That’s it. Thank you.
ADDED : It uses an LFO step sequence, with some specialization.
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This is in the video in the first post, just a quick shot.
Glen is talking about making their own collection of samples.
I am wondering what microphone he’s using here ?
Found it :
Anyone have any insight into whether these will start shipping soon? Every retailer just says “expected soon” and nothing on the ASM website. I ordered right when it was announced and am hoping it will arrive before Christmas.
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Have they not gotten the man himself, Pedro Eustache to do a demo yet? I mean he can make pvc piping sound dope for Christ’s sakes.
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Orthodox Christmas !
Sweetwater still says – Expected December 2025.
Good things take time.
More Bernie Kenerson
I mean, I get why they’re pushing the samples with all the care they put into them, but I want to hear some nasty bass lines, and soaring leads getting ripped apart on this, showing off the modulation flexabilities.
I will say that demos sounds are a bit better than the ones presented on the first jam video.
It’s an exciting product to be sure though.
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As far as any sort of deals on the Diosynth, i see Kraft Music has bundled the Dio with the Audio-Technica ATH-M40x Headphones for the same price.
I have been watching Youtube for more of the synthesized ( as opposed to sampled ) and more unusual sorts of sounds too. The best i’ve found so far are a few ( not enough ) of the SoundCloud demo clips.
I know the sampled sounds can be used for more original and unique sounds too, when combined with the core HS synth sounds, and/or run through the effects section or otherwise mangled. ( I just posted about using the Anyma Phi for this sort of creation. )
ADDED : As to the more unusual sounds, it is important to note here, some of the architectural differences relative the Hydrasynth. In particular that the Mutants are no longer present.
What you have though is the Growl ( a ring modulator in line that can be tuned to add inharmonic effects ).
There is a change too to the filter layout. So the two parallel / serial filter arrangement is gone, just the one highly versatile 16 mode filter there. But there is a LP / BP / HP filter on the noise generator, which i am looking forward to experimenting with now as well.
For non wind players – there still is MIDI in control.
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Ashun has put up the Diosynth Manager with its User Manual. The Manager requires Windows 10 or greater or macOS 11 or greater.
Looked through the list of Diosynth wavetable waveforms. They look to be exactly the same as the Hydrasynth ones.
There is also a list of ModMatrix sources and destinations. MIDI is not in the destination.
There is an explanation for the three modulation sources – Breath, Breath Threshold, and Breath Threshold Scale.
As i expected you can use the Filtered Noise all by itself for having that controlable with a wind synth.
Quite a bit more detail on Growl. Looks like fun.
Also note, there is a new Diosynth Users Guide. Off hand i can’t see what has changed relative thie first one now only a few weks old
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DS is shipping now. Friend of mine received his from SW and they are showing in stock at Perfect Circuit. My SW rep said shipments are small so they likely wont show “in stock” until a large shipment scheduled for 1/22 which will more than cover the remaining preorders they had (23).
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That’s good to hear. The 22nd of January, coordinates with NAMM. We’ll see if ASM has any more announcements.
EDIT : Rewrote my complaint in a more positive light.
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Wow that sucks. I was told the initial shipment was 12 units so you should have gotten yours if it were first come first serve. I know I pressed buy pretty quickly as well but cancelled when it was obvious it wouldn’t make the holidays.
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Mine is on the way. Talked to my sales guy, i really like him, and they found the stock to ship me one too.
While i had him on the phone, i backhandedly asked told him about the Leviasynth. He didn’t have any info yet, but promised to call me, when / if he does
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I got mine and started playing yesterday. Caveat: I am just a dilettante and not a professional musician in any field, and I don’t have other wind synths (except a Soma Pipe but that doesn’t really count).
Very short initial impressions:
- ASM went all out on the case and accessories and stuff, very nice, feels like they care about the instrument and respect the customer. Thank you for this ASM!
- The build feels very solid. It’s plastic but feels sturdy, and ergonomically it makes sense to hold and play, and the physical keys are nice to play. The octave keys are also super responsive and it’s very fun to do octave jumps in the melody with a little thumb rolling after some practice. I highly recommend trying any sample/preset in every octave because some of them sound kind of basic on the default and then you go +2 up or down and it sounds like a totally different instrument and plays a lot better.
- The speaker is very serviceable and fun to let my partner hear what I am working on so I am glad they included it, but definitely put some nice headphones on to get the real sounds as some of them (especially low octave stuff) is going to sound completely different.
- Never going to use the batteries, USB-C charger cable + charging brick is really useful and lasts forever.
- This is small but the finger support feels really nice. I am not sure what it is but it’s like a very soft but sturdy silicone or something and in just the right place for me - props to whoever on the ASM team made that choice.
- So glad they made the expression light color customizable, it’s cool!
- I don’t like that the metal extension keys on the side (I don’t know the proper name, they are meant for sax fingering) are sensitive to slight touch and if you touch them while they are under your palm while trying to finger the other keys it makes all keys unresponsive and no sound comes out. This is super annoying, hope this is something that can be turned off or fixed with a software update.
- I am disappointed that the fingerings are not customizable and I thought I read they would be. I am relying on the flute fingering but it feels like a waste of the other keys and the sax fingering is too cumbersome for me to learn. Maybe I am on my own here and all the sax/flute/trumpet players don’t care because they are trained to a certain fingering style and they want to stick with it, but personally, I think one of the major advantages of a digital wind instrument is that it can avoid (or go beyond) the limitations inherent in physical instruments. Like on a concert flute, you only have so many fingers to support/balance/key and so much length of pipe to make pitches that you need all these niche little valves and finger locations to get as many pitches as possible, but you can leap over all that with a digital instrument and make it like a vertical piano with the simplest fingering design possible to move through a chromatic scale. Again, maybe I am the only person who cares about this, it isn’t a knock against the build of the instrument. Please let me use all the keys for the notes I want ASM! I want to put those side keys to use.
- Some of the samples sound very nice, but I was hoping it would be more adventurous than it is. Going through the presets you will have like 6 slight trumpet variations and 10 slight flute variations that sound very close to each other but, in my opinion, a pretty limited diversity when it comes non-Western-focused wind instruments. Again, I can’t really knock this as a bad thing because they could have had fewer overall and it could still be considered a good deal/valuable wind instrument, and the samples could be expanded in the future, I just personally thought (and hoped) for more esoteric diversity from ASM’s selection vs. what I would expect from a company like Yamaha or Roland.
- Not digging a lot of the synthesized presets. Many of them are very repetitive. I don’t know how many “nostalgic cheesy 80’s wind synth sound” presets I need, but it’s definitely less than like 100 of them. Also, there is the joystick and the two modulation pads, but for a ton of the presets they seem to do very little, or are unmapped? I thought with the waveforms+filters+effects borrowed (at least in part) from the Hydrasynth that there would be a lot more interesting/creative stuff on tap, but like 80% of the time the joystick just slightly adjusts the filter or adds some chorus and the two modulation pads have no effect. I have found some gems I added to my favorites list but I have spent a few hours going through the synthesized presets and just feeling like it’s nearly the same sound over and over. If I had been on the preset curation team I would’ve cut out a ton, they just don’t add anything to the experience and you gotta scroll through like 50 of these things with names like “OverloveGDSmooth3” just to get between two sounds that feel distinct and enjoyable to play.
- Related to the preset note: I know this isn’t a Hydrasynth, I know it’s not the same engine, but there is very little weird/crazy/aggressive stuff in here. Even the section of “Distorted” stuff is tame. I am here for the piccolos and llama whistles and contrabassoon, really I love them and want them, but I also hoped to see more stuff I would want from a modern and experimental synth design.
- The drone presets are cool and make the playing experience a lot more like “Ah, so this is the power of a wind synth, I see.” when you can get these strange waterfalling walls of sound reacting to the expressivess of your breath and bite and pitch (at least I feel like some of them are reacting that way, need more time to play to be certain of how they are working).
I am not going to give a review of it as an instrument for now, those are just my immediate impressions, and the reason I am talking about presets a lot is because a big part of immediate impressions is that when you pick it up you should say, “Oh whoa, so it’s capable of that? Cool.” It is true that presets don’t really matter in the bigger picture and the main values come from: 1. What can the synth engine do? 2. How well does it work as a controller for VSTs? 3. Is it a reliable long-term instrument for professional performance? I haven’t had time to delve into the editor or hook it up to Omnisphere yet, and I can fully imagine that when I do it will fulfill a lot more of my initial hopes.
Ending on a positive note, I will say after my first few hours with I was a little bummed out about the fingering limitations and lack of preset variety/experimentalism and I put it aside, but then I started to want to “just try out another thing” and now I have found myself picking it up whenever I have had a chance at home. So if it physically FEELS addictive and inviting to play that is the most important part for long-term value.
I will add some more of my thoughts after I get more practice with it and explore the editor and MIDI stuff. I will also add a list of some of my favorite sample/preset sounds that I recommend people try out when they get one or test it at a store. Hope I am not being ignorant of anything obvious (like if the fingerings were customizable, oh man would I feel dumb).
Edit:
Since the presets largely don’t seem to have a modulation buttons assigned (even with the “patch” default setting) I added “Growl” as a global setting for the first button and I recommend this, it lets you add a kind of harmonic overblown sound to anything and definitely gives a lot more expression the reed instruments when you want them to really scream on a high note.
Here are some presets I recommend trying (saved to my favorite and not sure how to see the original bank/category they are saved to otherwise I would add that).
Girtha GD (I customized this one with both layers having a Metalzone copy for both effects, still want to get heavier but it’s a start.)
Obassoon
TrioOfFlutesM
HarmoFluteTO
IntrvlDroneTO
SpaceCowboyT
BangDiW/Yi
HuLuSiQiChan (I like this for what it is but how did they not sample a hulusi with the drone pipes open, that is like the whole reason they are so cool to play!)
RunTheBladeM
LlamaWhistle (honestly a banger, try rolling through the octaves on this bad boy)
BassoonVib
Xiao (great expressive feel with the breath)
MorinKhu (doesn’t sound like a Morin Kuuhr to my ears, but I like it anyway and its nice to play gently)
Piccolo
WaterXun_TO
RockTenorVelo (I think this sax has the most bite, though respect for the RauncySax for indeed sounding quite rauncy and lustful)
AltoSaxVibVelo
Didj&FluteTO
FluteShrtiTO (one of the best I think, can even make my playing sound decent)
CaveFlute_TO (try that -2 octave with a subwoofer turned up)
Thereminy GD (another standout, nailed the sound)
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Yeah this seems like the main miss to me in the initial release as just about every existing EWI either has a good customizability mechanism or follows the the Akai algorithm where everything is a modifier and you can usually get fingerings you want with experimentation.
That said customizability can easily be fixed in a firmware update so I’m hopeful they’ll sort that stuff out in the near future.
The Twenty Four Chinese and Asian Sample Instruments on the ASM Diosynth
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
105 Bang Di
106 Bang Di with Yi Yin
107 Qu Di
108 Qu Di with Yi Yin
109 Ba Wu
110 Ba Wu Qi Chan Yin
111 Xiao
112 Xiao with Yi Yin
113 Xun
114 Guan Zi
115 Suo Na
116 Suo Na with Chan Yin
117 Hu Lu Si
118 Hu Lu Si Qi Chan Yin
119 Lu Sheng 1
120 Lu Sheng 2
121 Er Hu
122 Vibrato Er Hu
123 Er Hu with Slide Up
124 Ban Hu
125 Xi Pi
126 Er Huang with Da Yin
127 Morin Khuur
128 Morin Khuur with Slide
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Glossary :
Yi Yin - Softly
Chan Yin - Vibrato, Trill
Da Yin - To strike or pluck
Bang Di - High pitched transverse bamboo flute from north China
Qu Di - Lower pitched transverse bamboo flute, aka Curved or Melody Flute
Ba Wu - Transverse free metal reed “flute”
Xiao - Vertical end blown banboo flute
Guan Zi - Double reed, “Chinese Oboe” ( softer sound )
Suo Na - Double reed, “Chinese Shawm” ( more piercing sound )
Hu Lu Si - Calabash gourd flute with bamboo pipes ( smooth silky tone )
Lu Sheng - Reed-pipe mouth organ, with multiple bamboo pipes and metal reeds
Er Hu - Two string Chinese fiddle with snake skin resonator, nasal sort of sound
Ban Hu - Two string Chinese fiddle with wooden resonator, high pitched
Xi Pi - Four string pear shaped Chinese lute with frets, aka Pipa
Er Huang - Peking Opera style using Erhu, one of two the other being Xipi
Morin Khuur - Two stringed Mongolian horse hair fiddle
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
I put this together by researching it online. I don’t have the cultural significance for any of this, and also may have got parts of it wrong. Corrections are welcome.
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The Dio is selling well.