I wanna buy an nyx but you afraid me about this poor quality mod selector.
Do you have photo?
Do you contact the manufacturer ?
No picture, I’ve boxed it up to go back to the retailer. Even with a replacement, if it is the same design, it will likely happen again since you have a small metal pin designed for a keyed shaft going onto a splined plastic shaft.
First happened switching between Dual and Split (the two inner selections) and after a few attempts to switch to other modes it would grip the pot maybe 20% of the time. You can see the start of a groove wearing into the pot shaft splines already and I’ve only had it for just over 2 weeks.
Differences from the demo unit I tried also (serial <100) , the vibrato level slider is not a LED one like the mod level sliders and the PCB, where you access the MIDI/unison DIP switches, is now SMD rather than thru-hole. The latter is noted on their website though and isn’t a big deal IMO.
If any of the other pots are the same (I didn’t lift any of the other caps) then it will only be time until the same fate becomes them. I’m not really wanting some 3rd party knob caps on such a stylised unit either.
A shame really!
Any news about this problem?
i don’t care about the issues, i love the sound of the Nyx, and when possible will buy one for sure.
it’s often said that buying the first release of an electronic item is a courageous move. perhaps it is just a manufacturing exceptional dip in quality.
even if the industrial quality is questionable, there is surely no questioning the sound of the Nyx synth … gets to places not many other contemporary analog synthesizers reach.
It’s not the first release, this is the revised version.
The sound is great, no problem with that, but given it has only a 1 year warranty from the manufacturer it’s not worth it for me, no good having great sound if you can’t adjust it with confidence.
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I returned mine, the one in the sound clip above. The reverb unit started crackling and popping and the mix knob became noisy - this after just few hours use from new. I’ve gone for some eurorack modules instead of a replacement for the time being. Loved the sound of the Nyx but not sure on the (hand-built) build quality - maybe I was unlucky.
Mine has been returned/refunded too, retailer was super understanding. Likewise, I’m going to grab some eurorack I think. Mini-skiff with a couple of Basimilus Iteritas Alter and util modules then ping it with Rytm impulses and A4 CV.
Bringing back this thread just to remind everyone that the Nyx is amazing. So raw and harmonically rich, and the way the modulators work together (with the cool pulsating LEDs on the sliders) is hypnotizing. The filters on the verge of self-oscillation are a thing of beauty. Plus a reverb so good it’s almost like getting a synth for free!
Here’s the first patch I made, just a continuously evolving drone., no midi required. This was output to the DN ins for light stereoizing with chorus and pingpong delay, plus a bit of overdrive to bring out the reverb tails more. Try switching to HPF for dramatic frequency shifts and switching osc 2 from triangle to off for crazy dolphin sounds.
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The NYX is indeed awesome, I love mine as well and its raw sound going through that reverb is Blade Runner vibes 100% 
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Just bought my THIRD Nyx mk1. Not letting go of it this time. Now I have Eurorack to overcome the LFO limitation I sold it because of the first time. Looking forward to welcoming back the goddess of the night. Going to pair it with an Erebus mk1 for massive 4 osc drones washed in filthy echo and reverb…
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Welcome back.
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Arise, Necro Nyx Thread!
I just picked one of these up and having arrived safely from its travels to me im just getting my hands on it.
As a user of the Erebus and Hades…its very different.
I guess im just poking the thread here to see who’s still out there with this thing.
Its strange and im going to have some questions.
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I sold mine and regret it. I still check for deals here and there
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I think my lack of true understanding of envelopes is currently an issue.
Somebody once explained LFO’s to me as “Invisible robotic fingers that turn knobs for you” and i GOT it.
Ive never had that moment with envelopes. I read a thread in here recently where a fellow user expressed their absolute JOY at discovering the envelope page on the OP-1 and how it was the single most beneficial experience in their sound design journey.
I guess im still waiting for that to happen to me.
i mean, i know that messing about with the envelope on the Erebus will make it go Meow , or Mee ow, or DeeOh…
and now here i am with this Nyx in front of me and im missing the simplicity of the Erebus’s envelope layout.
I like it a lot.
I think its going to teach me a bunch of stuff
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Just yesterday I wanted to start a „Dreadbox appreciation thread“ after playing with my Nyx and Erebus for a few hours nonstop.
The Nyx and Erebus both are the prototypical dreadbox synths, with that unruly wildness in the oscillators and filters.
@ViolentMeals Re envelopes:
Take your voice and burst out a sound. Now vocalise again, but this time slooooowly ramp up the sound from veeeeery quite to loud.
What you just did is change the ATTACK on your sound.
Ok now take your voice again, ramp up your voice from quiet to 100% loud and then immediately stop. Then do the same thing again, ramp up to 100% but this time kill the note just slightly slower on the way down. Next to a slow attack in this example (= ramping up from quiet to loud slowly) you modulated the DECAY in these two examples…decay being how fast the sound decays again once it reached full volume.
In this second example we reached our “peak” at 100% and then decayed the sound immediately or a bit slower the second time around. If you were to hold the sound there, you’d be sustaining it. So that’s what SUSTAIN governs…how loudly does the note continue to sound if you hold the note? So let’s say you set your Sustain to “60% of total volume”, then in our example above, you’d ramp up to 100%, from there drop to 60% and hold it there for as long as you hold it there.
Finally there’s RELEASE…that governs what happens to the sound once you let go of it / stop producing it. In a way it describes how the note fades out. If release is set to 0, the moment you let go of the note, the sound stops. If release is set to a higher value (usually measured in ms or seconds, like the attack), then when you let go of the note, it will slowly fade out.
ADSR…attack, delay, sustain, release…those make up your envelope. And it’s what makes the difference between eg a plucked note on a violin and a bowed note on a violin:
A plucked note: very short attack, fast decay, no sustain, release at 0
A bowed note: slow attack, slow decay, long (and loud) sustain, and probably a somewhat slower release also.
Here a visual representation:
In these examples, the enevlope we set modulates the AMPLITUDE of the sound…so how volume behaves through time (eg slow attack = slow ramp UP of the sound’s volume, fast release = fast ramp DOWN of the sound’s volume)
But an envelope can also modulate other parameters on a synth, for example the filter cutoff.
To make that work, we need to introduce one more variable, which can have different names on different synths, but we’ll call it “Envelope Depth” here (it’s sometimes also called “Envelope Amount”). This parameter governs how much of a modulation the envelope will apply to the modulated variable, in our case here the filter cutoff.
So let’s say the filter cutoff is set to 300Hz and the Enevlope Depth is set to 50% modulation (it’s rarely expressed in % actually and also rarely precise like this but that way it’ll make it easier to explain how it impacts the signal :))
In this scenario, the filter envelope’s ATTACK will govern how fast your filter cutoff will reach it’s modulated value (which is 300Hz + 50% = 450Hz) — so practically speaking, let’s assume we set the attack of our filter envelope to 1 second (which again, you rarely get to do so precisely on hardware gear, but for example in VSTs you could define it by the millisecond or second actually). Now the filter will open up “automatically” from 300Hz to 450Hz within a second from the moment you play the note.
The DECAY will govern how quickly the filter closes back down again to its original position (in our example 300Hz) once it reaches its peak (=450Hz).
The SUSTAIN will govern whether the “Decay” / closing down of the filter cutoff gets interrupted on its way down and at what point…so let’s say sustain is set to 30%….the moment your filter cutoff’s modulated peak of 450Hz are reached, decay will set in and close down the filter again at the speed you set for the decay…only instead of closing back down fully to the 300Hz, it will now only close down 70% (if my math is right to 390Hz 
), and now will sustain there (at 30% more open than our base setting of 300Hz) until you let go of the note.
Once you let go of the note, the RELEASE kicks in, and this will decide how long it takes for the filter to return from the 390Hz held because of the sustain down to 300Hz where our unmodulated filter cutoff sits. So let’s say the RELEASE is set to 0.5sec, then it will take the filter cutoff 0.5sec to go from 390Hz to 300Hz once you release the note.
The two scenarios I’ve described here are two typical use cases for envelopes. Amp Envelope (modulates how the volume of a note behaves when a note is played and released) and Filter Envelope (usually modulates the filter cutoff - and comes with an additional parameter often called “Envelope Depth” or “Envelope Amount” to regulate HOW MUCH the filter cutoff should be modulated by the envelope).
Amp Envelope and Filter Envelopes you’ll find on many analog, subtractive synths a fixed controls. But some synths also will have additional envelopes that can be mapped to other parameters to modulate…it would still be the same principle though.
OK, lastly, not all synths offer us control over all four elements of an envelopes (ADSR - attack, decay, sustain, release). Instead, they might just offer us control over eg Attack and Release…and decay and sustain are fixed or abstracted from these two values.
So look at your Erebus:
Underneath the volume knob, there are two little knobs, attack and release. That’s the synth’s amp envelope. The attack knob will affect how fast / slow your synths signal ramps up 0 - 100% volume (fast attack, ie knob turned all the way to the left, the signal will be instantly at full volume — knob turned all the way to the right, signal will sloooowly ramp up to max volume), while the release knob will affect how the note fades out once you let go of it (Release turned all the way to the left = note stops instantly when you let go of it, release turned all the way to the right = note fades out sloooooowly once you let go of it).
Ok then check the synth’s bottom left section. You’ll see the five knobs labelled “attack”, “decay”, “sustain”, “release” and “depth” — That’s the Erebus’ filter envelope. Your settings here will affect the synth’s filter cutoff as described in the example above.
Set your filter cutoff where you want it to start from (eg at 10 o’clock)…now with depth set how much you want the filter cutoff to be modulated by the envelope (more depth = the filter will open up wider through the envelope). Finally decide how fast the filter should open up (attack), how fast it should close down again once it reaches its “peak value” (decay), whether the close down should be interrupted and where on the way down while you hold a note (sustain) and how fast it should close down to its original value (in this example its 10 o’clock setting) once you let go of the notr (release).
Please note: the amp envelope affects what part of the filter envelope modulation will actually be heard. Here’s an example to illustrate: if your amp envelope’s release were set to eg 1sec (ie once you let go of the note, the volume will fade out within 1 second upon release) and your filter envelope’s release would be set to 2 sec (ie the filter cutoff returns to its base value within 2 seconds of letting go of the note), then you would not have enough time to hear the filter fully close (2 secs) because the volume of the note would have reached zero BEFORE (1 sec). So you wouldn’t hear that last second of modulation.
Hope all this makes it clearer.
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Finally re the NYX:
Below its Volume knob you’ll see two controls, Rise and Fall. Those are your amp envelope and the terms are effectively “Attack” (= Rise) and “Decay/Release” (=Fall) 
And then you’ll have the two envelope sections in the bottom middle of the synth — two sections with “Rise” “Fall” and “Level” controls each.
These are your modulation envelopes (the NYX has two), and without any patching done to the left of the synth, they are set to affect the filter cutoff as described in the examples above.
Rise = Attack
Fall = Decay/Release
Level = Depth
The two evenlopes can be set to work in series (so first one then the other, in parallel (at the same time) etc etc. that’s what the knob above that modulation section determines, how the modulation envelopes interact/affect each other (the one that gives the options Single, Dual, Split, Odd).
That little mod section gives the NYX soooo many possibilities, it’s a lot of fun to experiment with it
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What a beautiful and informative response! May future readers also glean knowledge from your words! I particularly found your descriptions of the sustain and release very informative, and while this was mostly information that i knew on some level, you put it into words very well. I suppose part of what i considered to be my confusion about them is merely my seeking a super simple, zen koan-like explanation of the over arching purpose.
LIke envelopes are a period of time during which an event occurs, or some such…
Anyhow, back to Nyx:
little riff ive been exploring, taking it for a spin on Nyx.
Its clipping a bit, yeah…
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An envelope is the path of sonic adventure & transformation your sound engages on when you hit a key, and from which it departs again when you let go of the key (your sounds hero’s journey).
EDIT: or more practically speaking:
An envelope is a path (mountain or valley) of modulation that gets triggered every time you hit a note and that always has a beginning and an end.
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Perfect.
chefs kiss
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Thanks again for taking the time to write all that out.
Folks talk a lot about how great a place on the internet it is here, and i tend to agree. This is a great example of the kindness and generosity and just overall good attitude of (most of) the people here. There is always a bit of reticence to admit to not really grokking something as basic as envelopes and figuring that when you put that out there on the internet the first responses are going to be along the lines of “Well, the first problem youre having is that youre an idiot…”
Very nice to not have that be the case, @hausland, your effort is very much appreciated
Now, i need to read up in the How to Discourse thread so i can post a link with the appropriate time stamp to pick some brains about how a certain sound is being achieved…
Back in a flash!
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