posted 13 October 2001 06:30            

Enables settings for both beginners and advanced users - Providing a more accessible starting point for sounds.

The current Kyma has various interfaces to use the programme - e.g. TimeLine / Compiled Grid / Individual Prototype
editing. All have their advantages and uses. I would like to see a more ready to use front-end - Perhaps based on the
Soft Synth User interface paradigm. Whereby - interfaces could be brought up - each representing an engine. E.g. One engine for
Reverb, a second for Dynamics a third for further processing.

The point would be to ease and facilitate the creation of useful sound environments - *KymaSpace* (!) (which might be saved for recall).
Opening up a saved KymaSpace would automatically compile the sound (on a free engine - see later) and attach it to the required IO.

It's interface would present the HotParameters as large onscreen objects which can be manipulated to control the
sound it represents. This would also allow the user to show/hide at will the KymaSpace they currently wish to work with
- Currently the Virtual Control Surface can quickly become over populated with widgets - especially when working
not just with just one sound.

I'm also thinking in terms of positioning Kyma as an alternative to Advanced effect processors such as those from
Eventide, TC Electronic and Lexicon et al. Which currently have a top-down approach to sound design, whereby you start
off with a preset and then dig down to tune your sounds. Kyma, on the other hand is very much bottom-up, one has
really to learn Kyma before one can really use it properly- which I think can often lead to frustration - especially in my case - if
one has limited time in which to use it.

I don't mean any of this as a criticism of Kyma, I think the open architecture of Kyma is excellent - just that
I think one needs another method to fully access the power of Kyma as early as possible - which would lead to earlier
successes with Kyma, the exploration of the Kyma soundscape and also fire ones own ideas and desires to create
wonderful sounds.

The release of Absynth (Native Instruments) really got me started with this. It has a wonderful user interface, it
interfaces with my Sequencer (Logic Audio) painlessly and has wonderful sounds.
It is a special programme in that it offers easily accessible presets which can then be edited at will within a well designed
programming environment. Within a project studio environment - I often find myself not using Kyma as much as I
would like, if I'm quickly working an idea together (rather than an electroacoustic project - which Kyma currently supports better), I don't always (but sometimes yes!) want to get bogged down inside the Kyma environment and hence
perhaps lose my creative thread - thus Kyma gets relegated often to the job of providing some 'nice' reverb ....Whose
role I'm sure isn't how Carla and Kurt see Kyma as being?

Hence I would like to see a really streamlined interface, which would enable me to use Kyma as speedily as I can my other
studio equipment. Perhaps the completion of the ASIO functionality would help achieve this.

I would love to be able to run separate engines within kyma. Four at least - One each could send/receive from the digital IOs) within Kyma,
which could be independently started (compiled) and stopped at will, without affecting the currently running engines.
This would also allow me to get better usage out of the 20 DSPs sitting inside my Capybara.... (Two card users could
run at least one engine Perhaps engines could be self optimising - shrinking and expanding, in terms of dsp
requirements, depending on their current processing overhead.) I find compiling the whole Kyma environment everytime
I change the structure of a sound, draining. Would be great if there were freely assignable IOs, in the sense that I could
feed sounds / engines (containing various sounds), to those IOs. This would facilitate me to compose and develop within
Kyma. The sound would *still* be happening *whilst* I'm working within another engine, holding a Kyma sound - the independent sound engines would
enable this to happen. Currently you can't hear any sound while designing it - with respect to it's struture I mean. This would
also be useful in terms of marketing Kyma - Whereby you can buy 'engines' for Kyma as you need them and can afford them -
It would make it clearer *why* you need more dsp cards - it currently seems as if the sound would just need
recompiling/redesigning to still operate within your current dsp hardware limits. Hey! - I can't wait forever for Kyma to be
listed on the Nasdaq ) I might start actually buying stock at that point...