I’m wrong or does this synth sound raw, even with the filters?
i just listened to some Digitone pads and they sounded nice, somehow dreamy
I was just told by somebody that he thinks the Matriarch and Voyager Old School both sound more “raw” than the Sub37.
No idea what “raw” means anymore.
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I always thought raw was a good thing. Is it a good thing?
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I thought raw meant uncooked.
I’m not into cooking synths but I’m not one to judge
Minimoog roasting on an open fire
DX7 nipping on your nose
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Los Angeles this weekend!
You can see the Hydrasynth (in all its raw goodness) at the Los Angeles Synth Expo, September 28-29 at DAF Studios, at 2234 W. Temple St near Echo Park.
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Scoop
I found an unlinked page at the ASM web site, kinda an easter egg. It’s a placeholder put together likely to be completed later, so some of it looks like a little “tongue-in-cheek” humor. In particular the patch banks.
ADDED (the next day): Indeed ASM did pull this link down, but you can see what was there by clicking on the little triangle below. Scoop becomes exclusive.
I guess the biggest thing here, though not unexpected, is the Editor VST – AU/VST/VST3 editor/patch manager. Software versions numbers are at 1.7 for the Keyboard and 1.5 for the Desktop. Also they are planning to have a manual in “Ancient Norse”! 
for those 11th century synth users.
The Patch Bank names:
All Ambient, Vangelis, About Bass, Space Music, FM Daze,
-AND-
Banjo Breaks 
If Glen is at the LA Synth Expo this weekend you should ask him about the Banjo Breaks patch, and tell him that that is the only reason you really want a Hydrasynth.
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We have posted the Hydrasynth owner manual online at ashunsoundmachines.com for those interested.
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Hi, is there any news about European distributors? Thanks!
So i’ve been digging in the manual – i’ve been using my imagination up until now in particular with the mod-matrix sources and destinations. Finally i can be a little more grounded as i imagine. There is more detail of this all in the manual starting on page 75.
So here’s a little summary from the manual of mod-matrix destinations for the pre and post effects processors. Add to all eight of these a Dry/Wet Mix destination as well.
- Chorus – Rate, Depth
- Flanger – Rate, Depth
- Tremolo – Rate, Depth
- Phaser – Rate, Feedback
- Rotary – Lo-Speed (Speed of Low Rotor), Hi-Speed (Speed of High Rotor)
- Lo-Fi – Cutoff, Resonance
- EQ – LowGain, HighGain
- Compressor – Ratio, Threshold
This doesn’t include the separate Delay and Reverb sections which both have a much more extensive set of controllable destinations.
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Mod-matrix sources: Envelopes, LFOs (either as bipolar or unipolar), Aftertouch, Keytracking, Velocity, the 2 Wheels, Ribbon, Expression Pedal, CV, MIDI CCs
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Also of interest to me are the mod-matrix destinations for the arpeggiator. The list is quite extensive and includes: Mode, TimeDiv, Swing, Gate, Range, OctMode, Length, Phrase, Ratchet, Chance
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All the MIDI CC’s can be mod-matrix sources, but a bit of a surprise (to me) is that all MIDI CC’s can also be mod-matrix destinations. So the Hydrasynth can be a really interesting MIDI generator. Add to this the poly-aftertouch data, and it seems like there’s a chance that this could jam up the DIN MIDI out channel. (I see on the the system setup page, you can turn off poly-AT data going out on MIDI.)
ADDED: Please jump in on this, especially if i’ve got something jumbled up, as i no doubt will as i struggle to understand this all.
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Keep telling myself i will not buy this, but i simply need to try this out. ArP as mod dest?? That is so cool 
i can not not to try this out. Hope others can learn something from this new company, great debut ASM 
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I know!
A few more mod-matrix things blowing my mind.
You can modulate a whole list of things with the mixer. For all five audio sources – Osc1, Osc2, Osc3 Ring/Mod (or eternal input), and Noise, you can modulate the volume, pan, and the ratio of signal sent between the two filters. Then there are 6 or 7 different parameters you can then modulate on each of the two different filters.
You can modulate the four Oscillator Mutants (two Mutants each for two of the three oscillators). There are five modulatable parameters each, plus the eight separate Warp parameters each if they are in the PW-ASM mode. And you can modulate the two Oscillator wave tables if they are in Wavescan mode. (You get to set up all eight waves in the wavescan wavetable ahead of time of course.)
You can also modulate the amount of modulation of the mod-matrix. I know this sounds all circular – it is.
This post is getting too long, so i’ll quit here.
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I think it you can get some awesome arpeggios controlling chance or ratchet with poly aftertouch! Kinda GAS’ing for this one.
Good thought thomaso. Not sure how this works exactly, as there is only one arpeggio, not an arpeggio per voice. I get confused on quite a few things, on what is modulated per voice and what is modulated across the system.
For instance i think the filters would be across the system, or are there sixteen filters, two per voice? And the mixer is that across the system, or are there eight five channel mixers, one per voice? How are the Mutators arranged? The five LFOs and the five envelopes are per voice. So are the things they modulate controlled per voice? I’m going to have to think about this some. Or someone here can illuminate me. This is probably a stupid question – but i have no pride.
So if you used a one shot S&H for an LFO that was set in the mod-matrix to a Wavescan position, would each voice be a different wave selected from the wavescan table? That would sound, though not exactly be, mulit-timbral. I don’t think the answer is in the manual, so hurry up ASM 
i need my Hydrasynth now to test this.
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My thinking is that you hold a 6 key chord. And the arp is playing those six notes. But then you can press harder on some of the keys to throw in ratchets for example. Or chance, so some notes arent triggered. Then you can get some controlled “randomness” if you want.
There would be filters pr voice. Thats taken for granted these days. Mixer could be pr voice too i guess.
The S&H example you mentioned should work. Depends on the implementation. Novation Peak has lfo’s pr voice, and the SH lfo is completely random on every voice. It can lead to really cool stuff. But you can also lock them so you have “one” master lfo for all voices. I hope you have the same choice on this synth as well.
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Thanks thomaso!
Cool with the arpeggiator, you can set it to additive mode and then as long as you hold at least one note down you can continue to add more notes to the arpeggiation sequence, so it grows each pass through, including adding duplicate notes, so you could have three Gs in the row if you wanted.
They would have to be per-voice. There’s been a lot of demos showing poly AT controlling filter cutoff per voice.
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