Amsterdam Dance Event ADE Lab 2025

Amsterdam Dance Event is just around the corner.
Every year it transforms the city into a buzzing mix of conference, festival, and networking hub, where more than 2,500 international artists come together.
For me, the highlight will probably be the ADE Lab — four inspiring days at the cosy Westergas terrain in Amsterdam.

ADE 2025 takes place from October 22—26, 2025
This year, ADE Lab is expanding into its very own Lab Village, a creative playground dedicated entirely to sound. It’s a multi-day program where sound synthesis, audiovisual art, and innovative ways of making music are shared, demonstrated, and developed. Expect everything from artist and engineer talks, to immersive AV installations, live performances, DIY workshops, and the unveiling of new gear.

The program spreads across several spots at Westergas:
WestWeelde is the industrial heart of it all, where big ideas stick. Here you’ll catch plenary talks and masterclasses, then retreat into the cosy Lab Living area to recharge, meet peers, or simply take it all in.
Radio Radio, the iconic nightclub, will transform into a workshop playground. You can roll up your sleeves in the hands-on sessions or drift into the vinyl listening bar, where the turntable itself becomes the teacher.
Pacific Amsterdam is the place to dream big. This studio-like club will host intimate talks with some of the most influential names in the game. Plus, the Gear Test Lab and Workshop Room will let you try the newest tools yourself — brand reveals are still under wraps, but I can’t wait to see what’s coming.

Me on the Verbos system

The last time I visited ADE Lab was back in 2016, when it was still called ADE Sound Lab and took place at De Brakke Grond and the Compagnietheater. 

I went with my good friend (DJ) Guido, and had fun wandering through booths from brands like Ableton, Moog, Pioneer DJ, and Roland. 

That year, Roland had just introduced their Boutique series — the TB-03 Bass Line, VP-03 Vocoder, and TR-09 Drum Machine. 

The VP-03 really stuck with me... I even own one now...

With Daniel from
LiveStock Electronics

The European eurorack distributor Alex4 was also there, showcasing Doepfer, AQA, and BirdKids, among their other brands, while Elektron and Erica Synths brought their gear-heavy setups, including an impressive Eurorack system.

I played with the Verbos system and had a great chat with Daniel from LiveStock, a Dutch modular manufacturer that sadly closed its doors in 2022. 

To close the day, I headed back to the Compagnietheater for a showcase of Dutch modular artists — an unforgettable night of sound exploration.

And now, years later, ADE Lab is bigger than ever. I can’t wait to dive back in.

👉 Get your tickets and i hope to see you at Westergas!

Allert from SonarTraffic performed in the evening

DanceFair/Musicfair Pro Audio Summit Impression

Victor Coral
School of House

This weekend I attended the annual DanceFair/Musicfair Pro Audio Summit, the biggest in the Netherlands at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht.
A gathering of more than 6000 music makers, industry professionals, 80 record labels and manufacturers of musical instruments, producer and dj gear.
It was the 5th time that Dancefair was held, and the first time that Musicfair joined in.
All together a great event for DJ's, producers and other fanatics for networking, learning and exploring, with inspiring workshops in different rooms and a nice Expo-floor.

We started off our Saturday quite relaxed with an interesting talk about the History of House, presented by Victor Coral from the Dutch School of House.
After that we learned a little more about audio-compression with some interesting views on side-chaining at a Pro Audio session.

DJ Magazine talk at the expo-floor

There was plenty of room for the younger audience and new talents with various production-sessions and workshops for the different styles of dancemusic by Hardwell and Chocolate Puma (amongst others) and a large demo-dropoff zone hosted by national and international record-labels.

The expo floor wasn't huge but filled with a wide variety of exhibitors.

It wasn't too busy on the Saturday, the people in the booths were very accessable for info and plenty of headphones were available for the public to listen to all the new synths and stuff...

Roland Eurorack Modules
Aira Modular, System 500
and Effectors

I had a lot of fun with (finally) playing around with the Moog Mother32, Korg Minilogue, the Novation MiniNova and BassStation 2, plus the modules from the Roland Boutique range JP-03, JX-08, and A-01.
Besides that, Roland showed the whole AIRA-range and a big rack with all their Eurorack modules including the  Aira Modular, System 500 and Effectors...

Arturia showed their Maxibrute for the first time in Europe.
The MatrixBrute is a programmable monophonic / duophonic analog synthesizer, outfitted with three ‘Brute’ oscillators, Steiner-Parker and ladder filters, three envelope generators, analogue effects and a matrix-style modulation matrix.

A short talk with Andy Mac from Akai learned me that they will shoot new MPC-Touch tutorials next week... I hope they will be online soon, as the last 4 Basic Workflow Tutorials that they released (a few weeks ago) were pretty useful for an MPC-noob like me, someone who is totally unfamiliar with the whole MPC-workflow.

One of the 2 Doepfer cases at the Alex4 booth

The most interesting booth (for me) was the one from European Eurorackdistibutor Alex4 that showed a diverse range of Eurorack modules from brands like Doepfer (with most of their new modules), AJH Synth, Verbos, Endorphin.es and Vermona
That last one als showed the prototype Vermona TwinCussion, a percussion module that is capable of very nice 'syncussion' sounds.

DJ/Producer Lucien Foort

The modules from the Austrian Birdkids brand were also on display at the Alex4 booth and the engineer from AQAElektrix showed me their full range of Eurorack modules. More on this in my next blogpost.

Allert from SonarTraffic, who also helped out at the booth  took the time to explain the interesting concept of their studio at Kytopia.

We spent the last hours of the day back at the workshop area from the Herman Brood Academy, where Lucien Foort (from Quadrophonia and more) presented a workshop. He first went through a short history about modular synths, up to the recent Eurorack-boom before he gave an intuitive tutorial on how to integrate modulars in your curent DAW setup.

Overall it was a great atmosphere at the whole event with almost everything you'd expect, including overexpensive drinks and food... and yesssss.... BoothBabes! :)

You can find the rest of my pictures from the Dancefair Saturday at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1103743713004246.1073741844.143124692399491 …