27 thoughts on “Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave Synth Unboxing & Demo”

1. Old news? Stagnant sales?

   1. The guy bought a 3rd Wave and shot an unboxing video. It’s not a nefarious marketing scheme by Big Synth or a sign that the sky is falling.

      1. He didn’t buy the synth tho. They sent it to him to make these promo videos

2. People in this economy are clamoring for $5,000 synths. I am gratified to see another one. Yeh right! More niche ridiculousness. UDO Domino too, a $3,500 synth that quickly runs out of voices. Brilliant. I think the days of these niche expensive synths is over or at least waning fast.

   1. That’s unlikely, expect to see a lot more instruments like this. The nature of expensive gear like this is kinda smart, even if it’s frustrating for those of us that can’t afford them (this is like 3x more than what I could afford when I had GAS).

      Hypothetical numbers time – If the costs $3k to manufacture and the manufacturer expects to sell 2500 of them over the course of 5 years, that’s a prediction of $1.5m in costs per year (300×500). Obviously that’s a lot of money. If the sales don’t meet expectations, how do you build in a buffer? Retail at a healthy margin. Retailing at $5k will meet the annual break even point by selling 300 of the 500 synth made (1,000,000/5000). At $5k expect a maximum profit of $2.5m if all units sell (5,000×500). It also allows for discounts & sales prices that still enable profits.

      ^Of course I don’t know anything about the cost of manufacturing a synth or how Groove Synthesis runs its finances. Just running some numbers there.

      A neat little psychological trick for sales is to bump up the price on premium products, it reinforces the buyer to think ‘I bought the right thing’ because they can’t easily back down from that point.

      Hence why we get rich pilots who dabble in synths posting unboxing videos that are purely aspirational for the rest of us.

      It’d be nice if Groove Synthesis would make a synth for the middle of the market if they can afford to.

      1. The distribution/store often gets a massive cut, way more than most people think. They are absorbing the free shipping to customers and so much more. Here is another thing most people probably really don’t know, when you get financing , like sweetwater 36 months zero percent, the manufacturer actually has to pay the interest to the finance company. It’s one of those things if they don’t offer financing they well sell very few if it’s a big item thing but the profit margin is really small when they have to pay for it. It’s quite common for distribution companies to get 40-50% off the top in general for some things. True all way back in cd days. I know this isn’t cds but here’s a breakdown that always blew my mind. Cd sold for 12$ on average, store gives music distribution company 5$ often owned by the labels themselves, label gets 4$, 1$ for printing and another expenses, often they use creative math to make it 2$ in profit. Artist gets the 15% royalty rate. Minus producer points in other stuff looking at a quarter for profit for the actual artist. Of which you have to pay back the recording of your album, music videos, other expenses, but anyway if your a band you made 25 cents, if your the label you made 1-2$ but Walmart made 7$ on that album sale. This is why audioscape and stam audio can make high end studio gear as good as the other companies for half the price, it’s direct to consumer.

         1. Great point about the ever increasing costs taken along the way to buying a buying a synth. While everyone in that chain deserves a cut, the ratios of that cut are insane if it works the way you describe. Personally I’d prefer the company responsible for the synth gets the biggest cut of what I pay.

            It would be cool to see a synth manufacturer do a Syro style breakdown of the costs associated with the purchase of that synth.

         2. Distributors can often get a 50% discount on many types of pro audio products, but not on boutique synthesizers. While they might receive 50% from mass market brands like Novation or Arturia, they will never see those margins from boutique brands like Groove Synthesis. Distributors usually sell products to shops (dealers), offering them approximately a 25%–30% discount. The distributor’s role primarily involves importing, establishing a dealer network within their territory, and handling repairs.

            THe dealer handle the customers, manage the advertising and provide after sales support. When they work directly with brands, they act like distributors, importing, handling repairs, and managing everything involved in the sale. Some brands compensate for repair and advertising costs, most don’t.

            These discounts are usually calculated from the retail price (MSRP) rather than the MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) or, in the case of Europe, “Street price” which dealers set at their own discretion. Distributors and dealers rarely see the full discount figures in practice.

            Groove Synthesis likely works directly with dealers only, offering a maximum discount of 20%–30% and hipping can be extremely expensive due to the weight of the units. Calculating the expenses of a small boutique manufacturer is difficult, it is by far the most complex occupation of the three.

            Before anyone gets agitated by these discount figures, it is important to remember that all three manufacturers, distributors, and dealers face massive overhead expenses that customers rarely knows about. The percentage the government takes from the margins is also significant.
            I have only named a few of the factors involved, it is a daily struggle to keep such a business running, and the incom is usually modest.
            If you tried to run one of these businesses in the synthesizer market I guarantee you would never describe the margins of brands, distributors, or dealers as “huge” again : )

      2. “It’d be nice if Groove Synthesis would make a synth for the middle of the market if they can afford to.”

         Isn’t that precisely what the 8M is aimed at?

         1. Good point, sorry I’d forgotten about that (should’ve looked at their website before posting that).

3. Way too overpriced.

   1. lol!

      Why do you think there are more high-end synths now than ever?

      People are buying them, because many musicians are willing to pay for a great instrument.

      1. Musicians, most musicians, turned from middle class to low class or poverty once Napster made it’s first appearance and the music industry imploded. It is not musicians who buy these things, it is hobbyists, dentists, doctors, people with signifiacnt income outside of music . Even in the rare cases musicians actually do buy these, it is not because these synths are necessary tools for their craft. You cannot “monetize” a synth like this. No one who cares about what synths you use for the hob, and no one will “give you their money” because you have them. Having a synth like this won’t give you “the edge” as it might had in the 80’s. Only youtubers can make money from gear and they most often get them for free, or for a totally different price. But for them being musicians or not has little to do, with their actual job, which is to advertise gear.

         1. Successful working musicians are buying expensive synthesizers, and today, there are more of them than ever.

            1. So if someone has an expensive synthesizer, then they must be Successful, yes?

               1. Cause does not equal effect.

                  Which is disappointing to people that buy cheap and expensive synths alike.

                  Successful musicians have always preferred great instruments, but have also always made do with crap when they had to!

               2. If you stupid

4. The price isn’t pocket change, obviously, but it sure feels like a $5k instrument. The specs are impressive. It would take that much to set up a PC/Mac system & software of that power. There’s also a smaller, less expensive module version. There are numerous other ways to go wavetable, many pretty easy on the wallet.

   I think a lot of people miss the point. If you’re really into it, you’ll find the bucks for some key items. I bought a couple of flagships and then built a rig outwards from there. At this point, I’d find it odd if someone didn’t have a main instrument or two, a set of smaller support gear and a few software options. Its not a casual hobby; its a 2nd cousin to Space Madness.

5. Y’all can theorize as you like. The reality is that these tiny companies making pricey, low-volume instruments are barely keeping the lights on. So many aspects of production and development of these instruments need to be farmed out – metal work, screening, production of circuit boards, custom packaging, printing manuals, paying someone to write documentation/make videos/etc, the list goes on and on. Going to trade shows of any kind costs a ton. And as mentioned in another reply, the big dealers have super-unfriendly deals, i.e. they take a big chunk, and expect them to take product back if they don’t sell.

   The truth is that the people who make these synths ain’t getting rich. They would be far better off to take their money and simply invest it in mutual funds, but they’re generally nuts (in a good way) who do this because they’re passionate about making this stuff.

   1. this

   2. Hear, hear!

   3. Thank you!

6. Super excited for the Moog Sub 37 unboxing video next Synthtopia. Way to keep your finger on the pulse of the synth world.

   1. Mike – thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this.

      As always – if you have suggestions for coverage, beyond complaining, there’s a Feedback link on every single page of the site.

7. These flagship synths are expensive to musicians because they are not essential or even realy important to a musician’s work. It is as simple as that. They are not expensive once you realise that might give a fifth of that price to someone installing a couple of air-condition units in your house, for a couple of hours work, which lets face it, does not require much…Hoewver having a direct competitor and the biggest name in the market for that sort of thing offering synths 2 or 3 times less the price these guys want here, is not in their favor..

8. “I got a brand new synth inside this box” he says and lift the box up for the camera to see.

   Then I suspect the 3rd Wave keyboard version is a lot lighter than my 8M, because that box was not very heavy

   Sorry, digression. Just had to say it

9. With Superbooth right around the corner it’s a odd choice for Groove to send their 4 year old 24K out to a yet another YouTuber in support of yet another unboxing and first impressions video.

   As a 3rd Wave owner I’m disappointed to see Groove continuing to spend it’s limited marketing / money / time giving single “not customers” expensive free stuff (the Anthony Marinelli keyboard giveaway, the 2026 Scott video linked to in this post, etc). I think there’s three big things that Groove needs to be focusing on:

   1) Better factory patches. A lot of the current factory patches were created back when the 24V was launched and don’t leverage the current OS 1.9 capabilities of the unit. I’ll also call out that the quality of the patches varies noticeably as well and they’re a confusing mix of PPG emulations, VA emulations, original sounds, and effects randomly arranged across the 5 banks. Please please please invest in getting a top tier sound designer to create new factory patches- the 3rd Waves can / do sound so much better.

   2) Provide an update Bob’s comments on Reddit back last fall that Groove was in final testing of an Editor Librarian app for the 3rd Waves. Six months of radio silence on this and counting now. An app is sorely needed and mitigates the hardware having evolved a bit backwards with the $2K 8V now having a significantly larger and better screen than the $5K 24 voice units.

   3) Bite the bullet and update the hardware. In 2026 the 3rd Wave really needs mass / flash storage support and class compliant audio interface support so that users aren’t tied to just analog 1/4″ ins and outs.