Hydrasynth from ASM - Tips, Tricks and Queries

Originally I bought a 2nd hand Blofeld - but it was damaged (only 1 audio channel worked) and had to get it refunded. I used to have a multitimbral Novation Nova and that handled 6 x midi note and PC changes (6 channels) no bother from the Takt ! and that was a 20 year old device !

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It has been mentioned before I’m sure, but don’t sleep on microtuning scales! Make a sequence in your favourite sequencer and send it to the HS while going through the microtonal scales and see how they interact with even with the most boring of sounds. Or just set off a latched arpeggiator like the manual suggests.

Where to find them: they are hidden after the long list of “normal” scales in the voice menu on page 3.

Some tips:

Microtones are best served with bright sounds, as the action really happens in the overtones (harmonics), and you might find that different scales work well with different waveforms. So if you find one you like and it doesn’t always work as expected on other presets, that may be why. It’s eady to get overwhelmed (or indeed underwhelmed by some of the scales) and I reckon that’s why we don’t see a lot of microtonal music in mainstream genres. Stick at it and it will at the very least give you better listening skills.

You have 32 to choose from, which is very generous, and if you want you can repace any of them by loading your own as well. If you decide to do that, the first ones you can safely replace are the equal tuning ones, like quarter tones and 19 tone. These can be done using keyboard scaling instead.

Happy synthing!

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I haven’t had any issues getting decent bass sounds out of the Hydrasynth. :thinking:

Can they be saved per program or is it global like most synths?

I understand on a system level why that might be easier but man, I wish synth companies would find a way to make this per program.

They’re global, so if you swap one it will be replaced in all the presets that refer to it - I assume. I haven’t actually tried this yet because I’ve been happy with the ones supplied so far.

I agree that it would be nice to have microtonal scales saved with the preset (as long as you can copy/paste them) but in that case only one per preset would be sufficient, no?

Edit: I didn’t think about switching between them! I guess if you could do that in real time somehow easily, that would be interesting. For those who don’t know why you would want to do this, it’s because microtonal scales work well in one key but not another. There are ways around this but if you’re a keyboard player it makes more sense to switch the scale as you’re playing, I guess?

Oh I mainly just meant I’d like to save a specific microtonal patch and have it always play the same way.

But then I could switch to another patch that may be in standard.

You could always send them a feature request…

Maybe they won’t add it to the HS but the more of us make a noise about these things the more likely they are to appear in the future.

And I believe they add a lot of character to a preset. Even though I don’t have golden ears some microtuning scales just sound “acoustic” with some presets.

Connect a Linnstrument to control Hydrasynth’s pitch on a much finer level with your fingers. HS truly sounds different, from beautiful to weird, when played from a capable MPE controller. Not the same as micro-tuning scales laid out over 12 keys but at the very least as exciting.

Now that Superbooth 2024 is over, ASM is just A Synth Manufacturer.

Okay

Each preset can have its own microtonal tuning (in the Voice menu), out of the choice of 32 in the global settings menu, which is where you can replace the ones already in the HS.

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Hi!

I just got myself a Hydrasynth Desktop and I was hoping to trigger my Digitakt tracks from its pads, but apparently it’s not possible to set the pads to Octave 0, and the Transpose feature in the system menu is 1 semitone short in order to trigger track 1.

Has anyone found a workaround for this?

Congrats !

Checking Mod Matrix…

I couldn’t find a way to transpose midi notes with Mod Matrix, appart from Arp octaves but this is irrelevant I guess.

-11 max as on Explorer ? Bummer. Feature request ?
I guess you used HS Desktop octave shift possibilities.

For information it works with Explorer…no need for System Setup Transpose.

Yeah, bummer indeed. :unamused: Does anyone know what’s the appropriate channel for feature requests with ASM?

Turns out the Hydrasynth is sending out the right notes (C0 to G0), it’s the Digitakt that’s somehow expecting an even lower octave. :expressionless:

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Maybe you have a +1 octave shift on the Digitakt?

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Yes, I’d rather say minus 1 but it may just change pitch.
First notes of first octave allows to trigger all DT tracks on the same channel.
Worse a try though.

I don’t think there’s any configuration in the Digitakt that impacts incoming midi notes, but I’ve opened a ticket with support to check.

Does anyone know if you can send patches from one synth to another? Like, if I made a patch on the keyboard and wanted it on my explorer, is there an easy way to do that? I don’t have both, but am contemplating it.

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