Re: more on Kyma.....

[matthias@bahianet.com.br (Matthias Grob)]

Jim answered me:
>In reference to Matthias' questions, most parameters on sound
>objects (such as delay times, frequency settings, filter bandwidth
>and frequency) are controllable in real time, and without glitches.
>Put an lfo on a short delay, and you get a flanger. (Delay lengths can
>be specified in a number of ways, such as in seconds, or samples,
>or relative to something else)  Control signals can come from midi,
>or all sorts of other things, frequency trackers, envelope followers,
>other audio signals, or signals built by processing other signals.
>When I was there, a Peavey PC1600 fader box (16 programmable
>midi faders and assorted buttons) was set up to
>control sound parameters. This is what I used during the looping
>test (no foot controller available).

I see... but this I can do on my PCM80, as long as its just controlling
parameters of a delay.
I was thinking about the loop specific functions like Tap, Multiply, Undo,
or rather sampler type functions like restarting the actual loop or
changing to another loop and so on. Probably those functions will have to
be created and I wondered how difficult this might be.

>Another nice patch involved a "harmonic resonator", a special
>kind of filter that resonates at a given pitch and all it's
>harmonics.

also available on PCM70/80

>Probably the most unique capabilities of the system revolve around
>it's analysis and resynthesis capabilities.  Their latest software
>version comes w/ a configureable vocoder w/ up to 70 filter bands.
>In addition to real time vocoding, you can analyize a sample
>(drums, vocals and animal sounds work best, due to their widely
>varying formants) to build a time-varying filter bank, and then use
>this filter bank to process a live signal.
 ...

>For really hard-core stuff, you can use an FFT analysis to convert
>the signal from the time domain into the freqency domain, and do
>processing there (such as stretching or scaling harmonics, pitch
>and time shifting, etc), and then resynthesize the result using
>an oscillator bank.  This is the approach used by Digital Performer
>1.7 and others to do pitch shifting w/o ugly artifacts.  Kyma
>can do this in real time, minus a 1/4sec delay due to FFT
>windowing issues

Interesting. This could certainly be used to colour and modulate loops. And
in this case, the 250ms delay (thats a lot!) could be hidden somehow.

>The only dissapointment I had was with the frequency tracker.
>It works amazingly well w/ vocals, but didn't do so great on
>a guitar.  The response time was at least as good as a Roland
>GI-10 midi converter and it did track vibrato and
...
> One big change that would make
>it better would be to use hexaphonic input a-la GK2, which would
>restrict the pitch guessing range, and avoid multi-string noises.

Did you play monophonic for this test, or is it even able to detect chords
of a monophonic guitar?!?

>Currently Kyma only has 2 inputs and 2 outputs, but they are working
>on increasing this.  They get many requests to increase the
>number of outputs, but Kurt said that this was the first time they
>had a solid reason for having multiple inputs, ...

Ahh... we will end up making our own VGx, more serious, with all in it!

>Kyma can run simutaneously w/ a
>sequencer or MAX on a modest MAC or PC.  Symbolic Sound is also
>working on a PC-card interface so you can use Kyma w/ a laptop.

Does it also work without any computer, on stage?

Did you check the reverb sounds? If the KYMA replaces two Plexes and my two
Lexicons, its not that expensive any more!

>If you're really interested in more about Kyma, you can get the manual
>for $35+shipping, and there's also a good review in the July '95
>issue of Electronic Musician, and, of course, they have a web
>site.


Thank you for this extended review, Jim!

Matthias