Re: Plex Upgrade ideas: Loose the box.

[pvallad1@tampabay.rr.com]

>$3300 may seem like a lot of money, but even a Kurzweil K2600 can do but a
>fraction of what Kyma can. Among their benchmarks for the base model is
>listed the capablility to do 70 (mono) voices of sampling. You can build
>some pretty freaky Echoplexes-out-of-a-dream in Kyma with this kind
>of power ! Imagine having the ability to incorporate LFOs, resonant 
>filters,
>toy with the speed, pitch, direction, whatever of your loops in real time.

I lurked in one of the Kurzweil web forums and the word is that the street
price for a new K2600 is well into the $5000s.  An outrageous price, but
that's just my opinion.  It supposedly can to realtime processing of
incoming audio (not sure about being able to sample-on-the-fly and process
like a dedicated looper such as the EDP/JamDudes/etc.), but only with the
purchase of the expensive Sampling option.

I did find the K2500 to have one really cool feature and that is the 2
foot-long ribbon controller (the K2600 comes with that too) that can be
split into three independent ribbons.  I found one patch where you can
trigger a sound just by tapping on the ribbon (no need to touch the
keyboard keys) and it will change its pitch if you tap on a different area
or slide.  I had a good time improvising on the ribbon with one- and
two-handed tapping and sliding on the ribbon.  As it turns out, Kurzweil
also offers the ExpressionMate, which is just the ribbon controller with a
box that has MIDI ports, breath controller port, ports for footswitches,
MIDI mapping features, etc.  It even has for some wacky reason 3 built-in
arpeggatiors.  The Harmony Central review says its actually quite a bit
more powerful in the MIDI department than the ribbon controller that comes
with the keyboards.  With the breath controller and/or footpedal to control
volume and the ribbon to control pitch, it's actually a viable musical
instrument in its own right.   

Anyway, you may want to shout out to Jim Coker.  If he's still on this
list, he's the resident Kyma expert and can tell you his personal war
stories.  Actually, you may want to check out the Looper's Delight list
archives for his posts.  It's not like nobody ever heard of the Kyma before
on this list. :)

Starr Labs, makers of MIDI controllers for guitarists, recommended the
Kyma/Capybara as the sound source for their MicroZone controller because it
was (at the time - maybe its different now) the only commercially available
synth/sampler that was capable of producing the resolution that one
StarrLabs customer demanded - 768 notes to one octave!

Cheers,
Paolo