I do have a Kronos, and Pigments too, but I never really got into wavetable synthesis even though I think it's a very cool idea.
That's changing rapidly with the Hydrasynth, because the Hydrasynth makes it a doddle. I've spent a lot of time tonight playing with it and by golly I wish all synths were as well thought out as this thing is.
Having the signal flow, from oscillators to post-FX laid out on the top panel works incredibly well:
Accessing just about anything only requires a press of the button in the Module Select section and the associated parameters immediately map (in pages of 8) to the Master Control section where they can be viewed and changed with the buttons and rotary controls.
It's so obvious, but so friendly.
I've not even glanced at the manual yet, and I've had no problem navigating around it, finding interesting ways to tweak the presets and come up with interesting sounds.
The Mutant functions associated with Oscillators 1 and 2 are superb, implementing a variety of extremely interesting wave-shaping methods. I was able to morph a sine wave into something that sounded not dissimilar to a
duduk using a single mutant in the form of linear-FM applying a triangle wave to the sine, with a bunch of feedback set and a wet/dry mix between the two modulated by polyAT.
I wasn't even trying to do that, I was just experimenting with stuff. It took less than 30 seconds, but then I spent 10 minutes playing that sound on the board because it was beautiful.
The external power supply is small and light, has a short cable and there is an octave missing from the keyboard but I don't care about any of those things because of the sheer creativity that pours out of it when I start touching things.
One of the presets is a nice little analogue-y synthesized drum pattern, and when I looked at it all the oscillators are set to 0 volume in the mixer. Looking further, osc 1 is the bass drum, osc 2 is the 'snare' carved out of noise and osc 3 is a 'woodblock' of sorts.
The rhythm is created by 3 of the 5 LFOs modulating stuff all over the place, and I am not sure but I think the other 2 may be modulating the snare and woodblock LFOs to vary the rhythm such that they are not just monotonously repeating at a constant rate.
I've now made more lovely sounding patches in the last 2 hours than I have on any other synth in the last 2 years and I get the strong impression I'm only scratching the surface so far.
It's so usable, and absolutely brilliant. All synths should be designed with as much thought.
I could go on, and on, and on... but I do need to get some sleep.
The Hydrasynth is a keeper. Well done ASM