Re: Looper Construction Kit (was Re: 1U PC for Kyma)

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Landman" <landman@wco.com>
> Would it be possible to post some descriptions of what your new looping
> algorythms do? I'm sure that both Kyma users (howevere many there are) 
>and
> non-Kyma users alike would be interested in seeing what you've come up
> with.

Pardon my delayed (and verbose) response...It's hard to describe without
giving some info on Kyma so I'll do that first for those folks who aren't
familiar with it.

A Kyma system consists of a rack-mounted propriatary signal processor (the
Capybara) attached to a host computer.  The Capybara contains analog and
digital I/O (4 or 8 channels), a MIDI interface, and a bunch of DSP (4 to
28).  The host computer is either a Windows or Mac machine.

You could call Kyma a graphical programming environment for sound
processing.  On the host computer screen, you specify a signal flow diagram
which looks like little boxes connected with lines.  Each little box is a
signal processing do-dad such as a filter, delay line, mixer, attenuator,
etc.  So connecting them on the screen is like wiring up a set of real
devices.  Kyma provides over 1000 basic do-dads for your signal processing
nirvana.

You can use Kyma at several different levels depending on you knowledge and
experience.  First,  the Kyma folks at Symbolic Sound provide A LOT of
examples that do marvelous things.  You can simply use their examples and
tweak on the parameters.  Second, you can rearrange or draft your own 
signal
flow diagrams.  Third, you can combine standard do-dads (ok...they're 
really
called Sounds with a capital S) into new objects.  Fourth, you can write
some Smalltalk code and seriously extend the user interface.  And finally,
you can write your own Sounds in DSP assembler.

Now my Looper Construction Kit (LCK) consists of several new Sounds, many 
of
which are highly optimized DSP code chunks.  My hope is that with the LCK
you can build nearly any kind of looper you want.  It has several Sounds
which support recording, overdubbing, and playback.  Some of these provides
synchonization features down to the sample point level.  I have built true
quad loopers, for example, that take four inputs and simultaneously loops
them.  You can build Undo loopers that perform an undo function like the
EDP.  Likewise with the EDP Multiply function.  You can also construct a
"Divide" function which fragments a loop (the inverse of the EDP Multiply).
Some LCK Sounds provide features like zero-crossing adjustment of recorded
sounds.

Several of the LCK Sounds, which I group under the name "EDP Assistant",
integrate the use of one or more EDPs.  You can move loops back and forth
from the Kyma system to the EDP, for example, or from the EDP to the host
computer's hard drive.  You can convert MIDI program change commands to the
appropriate EDP note on/off commands so that you can use a greater variety
of MIDI footswitches to control the EDP.

Depending on the feature set of the Repeater, I'd like to build a similar
"Repeater Assistant" that would let you easily integrate Kyma, EDPs, and
Repeaters.  But that's for the future.

Hope this answers your questions.

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