Kyma X.82 A Synthesis Engine for Alternative Controllers & Interactive Sound Design

The culmination of two years of research and development, Kyma X.82, a new software update for the Kyma X/Pacarana sound synthesis engine, is specifically designed to take advantage of the expressive capabilities and extended control offered by today’s new crop of alternative controllers and cutting edge musical interface designs.

The recent explosion of interest in new musical interfaces and alternative controllers for sound design and music has created a need for sound synthesis and processing engines that can take full advantage of the increased bandwidths, higher resolution, lower latencies, continuous pitch and velocity values, and subtle expressive capabilities of these new controllers. Symbolic Sound has a long history of support for alternative and extended controllers in Kyma X, and Symbolic Sound’s newest release, Kyma X.82, introduces several additional features to support these innovative musical interfaces and alternative controllers.

Features in Kyma X.82 include over 20 new morphing sound synthesis algorithms, support for 14-bit MIDI controllers, and the publication of Kyma’s OSC protocol to support and inspire future developments of new instruments and controllers that can exploit Kyma’s responsive, high-resolution sound synthesis and processing algorithms in a seamless, plug-and-play manner.

Whether you are a sound designer performing expressive creature voices to picture, an electronic musician performing live on stage with alternative controllers, or a composer using physical controllers to create dense multi-layered textures of sound in the studio, you will be able to take advantage of Kyma X.82’s ease of parameter-mapping, low latency, high-resolution parameters, and legendary sound quality. Additional features of the new release include enhanced multichannel panning and effects, higher quality spectral analysis, and a 40% speedup in the software executing on the host computer.

Sound and Video Examples

3d Morph on iPad

Using one of the new Morph3d objects to morph among a re-synthesized Tuva singer, bongo, flute, angry cat, female voice, violin, cat meow, and shakuhachi using Kyma Control on an iPad.

Morphadasical

The foreground ‘melody’ is performed live on a Continuum Fingerboard, using KeyTimbre (near/far) and KeyVelocity (pressure) to morph between re-synthesized violin, trombone and flute. In the background, Kyma is generating the Sax/Flute morph pattern.

Medieval Miasma

The key-mapped spectrum of an organ is re-synthesized through a FormantBank with a slowly changing formant. The voice is a key-mapped spectral analysis/resynthesis using sine wave oscillators.

Peace Flute

A key-mapped flute spectrum is re-synthesized with a time-stretched attack and played on the Tonnetz in Kyma Control.

Spectres

A re-synthesized voice morphing to re-synthesized bowed glass performed on the Kyma Control keyboard. In the background, a key-mapped piano spectrum performed on a standard MIDI keyboard is re-synthesized through a FilterBank with vinyl clicks as the input to the filter.

Cloud Cadence

A key-mapped CloudBank on a set of piano samples, performed on a standard MIDI keyboard.

PNO Squeal

Key-mapped piano spectra re-synthesized by a FormantBank played on standard MIDI keyboard with ModWheel controlling the formant to create the ‘squeals’.

For more sound and video examples from Kyma X.82, please see Sound and Video Clips

For a full list of features in the new release please see the Kyma X.82 Press Release.