Re: Kyma (Was: NAMM & the new Plex)

["Dennis W. Leas" <dennis@mdbs.com>]

>Dennis, saw the site. Can I do realtime looping with Kyma? And can you 
>give
>me a price estimate?

The quick answers (opinions not included):
Yes, you can do realtime looping with Kyma.
$3,300 for a basic unit (4 analog inputs/outputs, 4 digital 
inputs/outputs, 4
DSPs, one interface)

The longer answers (opinions included):
For me, the great appeal of the Kyma is its flexibility.  You can pretty 
much do
ANYTHING with it.  You construct "Sounds" out of prototype modules 
supplied by
Symbolic Sounds and others.  The Sounds do things like DelayWithFeedback,
filtering, mixing, etc.  The trade-off is that it does very little 
(especially
regarding looping) out of the box.  You have to do quite a bit of set-up.  
Now
Symbolic Sound gives a lot of examples that you can plagerize.  One of the
examples is a "tap-tempo" and it works quite well.  You tap a MIDI key to 
begin
the loop and tap a second key to close the loop.  Unfortunately, you can't
"overdub" more sound into the loop that is produced.  At least with the 
example
given.  You can loop more sound by creating more "tap-tempo" Sounds but 
that's
not the same as overdubbing.

In the words of the Rev. Kim Flint: "At the minimum, a Real-Time Looper 
must be
able to sample audio and loop it on the fly, and allow the user to sample 
new
material while the current loop is playing. Usually they do much more."

Amen.

What I dream of doing is creating a "Looper" prototype sound for Kyma.  I 
want
the Looper to use the same basic interface of an EDP, i.e., buttons for 
RECORD,
OVERDUB, MULTIPLY, INSERT, MUTE, UNDO, and NEXTLOOP.  Personally, I think 
the
EDP's interface is fantastic.  It's so easy to improvise with it.

I'm finding that Kyma has quite a steep learning curve so my project might 
take
awhile.

Dennis Leas
-----------------------------
dennis@mdbs.com