WoFI from Kiviak Instruments

The Lounge Other Gear
48

Here’s the main points (from auto-translated captions):

  • Overview:
    • Release via Kickstarter in October, available early 2024
    • € 600 - €800 (depending on success of Kickstarter)
    • 10 voice polyphonic mono-sampler (they don’t say how many voices, in the video you can hear only 2)
    • 48kHz, 16-bit sampler engine
    • “analog-style”, i.e. one function per knob, 90% of the functions are available with a dedicated control, the rest is available via shift, menu seems only for configuration
    • portable: 2.2kg, built-in-battery, lasts for 4 hours (charged via USB)
    • 100 MB of internal memory (18min, the cartridge can extend that, and it can stream directly from the cloud)
    • there will be a simple sample editor in the WOFI where you can set start and end, and normalize the sample
  • Connections
    • DIN-MIDI in/out/thru
    • CV/Gate: Gate in/out, CV in/out, mod out (whatever that is), you can route any parameter to CV
    • Audio in/out (2xStereo, 6.35mm TS)
    • USB: for power, MIDI, but no USB audio (yet) (he claims that is a problem because there is no standard, which is weird because there is class-compliant audio interfaces, but the translation may be off there). You can use USB for transferring samples apparently
    • Sync in/out
    • Headphone out (3.5mm TRS)
    • Speaker (“in case you forgot your headphones”)
    • microphone is for sampling (you can also sample through line-in, of course)
    • WiFi
    • card slot for custom cards (apparently they consider providing an adapter for SD cards in the future)
  • Sound (on the panel from left to right)
    • Emulation:
      • emulation is not aimed to be realistic, more like an effect
      • emulation has “presets” (e.g. some classic Japanese 8-bit and 12-bit samplers)
      • there are 5 parameters you can tweak to create your own effects (including sample rate and bit rate)
    • Samples can be pitched, stretched (IRCAM gave them a library for innovative time-stretching), there is a glitch control also
    • Play modes: one-shot, loop, reverse, “boomerang”
    • Envelope: ADSR, can be assigned to filter, amp, or both
    • Filter is digital (12 or 24db), not modeled after an existing filter
    • Texturer: is the granular effect (“granular shimmer”) with controls for grain size, grain density, effect depth, chaos is the grain stealing algorithm (starts with first-in-first-out, turning it up increases the randomness of stealing grains), mono or stereo
    • LFO (tri, pulse, saw), can be assigned to different parameters via learn, (one at a time), can be synced to clock
  • Sequencer
    • Monophonic 16-step sequencer
    • Recording via keyboard
    • button for tapping the tempo
    • Automation: sequence (multiple?) parameters
    • Start and end point can be changed in real-time
    • you can play over the sequencer
    • Piano-roll visualisation (of notes)
  • Cloud Platform:
    • cloud-platform for sharing sounds is free, and not mandatory
    • There will be premium content, but no subscription
    • a dedicated button to turn WiFi on and off
    • you can save samples and patches, there is versioning, and apparently no size-limit
    • direct streaming from cloud is possible
    • you can access the cloud directly from the device (also via hot-spot from your mobile, of course), but there will also be a web interface for the browser
  • The rest:
    • extensive midi and CV routing, filtering, and processing, they say it’s designed for easy integration into a modular setup
    • they showed a plugin version of the Texturer (with more features), available at Kickstarter launch as a reward for backers, and for sale for 50 Euros afterwards
    • they aim to create more plugins and hardware products

Edit: added infos from the rest of the video and from the second video below, mostly about cloud, price, emulation, USB,

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