Waldorf Kyra

[oli@bass]

IMO, the Kyra is a bag of missed opportunities for a newly designed synth, and I don't see anything the Virus TI2 can't do or isn't even better at. Killer for me:

- No DAW intergration (and Waldorf leaves that to third party developers, which didn't work for the Blofeld either)
- Only 8 Parts
- No unison
- No user waves
- USB 2.0 for multi channel 96kHz audio streaming. That's the same sort of mistake that was made with the Virus (which effectively runs at USB 1.1 speed). The problem is not the single unit, but all those devices together sharing the USB bus.
- Limited effects, especially missing distortion types

[MBTC]

Although I won't come to any conclusions until I've seen a LOT more real-world reviews, I think the selling point of the Kyra is that FPGA offers a much more powerful synth.

For example, from the manual:
"Effects: Nine module stereo effects unit per Part with a 3-band shelving EQ, a FormantFilter, 5-mode Distortion module, dual Limiters, stereo delay module, 6-stage Phaser with dedicated stereo multishape LFO, Chorus/Flanger module supporting comb and doubling effects and a Reverb module. All 72 effects modules can be used simultaneously without affecting polyphony

https://support.waldorfmusic.com/fil...anual%20EN.pdf

With regard to unison, you can stack up to 20 sounds in dual mode and or layer them (more on this in the manual).

Most of the early reviews I saw of the Kyra commented on things like killer polyphony, killer reverb tails, etc. At the same time, every Virus owner I've ever talked to on the matter feels it sounds great with one or two sounds at a time but is a very polyphony starved synth. It's not the fault of the Virus, it is based on older Motorola DSP chips that were good stuff in their day, it's just that their day was 20 years ago and Kemper hasn't kept up.

I agree with the USB 2.0 implementation though -- not sure what they were thinking there.

[engineer]

Originally Posted by oli@bass

- USB 2.0 for multi channel 96kHz audio streaming.

Hm, I do not see a generall problem with USB 2.0 since it should be possible to transport quite a large number of channels with the given bandwidth. USB devices like RME show that it is possible. The problems mostly acoour because of driver issues and chip hardware.

Originally Posted by oli@bass

- Limited effects, especially missing distortion types

Which do you miss in detail?

I am currently redesigning my workstation and preparing a release for electronic developers to enable them to produce their FPGA synths themselves and search for input.

[oli@bass]

Originally Posted by engineer

Hm, I do not see a generall problem with USB 2.0 since it should be possible to transport quite a large number of channels with the given bandwidth. USB devices like RME show that it is possible. The problems mostly acoour because of driver issues and chip hardware.

Only in theory. As I already wrote: "The problem is not the single unit, but all those devices together sharing the USB bus." USB 2 was never desinged for real time distributed mutli-channel audio.

Originally Posted by engineer

Which do you miss in detail?

I am currently redesigning my workstation and preparing a release for electronic developers to enable them to produce their FPGA synths themselves and search for input.

Different types of shapers:
- Soft Bounce (Virus)
- Hard Bounce (Virus)
- Sine Fold (Virus)
- Saw Fold (Virus)
- Triangle Fold (Virus)
- Wave Shaper (Virus)
- Parapolic Shaper (NI Massive)
- Different Types of modeled distortions (Overdrive, Tube Amp, etc)

[engineer]

With USB, this is correct. It is anyway recommended to use a separated channel for each of the high performant clients.


Regarding your proposals: I am not 100% familiar with all these effects, but might take this into account. From totdays point of view, there will be an FPGA synth having that soon