My favorite piece of gear: Rawdio

Each month we dive a little deeper into the lives of our artists, to see how they came up with the tracks and what their creative process looks like. In this series we will take a look at their favorite pieces of gear, favorite workflows, tips and tricks they found along the way etc…

So today we find ourselves in the studio with Rawdio, or should I say, by myself, since I am Rawdio, and writing this…

Between all the new and old equipment I acquired over the years, and we might add that it is getting a bit out of hand for the space I am currently living in, I find that the Synthstrom Deluge is my favorite piece of kit, at the moment.

What I like so much about the Deluge is the versatility. It is a sythesizer (subtractive and FM), a sampler, a sequencer… And it doesn’t stop there, you can record your voice because it has a mic input, you can record outboard gear and other synthesizers with it via the audio input. And it runs on batteries so it is extremely mobile.
To me it feels like having a portable DAW.
You want to prepare a liveset? No problem, grab your samples or stems from your DAW and import them to your Deluge with the SD card.
There is also no limit on the amount of voices or on how many simultaneously run “patterns” you have per project. It is only limited by its own CPU or internal memory, and I still have to run into problems as far as that goes.

“This is my idea-machine”

For me this is also my “idea-machine”.
Quickly laying down a simple beat on the grid, adding some synth sounds, a bassline and you have your idea ready. This speed of workflow comes in very handy when you have an idea or have a spark of inspiration and you want to lay it down quickly. And I feel this is even quicker than in a DAW, as you have all the knobs and shortcuts at your fingertips and you don’t have to be messing around or click/dragging with a mouse(pad).

I know this might seem like I am trying to sell you this piece of gear, but you just have to find out for yourself. Search some Youtube tutorials or performances. Red Means Recording has some great ones with the Deluge as a centerpiece.
It is quite an expensive kit, for around 1000-1200USD, I bought mine in 2019, could be a little more expensive now. Also, they are based in New-Zealand, so keep in mind your country might have some import taxes as well.
But if this is the kind of thing you want to be able to do, I don’t think there is anything more intuitive or flexible than this.
They also do very frequent firmware updates or add new features for free!

#mfpog #rawdio #inthestudio