posted 01 January 2010 18:09            

Anyone owns or has played with this synth ? I used to go downtown and play it in the hardware store, and I must say it was an incredibly interesting piece of gear, although ginormuously overpriced.

Im asking if anyone has any clue on what it did under the hood, and if it is doable within the kyma horizon

regards from Slovenia

Andrew

posted 02 January 2010 04:31            

For the 'Neuron's Blender function' of the Neuron a four way circular morph comes to mind to move between the 'resynator's, using four morph sounds feeding into a mixer:

If each resynator were feeding into a separate memory writer's (A, B, C & D)

A = resynator A <Morph Between> resynator B
B = resynator B <Morph Between> resynator C
C = resynator C <Morph Between> resynator D
D = resynator D <Morph Between> resynator A

A <-> B <-> C <-> D (<-> A)

Then using crossfades (or perhaps using additional memory writers) to morph, for example A <-> C (which could allow for morphing between the morphs! )

posted 02 January 2010 11:11            

It isn't possible to correctly and completely describe what it is that the Neuron does. Both developers and fans/owners have tried, using imagery from for instance neural networks. It transforms whatever it touches in a way that very likely might be achieved using other synthesis methods, though like anything ineffable, how will you know where you are trying to end up.

Though a crazy enough patch on an Xpander, a Waldorf mW XT, a Fairlight will now and then achieve the same otherworldly mindlike mix of alien and deeply familiar, the Neuron does it constantly, and it is difficult to imagine how one would ever approach the problem of emulating its soundscapes.

The synth's factory patches demonstrate some of its abilities and limits. While many of those patches are on the whole downright plain, yet nearly anything you do to any of them, not to speak of what can happen using simple raw samples of your own material, from extensive re-working to the mildest little tweak, opens up unimaginable horizons of audio nirvana, marrying the grossest possible mayhem of insectoid sacrifice to scintillating waterfalls of ancient ceremonial ritual.

In their hurry to move this product to market, the developers made a couple troublesome design errors, which make the synth difficult to use: the computer soul of the beast is grossly under-sized and over-sized, for the sleek exterior of the synth. Under-sized in the sense that one can imagine immeasurably more audio wizardry would be available if the OS were portable to a more modern platform, instead of needing to stick with the Shuttle MV25/N (PLE133T-based Pentium-3) motherboard, and over-sized in the sense that this Shuttle motherboard not only runs hot, as does other hardware in the synth, it very much fills out the space available in the synth's elegant casing, requiring loud and inefficient cooling fans that together with the noisy drive fill one's performance space with copious grayish pink noise. It is so loud that working without headphones, unless on a very noisy stage, is unimaginable.

I have approached some computer cooling experts and come to understand that it could be re-built, but it will not be easy. The payoff will however be very well worth a great deal of expense.

More later!
exdc

posted 02 January 2010 11:42            

@photonal, that generic syntax is way above my head, just got kyma a couple of days ago...but the sole fact that one can interpret a foreign synthesis algorhytm sounds preety hardcore to me ?

@ex, dang that sounds like a grudge machine.Cant really imagine fans that loud.What about the software version ? I hear it does the same thing as its hardware brother...surely it can be easier to hack in there and take a peek at what it does.

[This message has been edited by andro.bole@volja.net (edited 02 January 2010).]

posted 02 January 2010 18:19            

You're conflating the VS with the "hardware brother" - it's the hardware brother wrecks the studio ambience. I've been inside it, it's exactly as I described it...

posted 18 January 2010 11:37            

I did some searching for the VS, and there are a few used versions, but quite frankly, after just getting the Pacarana, I feel almost perverted searching for another piece of equipment

Ill stick to Kyma for now, I just barely know how to edit a Sound

regards from slovenia

Andraz

posted 20 January 2010 09:43            

The fan is terrible indeed, and as was pointed out correctly, some design decisions were far from optimal when looking at the synth from a sound designer's perspective; Axel Hartmann wanted the synth to be more of a keyboard than of a studio-sound-maker/mangler. Hence there are such useless "features" like reduced resynthesis resolution on some algorithms to facilitate for a 4-part "multimode" (which never really worked, anyway....), or the file organization paradigm (there are 512 "waveform slots" to put your models in ---- I mean come on, filename-based systems have been around for decades.....).