Australia’s music technology community is getting a new place to meet, make noise and get properly hands-on. Sound Summit 2026 lands at Howler in Melbourne on Sunday 13 September, bringing together artists, producers, DJs, synth enthusiasts, product specialists and gear obsessives for a full day of workshops, performances, conversations and music-making technology.
Key Features
- Three spaces of workshops, performances, panels and hands-on music technology
- Artists including Harvey Sutherland, Luke Million, SHOUSE, Sampology, Simon Mavin, Frank Booker, Honeysmack and more
- International product specialists from KORG Japan and Moog USA
- Hands-on access to instruments, DJ gear and production technology throughout the day
- $30 tickets include a $30 Store DJ / Mannys Music Gift Voucher
There are plenty of places to see new music gear online. There are fewer opportunities to stand in a room with the people who design it, watch artists put it to work and then immediately have a go yourself.
That’s the idea behind Sound Summit. Taking over three spaces at Howler in Brunswick, the new Melbourne event is built around the community that actually uses this stuff: bedroom producers, working DJs, modular obsessives, synth collectors, musicians, sound designers and anyone else who has lost an afternoon because they turned one knob and something interesting happened.
Three Spaces, One Very Large Gear Habit
Presented by Store DJ and Mannys Music, Sound Summit isn’t structured like a conventional trade show. The focus is on putting music technology into a musical context, with artists and specialists demonstrating how these instruments and tools fit into real creative workflows.
Across the day, attendees will be able to move between live workshops, masterclasses, artist performances, DJ sets, industry conversations and product sessions covering everything from synthesis and sound design to DJing, sampling, music production and electronic live performance.
That distinction is important. Reading a spec sheet can tell you what a synthesizer, sampler or DJ controller does. Watching someone who knows the instrument inside out build a track, patch a sound or pull apart a performance can tell you why any of those features actually matter.
And then, ideally, you get your hands on it.
Artists, Producers and People Who Actually Build the Gear
The inaugural program pulls together an interesting cross-section of Australian electronic music.
Harvey Sutherland, Luke Million, SHOUSE, Sampology, Simon Mavin of Hiatus Kaiyote, Frank Booker, Honeysmack, Tom Cosm, Dean Walliss, Michael Belsar and SANOI are all appearing throughout the day.
The program also goes beyond artist demonstrations, bringing some of the people behind the instruments into the room. Yuki Ohta from KORG Japan and Max Ravitz from Moog USA will join the event as international product specialists.
For gear-minded musicians, that kind of access can be particularly valuable. Instead of trying to decipher why a feature works the way it does from a manual or forum thread, there’s an opportunity to hear directly from people deeply involved with the technology.
It also opens up some interesting crossover. A producer might arrive wanting to learn more about sampling and walk out thinking about modular synthesis. A DJ could catch a live performance workshop and find a completely different way to approach their set. That movement between disciplines is increasingly how electronic music is made anyway, so putting those communities in the same building makes a lot of sense.
Less Glass Cabinet, More Hands-On
A big part of Sound Summit is simply being able to try things.
Music technology is particularly difficult to understand from a screen. The resistance of a fader, response of a keyboard, workflow of a sequencer or immediacy of a synthesizer interface can completely change how you feel about an instrument.
Sound Summit is leaning into that with hands-on experiences running alongside its scheduled sessions. Rather than products sitting around as scenery, the idea is to create an environment where attendees can hear them being used, understand the thinking behind them and then explore for themselves.
For Australian musicians, that’s also a chance to encounter new instruments and workflows in one place without the usual bouncing between shops, YouTube tabs and increasingly deep late-night forum searches.
The $30 Ticket Comes Back as Gear Money
There’s another particularly musician-friendly detail: admission effectively comes back to you.
Tickets cost $30, and every Sound Summit ticket includes a $30 Store DJ / Mannys Music Gift Voucher.
So your $30 gets you into the full day of workshops, performances, panels and hands-on sessions, while the same value can then be put towards gear through Store DJ or Mannys Music.
That makes it a pretty easy excuse to spend a Sunday surrounded by synthesizers, DJs and people who understand why you needed that fourth delay pedal.
Sound Summit 2026
Date: Sunday 13 September 2026
Time: 10am–7pm
Venue: Howler
Address: 7–11 Dawson Street, Brunswick, Melbourne
Tickets: $30, including a $30 Store DJ / Mannys Music Gift Voucher
Presented by: Store DJ / Mannys Music
The full schedule, tickets and further event information are available via Sound Summit.
If you make electronic music, DJ, collect synths, build patches, obsess over studio gear or simply enjoy seeing how other musicians work, September 13 is looking like a good day to leave the studio for once. The gear will still be there — quite a lot of it, actually.
