Anybody familiar with KYMA

SongCarver · Post by **SongCarver** » Tue Jul 23, 2002 1:57 pm

As I delve more into performing real-time audio modulation I am starting to think about KYMA by http://www.symbolicsound.com

Does anybody out there have experience with this, and can you make comparisions to LIVE?

I would love to take audio and contort it totally on stage, maybe KYMA is the only way...

expensive though..

I am looking forward to the possibilty of a Warper panel.

burgessa23 · Post by **burgessa23** » Tue Jul 23, 2002 5:15 pm

I would recomment Max/MSP it's less than 1/6th the price of Kyma and you can also make vst plugins (pluggo) for live with it.

you are not limited by what othher software companies think you need, you DIY!!

just ask the ableton guys, it's what they use (monolake)

jdg · Post by **jdg** » Tue Jul 23, 2002 5:25 pm

max/msp isn't that friendly tho.. i've been using it on and off for 5yrs. i just never fell in love with it. i'm excited about jitter (they're new set of video processing externals). i've never got into NATO as the politics about it seemed wierd.

ok.. back on topic.

i've never seen kyma b4, although it looks kinda kool. you can do some really cool realtime stuff with reaktor also.. too bad its not that stable on mac.

Yon · Post by **Yon** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 2:07 pm

jdg wrote: i've never seen kyma b4, although it looks kinda kool. you can do some really cool realtime stuff with reaktor also.. too bad its not that stable on mac.

I owned a Kyma, and I use Max/MSP, as do a few
others here at Ableton. The Kyma is capable of
making some very interesting sounds more or
less out of the box. The model is more like Reaktor
than Max/MSP, in the sense that each module (it is a
modular processing and synthesis environment)
does quite a lot, whereas a typical Max/MSP object
might be an oscillator, multiplier, or what have you,
hence performs a job which is small in scope.

Kyma is very deep, in that there is a programming
language which underlies it, based on smalltalk,
but (as you might expect) a rather steep learning
curve is involved in implementing your own
objects. It was my impression with Kyma 5.0 that
the set of preset objects was not, unlike Max/MSP,
sufficient to put together an arbitrary process from
your head out of, although one can certainly
assemble interesting and unusual sounds with
it, as evidenced by its use in special FX for film
(recent episodes of Star Wars..) The net effect
is that one has the impression of a great deal
of depth in its design, while in practice, unless one
is willing to invest a great deal of work in learning
the system, one ends up using the collection
of preset modules. Courses in using the Kyma
are offered by symbolicsound, however.

A big advantage of Kyma is that the processing
is hardware based, and scaleable (one can buy
additional processors). However this is rather
expensive. Also, because of the size, you
might find the Capybara is cumbersome for
live use.

Supercollider is software for the macintosh which
is similar in some respects (smalltalk like programming
interface). It is quite sophisticated, and it is very much
a programming language. Supercollider is free, and
was written by James McCartney, who now works for Apple.

Recent versions of Kyma incorporate a sequencing
model, and I think one configuration is oriented
toward sample playback. However it did not seem
to be to be comparable to Live when I last looked
at it.

One should also mention Pd, the free, open source
version of Max/MSP, by Miller Puckett.

You can find more information at these websites:

Kyma -- http://www.symbolicsound.com
Supercollider -- http://www.audiosynth.com
Max/MSP -- http://www.cycling74.com
Reaktor -- http://www.nativeinstruments.de
Pd -- http://www.pure-data.org

and of course us ;)

Live -- http://www.ableton.com

Cheers,
Yon

yon@ableton.com

jdg · Post by **jdg** » Wed Jul 24, 2002 3:51 pm

i am now a big fan of supercollider (esp now thats its free)
i thought it was gonna be a pain to use and create sounds, and never wanted to touch it due to many years of CSound programming (that left me emotionally scarred)..

but if you have light to moderate knowledge of programming, i suggest you mac peeple give it try (trust me.. its harder than it looks.)
i really enjoy using the x/y mouse control functions (moving your mouse controls sound parameteres) as i actually feel like i'm playing a laptop! ha!

Anybody familiar with KYMA

Anybody familiar with KYMA

re:kyma etc