Zynaptiq Wormhole

[Guy Rowland]

There's a thread from last year that looked at an early development version of Wormhole - http://www.thesoundboard.net/viewtopic. ... 6&start=50 . It's now just a couple of weeks from release and a new video is up showing what it can do:



In short - it's a spectral combi effects unit, useful for everything from monster voices to atmospheres via pitch shifting tricks. There's some novel takes and different processing strategies - perhaps most importantly, it doesn't use FFT so this should have its own distinct sound and tricks. Most impressive to me was the humble wet/dry slider, given a morphing makeover (@approx 3.25 in the video above). That's simple yet revolutionary - can't count the times I've had a cool effect on speech that renders it unintelligible, and dialing the wet/dry back is always unsatisfactory.

Available in all the standard formats, RRP will be $189.

[playz123]

Very interesting! I like what it does on instruments as well as voices. Perhaps there will be an intro price too.

[Guy Rowland]

Very interesting! I like what it does on instruments as well as voices. Perhaps there will be an intro price too.

I think there was on Adaptiverb, wasn't there? Also the resellers usually knock a little off.

[playz123]

Very interesting! I like what it does on instruments as well as voices. Perhaps there will be an intro price too.

I think there was on Adaptiverb, wasn't there? Also the resellers usually knock a little off.

Yes...I, for one, purchased Adaptiverb at less than the final retail price, so am hopefull Wormhole will be available for less as well. The US dollar is a challenge for anyone outside that country these days, so it seems price always plays a role now in purchasing decisions.

Just as an aside, I wouldn't recommend watching that video on a large screen monitor or TV...there's a chance one could become mildly sea sick. The person shooting the video could certainly benefit by using a tripod.

[X-bassist]

Any word on this? Adaptiverb was on sale for $99 when it came out, hoping this will be similar.

Last thing I heard was "Both products released Q2 2016". Could this be the BBB v2 of effects?

[Guy Rowland]

Not sure, X, but i'm pretty hopeful we're not in the land of Fable - they've always delivered on what they promised as far as I can remember, even if there's a bit of a wait for this. The video above was from NAMM this year - I kinda assumed Adaptiverb was more ready to go and released quickly, while Wormhole needed more development.

[Guy Rowland]

Ooh, it snuck out. $149 til the end of April at JRR shop - https://www.jrrshop.com/zynaptiq-wormhole

[Erik]

I sure will demo it. Adaptiverb was kind of fun at times but too CPU hungry for my taste and wallet.

[X-bassist]

I'm surprised it's only $30 off. Adaptiverb was intro'ed at $99, and I was hoping for the same for a "novel" effect plug. Also no further discount on JRR. Not on Audio Deluxe... yet. (They have the rest of Zyn's products)
Edit: Aaaaand there it pops up a few hours later on AD... no discount... it's $149 everywhere.

Any possibility of a Guy review? (even a quick pitch--change one) If this can be used as a vocoder like pitch change device as well and still sound like clear english, it may be worth the price to me.

[Guy Rowland]

I'll probably get this, if so will of course pass on thoughts.... video maybe. That's a probably and a maybe multiplied together.

[Jaap]

Mm interesting! Saw it already passing by in an email and just checked it out. Looks like some great oppertunities. I was actually doubting to buy Novo Strings, but started fiddeling tonight with some string libraries and processing sounds just to see how much I actually need it but after checking out these vids I am gonna see first with the demo what I can achieve here!
Adaptiverb found its way into my regular workflow and I just love that so looking forward to check this out as well



Edit: after half an hour of messing around with it I can say I really like it, but just like with the release of Adaptiverb it is destroying the CPU, but I inserted it as plugin to play live with on an instrument track and haven't tried to apply it to an audio file. Maybe that makes a difference, but messing around with it is nice. I don't know if anyone else tried it so far, but it doesn't response to midi learn. Anyone got luck with that?

[Guy Rowland]

I decided to try the test too. Not a great experience unfortunately - the vst3 crashed cubase within the first minute of parameter tweaking, and I must have got 5 minutes out of it before it crashed a 2nd time. I maybe got slightly more the third time and slightly less the fourth, but here I became increasingly bored and irritated by the whole thing.

In between the crashes, some promise. Although it uses different techniques to achieve pitch shifting, modulation etc, in truth it often doesn't sound so different in practice, but there are are some nice variations. The morph control is very handy, though I found it a little variable - sometimes it seemed to seamlessly morph, but other times it just felt like the old problem of the wet / dry control. I don't think its a holy grail for pitch shifting - you often get that lower modulation that reminds me of off-tune short wave when pitching up, for example - you can minimise this by varying other parameters, but at the expense of it sounding more effected in other ways which may or may not be desirable. Overall, based on my very limited time with it, it's likely to be more useful for me in audio post than music, but I don't feel I've really put it through its paces yet - nor am likely to until it stabalises.

[Jaap]

Bit the same here Guy. After experimenting more with it I had a few Cubase crashes and using more then 2 instances of it seems to kill my whole computer. Also when using it with just audio.
I kinda like the things you can do with it, but due to the heavy weight on the system and the randomness of the cpu spikes and crashes it annoys me too much at the moment.
I will keep an eye out though for it to see if they update it in the future just like with Adaptiverb to fix the heavy weight on the system.

[Guy Rowland]

Bit the same here Guy. After experimenting more with it I had a few Cubase crashes and using more then 2 instances of it seems to kill my whole computer. Also when using it with just audio.
I kinda like the things you can do with it, but due to the heavy weight on the system and the randomness of the cpu spikes and crashes it annoys me too much at the moment.
I will keep an eye out though for it to see if they update it in the future just like with Adaptiverb to fix the heavy weight on the system.

I hadn't seen anyone else have the problems I've been having, so it's a bit of a comfort to read that it's not just me / my rig!

I'd definitely want to put it through its paces a bit more as and when it's stable - I wasn't 100% convinced it was different enough from other tools. Sorry to harp on about it, but the morph control is its single biggest plus for me, in the context of sound designed voices. It's a real problem that, the old intelligibility issue, and mixing in dry isn't very satisfactory. And its a problem that bedevils even big budget features - anyone remember the whole "what the hell is he saying?" problem with Bane in the Dark Knight Rises? They needed that morph control....

[Jaap]

As far as I can see and hear from messing with it, it certainly delivers on that front though I have not been using it for sound designed voices yet, but it has all the potential as far as I can tell.
What I love so far is that you can create some really unique sounds with it and that it what I am after at the moment, to tweak the living joy out of sounds and create a unique sound palet for an album project I am working on. If it was just a bit more stable...
Maybe it doesn't like Cubase if other seem fine with it?