Re: soundmorphing software for pc Also: Sampling in realtime

[Vance Galloway <vanceg@earthlink.net>]

Title: Re: soundmorphing software for pc  Also: Sampling in realtime

The Kyma software/hardware solution works GREAT on PC.  Remember, though, that you are buying a hardware subsystem, basicaly a black box full of DSP and memory, along with the software to control it.  

The morphing on Kyma is unbeatable.  One of the really cool things you can do with the Kyma is morphing sounds in realtime; take the frequency component of one sound and apply that to the amplitude component of another sound....It also does: AM, FM, Granular, Additive, Subtractive, Wavetable, and about a dozen other types of synthesis,

Loopers ought to know that Kyma allows you to record and playback an almost unlimited number of loops at any time (I have personally recorded 16 while playing  back over 30, and the system wasn't straining at all) and you can play the loops back forward, backward, randomly grabbing pieces from the record buffer, playing them back like a sampler would, whatever.  A basic system has 96  megs of ram (9.5 minutes of stereo 44.1 16 bit looping) and a loaded system has almost 600.  You can divide the memory for the loops up most anyway you want (maximum loop time from memory would be about 5 minutes) so you could have hundreds of loops going at once.  Of course, if you wanted longer loops. 

It's not an inexpensive tool, but it is very, very flexible.  You can get a VERY nicely outfitted Kyma (much more than the basic system I describe above) for the same price as a Kurzweil 2500.

Reading this back, it sounds much more like an ad than I intended it to sound.  I was really trying to express that I believe Kyma solves several issues that have been brought up on the list recently....

Vance


Last time I looked, the Kyma software was available for Windows.  Have
they abandoned it?

Probably the best bet for being able to do that kind of sound morphing
on the PC platform (short of getting a Kyma/Capybara system) would be
Csound.  Csound isn't for the faint of heart, though.  It has a steep
learning curve, and many people do find the process of writing ORC and
SCO (orchestra and score) files too disconnected from the act of making
music to be useful.  I personally love Csound, though I haven't used it
in a while.  For an example of a piece that uses a very simple Csound
orchestra (drenched with lots of reverb), check out "Stained Glass I:
FLW - IX" at my (woefully out-of-date) mp3.com site:
http://www.mp3.com/gamut