The Melbourne Instruments NINA is a 12-voice, 4-part multitimbral desktop polysynth with a motorised control panel. Each voice pairs two discrete analog VCOs with a digital wavetable oscillator, a transistor ladder filter and a through-zero VCA. It is aimed at players who want deep sound design with direct hands-on control rather than menu-diving, whether for live work, splits and layers, MPE playing or standalone sequencing.
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Motorised knobs: brushless motors with contactless optical sensors move the controls to the stored patch and follow modulation, morphing and automation
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Hybrid voice: two analog VCOs morphing from triangle to saw plus PWM square, and a 96kHz/24-bit wavetable oscillator that accepts user wavetables
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4-pole ladder filter with a heavy overdrive mode and a smooth low-noise mode
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Up to 4 layers split by MIDI channel and note range, with 12-voice MPE across all layers
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Modulation matrix with 16 sources and 27 destinations, bipolar amounts and whole-patch morphing
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Multi-track sequencer with 4 polyphonic, polyrhythmic tracks of up to 64 steps and per-step parameter locks
The motorised panel is central to how NINA works. When you load a patch or switch layers, the knobs jump to the stored values, and during playback they track modulation, morphs and recorded automation, so what you see on the panel always reflects the sound. The optical sensors offer 15,000 steps of resolution, and Melbourne Instruments rates the mechanism for more than 50 million cycles.
The analog side includes a sub-octave mode for VCO 1, hard sync of oscillator 2 to VCO 1, pink and white noise and an XOR fuzz source, plus two ADSR envelopes capable of very fast slopes. The stereo VCA design uses two VCAs per voice for infinite panning, with a choice of polyphonic panning schemes. In MOD mode you select a source and set modulation amounts directly on the panel.
Firmware updates have expanded the instrument: version 3.0 adds the complete Mutable Instruments Braids macro-oscillator engine with 45 models, and an earlier update brought the multi-track sequencer and 64 noise types ranging from metallic textures to digital percussion. Up to three 96kHz effects run in series or parallel, with parallel mode keeping the analog dry signal intact.
NINA runs open-source software on Elk Audio OS and a Raspberry Pi 4, ships with over 400 factory presets and stores up to 16,000. Its audio and CV inputs let you process external signals or modulate it from a modular setup. The solid metal chassis can be rack-mounted with optional 19" rack ears.