I’m using Bitwig a lot more than ableton since getting the Hydrasynth. It accepts and records poly after touch and works with MPE.
Have had a Roli seaboard and Linnstrument gathering dust for a while, going to mess around with them into the Hydrasynth this weekend, they’ll finally get some use!
Interesting… No, I have not. My experience with the Hydra is strictly in-store. Next time I’m around one, I’ll dig into the global settings and give that a try; but I’m skeptical now, based on the shift behaviour I observed. Anyway…
Cheers!
Let me know what parameters you noticed it on most, and i’ll try it with different settiings and let you know what I find.
If only I could remember… 
Cheers!
Update 1.3.1
Yes already. This is a minor change – more a modification to the last update 1.3.0 . One of the four new features in 1.3.0 was a “Tighter Envelope attack time”. With 1.3.1 this change is backed down to an option selectable per Patch. It’s now called “Snap Mode”, and is on page 3 #8 of the Voice. This is only speculation on my part but perhaps making this change global, negatively affected the sound of some patches. Maybe some patches relied on slightly slower envelope attack time.
So my trivial complaint, is similar to the change with “Warm Mode” – it means that you can choose to have different versions of a patch, a with and without Snap Mode ON and a with and without Warm Mode ON. But options are good, right? That certainly is in line with the HS philosophy.
And you can hear it – in those real low notes. So for instance take the patch A006 “Doppler Bass”. Press Octave Down once. Play the lowest C on the keyboard hard. With Snap Mode ON, you get the cracking impulse at the beginning of the note – which carries over as a higher pitch in the reverb. With Snap Mode OFF, it’s a duller bass drum sort of attack.
Not sure how ASM did it, but this effect is distinct at times.
Hmmm? With the impulse, could we explicitly rig a Karplus Strong sort of oscillator on the HS with some sort of filter and reverb, and feedback and maybe a little amplification?
ADDED February 6th: Eight days later. There is a new manual for 1.3.1.
Power up on my HSK with 1.31 is the same, it sets Local back to ON, and always starts at A001. I doubt these are bugs. I’d call them design choices. I’m with you auditorycanvas it’s not a huge deal.
On starting at A001, since patches are all mobile and freely assignable, i’ve started putting what i call, my “Presently Of Value Patches”, in those early Bank A slots. I am using the favorites menu and browser to navigate around, rather than using Shift and spinning the dial. The Patch Manager, basic though it is, has been a real improvement for me.
Not sure about the choice to always set Local ON, i can see it both ways. If you want contact ASM support, but i think this is a ‘feature’.
There are already LED ring encoders to control both the filters and arpeggiator, on both the Key and Desktop versions. The doubling of controls, in two styles, is (imo) a great feature of the HS. Actually the controls are in three places if you count the option of arranging them yourself on the Macro page, all labeled and arranged precisely as you want. (The Macros can be set up simple one-to-one or a complex mix of controls if you want.
Also try the “scale” mode (System Setup, page 2, #1) with the knobs in question, you mentioned the “absolute” and “pickup” modes but i like the “scale” mode, and it may address some of your problems.
[And actually, according to the manual, to clear something up, both style of controls are “encoders” – some are endless encoders and the ones you are talking about changing are 270° encoders. So the design was not done to save money. Even the Master Volume knob is an encoder.]
And JohntheSavage (from Brave New World i assume?) i’m not experiencing the jumpy encoders in the way you talk about them, i don’t have (or maybe perceive) that problem. I was going to suggest changing the “Knob Speed” parameter too (System Setup, page 2, #2), there are three settings there, default is ‘medium’. That should eliminate the problem along with phaelam’s suggestion of holding the Shift button with the knobs which slows most knobs down a lot – but speeds up the Patch Knob.
ADDED: auditorycanvas – i’ll be interested to hear about your MPE experiments. I want to know if the MPE sources added to Mod-Matrix – MPE-X, MPE-Yabs, MPE-Yrel, and MPEoffVc cover all your needs? You get to map them as you like which is good. Also interested how well the MPE output from the HS works. I was thinking MPE in the Mod-Matrix destinations would be fun too, but that’s a frill, i guess.
Inhalt Demos his Patchbank
Thanks for confirming my Hydra is behaving normally. I’ll too be moving patches around. I agree, the local control reset could be a plus or a negative, depending on which way you look at it. I just use the synth with a DAW more often than not, so for me, I’d be happy with it not resetting, but it’s hardly a big issue, I’m soon reminded to turn it off when I hit a key and get a note feedback loop 
It might be a design choice to do with the ribbon - I noticed when in local off mode, the Theremin mode on the ribbon doesn’t work. took me a minute to figure out why the ribbon mode wasn’t working, and after scratching my head and trying on an init patch, I thought to try turning on local mode…bingo.
Yeah, I’ve tried scale mode, it does help, but still feels a bit awkward. I’ve tended to hit the filter button so I can control it via the macro encoders, but it then feels like a waste 5 knobs, shame they can’t be reassigned in the menu.
Regarding the LED ring, I just meant around the filter section knobs, having those with pickup mode would be at least a great workaround and not make me want to just use the filter button and center encoders. Not a big deal. just an honest observation.
I’ll let you know how it goes with the MPE exploration. I’ll likely try messing with assigning unusual parameters to the x and y axis, and see how much fun it is. Whether it will actually be musically usable might be another story.
The Seaboard and Linnstrument have been novel to play around with, but I found limited real world need for x, y, and z expression per pad on the Linnstrument…my brain just gets overloaded - it’s easier on seaboard given the length of the y axis, but hitting perfect notes on that thing takes a significant amount of practice, so I haven’t played with either of them much lately.
Some people make it all look like a breeze with both controllers, but alas not me haha. It’s definitely fun to get lost in playing with a nice pad for several hours if nothing else though.
I don’t do FB, but I imagine there’s tons of feature requests. I know Glen said there’s not much more code space for additions.
My request would be: add Key Zones as a mod source.
Using KeyTracking, I can sort of fake a bi-timbral split, but KT is more of a fade rather than a hard cut.
With a proper Keyboard Zone modifier, like on the DX7 and other boards, it’d be a snap to assign an OSC per zone for bi- and tri-timbrality.
Since I’m here, here are a couple tricks I’ve found to add “warmth”:
– filters and amps distort / react differently to input levels; check your levels
– reduce OSC levels in Mixer section – gainstaging says, “Don’t overload!”
– after reducing / balancing input levels, re-adjust levels later in the chain
More tips later, if ppl actually care…
In the most recent Sonic Talk – #604 The Post NAMM Discussion – Tori Leztler told everyone that the Hydrasynth Keys was her favorite thing at the show. Nick Batt: “I told you so.”
And Robbie Bronnimann reported that he recently bought a Hydrasynth Desktop.
Thin and weedy seems to be a trend.
Just noticed that the Tempo Lck setting in global settings doesn’t survive a power cycle, just like the Local on/off. I can understand the Local being by design, but why the Tempo lock??
Makes sense for booting from last patch ,but makes no sense in relation to global settings like Local on/off, and Tempo Lck on/off.
Ya.
I agree with you! I’d call that a bug too. So two and a half things that are failure to store values – Theremin Hold (with patch storage), Tempo Lock, and Local ON/OFF.
Did you send this in to ASM Support? This makes me want to actually go down the list to see if there are other similar bugs, the way a system tester would.
I notice that if you change things in the System Setup, when you leave System Setup, there is a delay of a second or so – which is when values are stored. I also notice that when you go into the System Setup, but change nothing that there is no pause when you exit, which makes sense because there is nothing to store. A flag gets set to know when to store the contents. I was hoping with Local ON/OFF that perhaps it wasn’t setting the Write Flag, and that changing a second item would cause the Local OFF to get stored – but it didn’t work.
I will try the same thing with Tempo Lock to see if i can get this to store in that way.
This is frustrating – and in my opinion shouldn’t be happening. Some bugs are in deep, and are difficult to find, but these are scurrying around right on the surface, and even a cursory test plan would nail these.
ADDED A DAY LATER: I am changing my mind in calling this a “bug”. I think it was a decision made by ASM, which they implemented – one that i disagree with. But it’s still a good idea to tell ASM about it! I definitely could see me using Tempo Lock to keep the same tempo between patches, and expecting it to stay ON after i turn off the HS.
I decided this is not a bug based on two things: How unavoidable this feature is to a tester. -AND- I found other System Setup parameters that do a similar thing. See my next post.
I emailed them about the local setting via their website contact form same time i posted here about it, but never got a response back.
So i ran through the entire System Setup and tested every parameter to see if it changes it’s value when the power was turned off. I found a few more that do. I’ve listed the page, the parameter, and the default value that it is set to after the power is turned off.
Page 1:
Page 2:
Page 4:
So what does everyone think about having these be non-permanent changes?
I guess if you’re in to the mystical A = 432Hz or are playing Baroque music on your Hydrasynth 
you’ll have to change it every time.
ADDED: This changes with Firmware Version 1.4.0. See my post below.
LED Dim seems like it should be a system wide setting…
I wish you could disable the tempo blink. annoys the F*** outta me.
