Aelita (synthesizer)

Although its design seems inspired from American and Japanese synthesizers of the previous decade, with a dark aluminum body[3] and near vertical control panel, the Aelita's looks are distinctive in the details.

Its hinge-mounted upper control panel can be shut like a piano keyboard's lid,[4] thus protecting the buttons and sliders and preventing accidental settings changes during transportation, and changing the general shape of the instrument to one that is not playable but more transportable.

The keyboard is 3.5 octaves wide and made of 44 unweighted, full-sized plastic keys ranging from F to C.[2] All controls are labelled in Russian, using Cyrillic script.

The Aelita has 3 oscillators, each with 3 fixed waveshapes (Saw, Pulse and Square), plus a 4th oscillator only active in unison mode, amplitude cross-modulation, a low-pass filter with resonance, one LFO and two envelope generators, all arranged in a fixed architecture typical of subtractive synthesis.

[4] Although of a sturdier construction, it lacks several features commonly found on American and Japanese brand synthesizers at the time, such as : velocity response, portamento, pitch and modulation wheels or levers, settings memory, and (from late 1982 on) MIDI implementation.