posted 04 January 2008 09:19            

(what was your worst hardware purchase of all time? thread)
http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21039&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

"okay. here we go: KYMA.

I once thought it must be cool to have a super expensive super specialized hardware+ software box that will be sooo much cooler than all that reaktor and maxmsp stuff together. Oh, I was soooo wrong. It sounds great but the user interface drove me
I_N_S_A_N_E. I had the worst two weeks of my life with it before I finally decided it was stupid to buy it. Thanx god I was able to sell it to a film post pro studio. For the money I lost with this buying-selling action I could have gotten a used H-3000 or H-4000 and had a million times more fun. Agggggggggggggggggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrr"

OK, so he was probably optimistic to try and master Kyma within two weeks *but* I've had Kyma for several years now and *still* have issues trying to fully integrate Kyma into my music making process.

Recently I was trying to use Kyma to analyse individual track outputs (exported from Ableton Live) and laid into a TimeLine. The idea being to output extracted parameter data via OSCulator into a Quartz Composer (Apple) file to generate live computer graphics - which to an extent works.

However, the stumbling block was just trying to get the Time Line to return to Time Zero. I read the manual, and other sources but still I couldn't find a way to get it to go back. Unfortunately, such glitches like this happen enough that they really break my creativity flow, to the extent that I don't use Kyma as much as I would like to.

I have the best results with Kyma when I'm *only* using Kyma, then I find I can obtain great sounds without any problems. I just wish Kyma would integrate/co-operate with other software better (excluding OSCulator of course!)

posted 04 January 2008 12:00            

OK, I failed to play Liszt sonata after 5 years of piano.
I think Liszt should had write it more "user friendly"

posted 04 January 2008 14:01            

Regarding the link, it's interesting to note the name of the person who authored the quoted post. Given that he is one of the founders of a company who recently announced a business partnership with another company whose president considers his product to be a rival of Kyma, one has to take this kind of diatribe with a grain of salt. In politics, in business and in life, it's important to take into account who is speaking and what his underlying personal & financial interests might be in making such a statement.

One also has to question why someone would give up after only 2 weeks (especially when he got so much assistance and offers of help from Kyma users on this forum, and since he never once contacted Symbolic Sound directly by email or telephone with any questions).

If *you* were the founder of a music software company, would you buy another company's product, keep it for 2 weeks, sell it, and then publicly trash it on your company website? What might be some of the underlying motivations for this kind of behavior? If you genuinely wanted to use something, would you not have at least tried contacting the manufacturers and asked for help or guidance?

It's sometimes easy to mistake familiarity with ease of use. In this particular case, the person had many years of experience using a "patcher language" and he may have expected Kyma to use all of the same conventions. It's likely that some of his frustration was simply that Kyma is *different*. And different is not always bad.

We are the first to say that Kyma is *not* for everyone (but for those who who do need it and who take the time to learn it, it can repay them many times over). We also never claim that Kyma is perfect (in fact we spend our days... all of them... working on improvements to Kyma).

posted 05 January 2008 07:46            

It's funny but actually I find Kyma easier to use than the Patch Language Reaktor. *but* being able to load in Reaktor Sounds as Audio Units within other Software is very useful.
Personally I find the current implementation of input/output between Kyma and other software very fiddly and end up reverting to writing Kyma sounds to disk for use in other software. Ideally, I'd like to ba able to load up a (I know this is a huge misnomer!) Kyma-Lite-Audio Unit which would automatically connect Kyma to the host software,and be used only to load up a Kyma Sound without the entire TimeLine/VCS/Prototype Viewer functionality.

posted 07 January 2008 12:46            

Yes, I too sometimes wish that there was better integration, and that some old fashioned stuff was weeded out... Specifically a better way to send sound to a Kyma reverb or other effect, without having to convert DA/AD/DA - the CoreAudio drivers should work better, but I've not managed to get it going without World Clock issues .. Keep working on that SSC, and I, for one, will be satisfied!

I like Kyma X , I like using it everyday.. thats a simple thing to say, but it really means alot to feel comfortable with a tool, when you are a creative professional working everyday. It is also quite reliable in live concert situations - I can't say the same for other systems, and I've used quite a few in my time.

posted 11 January 2008 00:52            

i don't own any synths that i felt i had full comprehension of within two weeks. if you hit bottom' with a professional instrument in that time frame, wouldn't you be equally disappointed with your purchase? someone with the credentials outlined, and presumably a skill level to match, who may be able to whip through the material/ manual that quickly and is still unhappy with what is possible in kyma ..??!?. ssc, i wouldn't be too concerned.

i can't think of any other company that offers the level of support that ssc does. i am always impressed with your ability to manage that; i have never gotten to speak to a rep or get this level support from other companies.

perhaps he just recognized he would be a slave to his capy and a junkie to ssc, pining for more processors, and couldn't deal with that fact

thanks ssc
rafe

posted 12 January 2008 02:36            

I was a little disappointed in the power with 4 processors when I first got the system, but with 8 wowww and with 12 great!! I sold a lot of gear to afford Kyma and have never regretted the decision and feel my creative musical output have grown year on year ever since.

I LOVE the system, LOVE the level of support and the generosity C+K give to their users. And I LOVE the extroidinary level of knowledge in this community - I learn from you all every month.

posted 19 January 2008 04:57            

Concerning ease of use, it seem to me that to really succeed with Kyma, you have to be conversant in synthesis and sound design, and a decent programmer besides. That's a tall order and it doesn't surprise me that lots of people are not successful at the attempt. It took me months to understand synthesis to the point that I could create useful sounds in Kyma, by which I mean sounds that are comparable in quality to what I can get with a conventional synthesizer or sound module. To me, Kyma is the ideal platform for this activity; but the activity itself is quite difficult.

I am also of the opinion that there are lots of ways to program Kyma, and they are not equally productive. I can't say that I've figured out a perfect workflow / approach yet, but I can say that I've noticed huge changes in productivity from simply changing the development process I follow. I think it helps enormously in this regard to have some experience developing software, and I can imagine someone without that experience going down a lot of unproductive alleys.

A related issue is that most commercial synthesizers ship with lots of presets. The best synthesizers ship with very good presets that are designed by well-known sound designers. The Access Virus is this way; a dozen famous sound designers have designed sound sets for it. Most Virus owners can't program the Virus any better than they could program Kyma, but they can pull up a bunch of nice presets and make music right away, and that is how most of them work. In the case of Kyma, it seems to me that the presets are instructive, they teach you something about a dimension of the system, but they are not musical by and large. At least someone who buys a Virus or a Nord lead would probably not find them to be especially musical.

posted 19 January 2008 12:27            

Some time ago I had interest in the Clavia NordModular... but if you see what mentality they have! They just stopped with software development because of limitations on hardware and no more support for new Windows and Mac OS versions. That really a sad behaviour. For now with the NordModular G2, history is going to repait itself...