Hydra synth: first impressions

[Jay Vaughan]

Well, a few weeks later, and my first impressions have evolved a bit.

How are you guys getting along with yours?  Mohsen, had a chance to bang at it yet?

Its a very versatile synth engine.  The Mutators are a great way to describe hard-wired modulation capabilities.  Having them encoded in the oscillator flow like this is clever, and sensible.

It is *so* nice to not only have a synth with MPE/Polypressure, but also the ribbon strip and mod/pitch wheels are very nice to play with.  I find myself reaching for the ribbon controller when I play other synths now, which is a bit frustrating.  Getting that muscle memory factor, I guess.

The Wavestack is awesome - I wonder though if it works in a similar fashion to that of the Korg Wavestate, in terms of being able to morph between up to 8 different waveforms per Oscillator?  I’d love to have a comparison session to see how this is implemented by both synths, side by side.  I’m also pretty impressed by the range of the filters - they can be cold and hard and digital, like sometimes is nice, but then easily swing out to the other end of the ‘warmth’ scale, too. 

There are bugs though - I’ve managed to hang the panel/UI a couple of times with various monkey-tapping operations.  Seems like they’re going to be releasing bug fixes in the near future, though - another digital synth that gets monthly updates, lol.

Looks like we’ll be getting the desktop version at Sky Studio as well - one thing that is clear after playing the Hydra for a while, is that it sure does lend itself to a synth-expander style composition setup.  Wish they’d do a 19” rack mount version, haha.

Anyway, working on a tune that will be all-Hydra - will post when its ready.


j.