Mandala "Hi-Def" USB Drum Synthesizer

Synesthesia Corporation announced on Wednesday they're launching a new version of their Mandala drum synthesizer, a drum pad that registers where and how hard you strike the drum's surface and returns a correspondingly softer or louder hit. This type of pressure-sensitive playback, which allows Synesthesia to bill their product as a "high-def" drum pad and synthesizer, sounds like it uses a process called multi-sampling, a term that should be familiar to anyone who's ever played around with Soundfonts.

For the uninitiated: multi-sampling involves recording or creating samples of the same sound at different volumes, and stacking them using software so that certain samples trigger based on certain events (like striking a drum head harder or software). When done properly, multi-sampling can create surprisingly dynamic sounds.