{"id":637,"date":"2021-08-21T06:24:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T06:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=637"},"modified":"2024-05-07T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T09:20:16","slug":"hydrasynth-desktop","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/hydrasynth-desktop\/","title":{"rendered":"HydraSynth \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83d\udca9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2024 update.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hey look they include stickers in the box! I haven’t seen that since the early 80s. It looks like a Roland Jupiter 8 bonked a Nord<\/a>, it works a bit like a SQ80<\/a>, but three oscillators with some inscrutable wavetables and built in tweaks – a bit like the Nova<\/a> as well! Such thoughtful presentation (except when you rack it you can’t read the labels on the outputs. Which ones are line out?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First Impressions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A jumble of patches included, all Thai Food (various names but same curry). Bang away at the colourful buttons on the front – poly-aftertouch is fun but it’s not for me – the rack will be just fine. Tap INIT<\/strong> twice and get a plain patch – I like the ability to clean everything out and start from scratch. The default sound is very<\/em> plain and you will quickly learn to go to VOICE<\/span> button over at the right and introduce some oscillator drift and perhaps turn on the warmth setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go to the MODULE SELECT<\/span> and click on OSC 1<\/span>. Just pick two waves for now – maybe a pulse and a sine. Morph between them with a ENV<\/span> – ok that’s the basic wavetable sound, very clinical. Now add a MUTANT<\/span>, maybe FM-Lin, set the operator to Sine and tweak the frequency with a knob on the front, just move it slightly off 1.00 … eh … slight movements still can’t get it to .998. Poo<\/em>. Set it to OSC2 instead and detune that a little … that does it, sounds quite upset, now another mutant, WavStack … right so that’s a supersaw, a FILTER<\/span>, let’s use an MS20 filter and a touch of drive, pretty good. Let’s change OSC<\/span> 2<\/span> use a wave table waveform and pulse width mutate it, OK some FX. Hmmmm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an excellent hardware interface, like Ensoniq came back from death and brought gifts. You just touch the button for the bit you want to adjust – OSC, FILTER, AMP<\/span> whatever and get going. Modulation is particularly cool, touch the thing you want to mod, touch the thing to mod it – good to go. Everything flows.<\/strong> My first lessons are in subtlety. The knobs are very good at bold, but don’t have quite the resolution needed for the tiny adjustments I would like to try. Early days. I like this thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Updated 2021<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While I was quite happy with the beast for the first few weeks I found a few definite flavours kept on popping up. It feels like the features that make HydraSynth not just another virtual analogue tend to produce very specific outcomes.<\/strong> The first flavour is “ye olde FM synthesiser<\/em>“, an artefact of the FM-Linear<\/strong> Mutant. FM is a bit like chilli – there’s only a certain range of application. The FM-Linear Mutant seems to have more potential than the three kinds of Pulse Width and the WavStack, but it’s easily overdone and has seemingly few sweet spots. The second noise I keep reaching is the exact opposite – “Prog Rock Mellotron<\/em>” which is that combination of very tight Pulse Width<\/strong> and WavStack<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And HydraSynth really is that analogue traditional layout, with a lot of emphasis on the oscillators. The filters are not that exciting – I can’t ever seem to get the subtle<\/em><\/strong> result I want. Not super disappointed or anything but not singing praise on high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Updated 2024<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I recently pulled it out of the rack and got ready to sell. It just seemed to hold no endearing flavour, particularly in comparison to the wilder animals in my zoo<\/a>. But the resale value wasn’t that good so I held off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just the other night I resurrected the unit on the desktop and tried again. I went back to first principles – this is a virtual analogue, it has knobs and you can patch things by touching them. Just treat it like a old Moog or something – feed a saw wave in to the filters and twiddle shit. No wavetables or mutants. This went surprisingly well – just tweaking and pushing things around to get a basic noise going. Just above the Hydra sits the Novation PEAK – both have wavetables but the PEAK doesn’t accent the idea. I began to see that I’d jumped straight to that aspect of the Hydra without spending enough time on the basics – which came out better than I’d remembered. Actually quite a rival for the PEAK, without even pulling out the special effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a bit of thought I see that the Hydra is really covering a broad spectrum, where I had wanted it to be a powerful specialist. It certainly can be powerful, but my continuous arrival at a few similar sounds came from starting near the end of the fabrication. It has a large bank of wavetables, they can be mutated – but get the basics sorted first and then start this part of the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not moving the rating just yet. But I am rewriting this review with kinder words.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2024 update. Hey look they include stickers in the box! I haven’t seen that since the early 80s. It looks like a Roland Jupiter 8 bonked a Nord, it works a bit like a SQ80, but three oscillators with some inscrutable wavetables and built in tweaks – a bit like the Nova as well! Such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[4,6],"class_list":["post-637","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-virtual-analogue","tag-wavetable"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}