150 credit to use as they please. The learning library sports 112 courses at launch, with single packages available for $3.99 each and collections running from $9.99 up to $19.99.
Lava Music
Of course, if you just want to sit back a listen to tunes at the end of your day, Bluetooth 5.0 and USC-C connectivity means you can feed in favorites from your go-to source devices.
The “all-in-one music creation and playback powerhouse” is raising funds on Kickstarter right now, where pledges currently start at HK$5,840 (which converts to around US$750) – including free shipping to many locations. An adjustable stand can be optioned in for an extra US$79.
All crowdfunding projects carry an element of risk, but Lava Music is an established company with distribution hubs in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia, and a reputation for delivering. If all goes to plan with this latest campaign, shipping is estimated to start from November.
Introducing LAVA STUDIO
Source: Kickstarter
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