Looks like Zynaptiq is using Symbolic Sound KYMA for product development.

[Udo]

The essence of this argument is that in KYMA you can see exactly how a sound is designed/created, i.e. through icon diagrams, programs (in Capytalk/smalltalk), etc, etc.

KYMA Tau does all the things in Zynaptiq Wormhole (and a lot more). Some of it you can see and hear in the Tau morphing demo I put in the other Zynaptiq thread (there are plenty of other KYMA demos available).

Even the name "Wormhole" is used in the KYMA environment (it's what a network of 2 or more Paca(rana)s - the DSP processor boxes - is called.

Zynaptiq is of course limited in what they can achieve by CPU processing power vs KYMA's dedicated DSP boxes.

[Guy Rowland]

Interesting - are you saying they've licensed technology, or are, um, borrowing ideas?

[Udo]

Interesting - are you saying they've licensed technology, or are, um, borrowing ideas?

The latter. You can see in KYMA how the sound was created/manipulated, so it can be done with any other suitable tools. It's only "speculation" of course. Do you think it's likely Zynaptiq would ever admit it?

[wst3]

If Zynaptiq borrowed from KYMA (a good place from which to borrow) then I am quite certain it is completely above board. The folks at Zynaptiq are very smart, and very clever, and very curious. Their previous plug-ins demonstrate that they are not trying to create the next great 1176 emulation.

I would suspect that Wormhole was inspired by several off-the-wall processing tools, KYMA certainly, and the now defunct Kantos, and a couple others, names of which are escaping me at the moment.

I do know I'll be putting off other purchases for a bit so I can afford both new plug-ins after a fair trial...

[woodsdenis]

Is wormhole not based on a Prosoniq plugin which Zynaptiq bought the intellectual property of ?

[Udo]

People, I didn't express myself very well when I started this thread - no doubt influenced by the drinking of a couple of opened bottles of red wine that needed to be finished to avoid spoiling.

What I said was partly tongue-in-cheek - should have used a .

All I was trying to say is that many of the "new types of sounds" you hear have been around for a long time, e.g. in the KYMA environment.

[Guy Rowland]

Kyma is such a mysterious and strange beast to me. The screenshots look like it was developed in 1987 and has been left there ever since. Proprietary hardware similarly makes it seem from a bygone age. Yet that demo you posted, Udo, is just stunning - and it sounds way better than Zynaptiq's Morpth (coming from someone who loves Zynptiq). To quote a franchise that has benefitted from Kyma over the years - "it may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid".

There certainly has been some crossover of ideas between the two companies - perhaps that's inevitable for such similar applications, and the history of Zynaptiq's product development seems to show their own clear path. But point taken - what sounds new in the regular world of effects isn't quite so new if you include Kyma. It just opens it up to mere mortals.

[Lawrence]

In my mind's eye, I see a room full of dusty, discarded Synclaviers and lopsided off-kilter Fairlights.....ah, the heady smell of $1000 per MEG of RAM....

Still, pretty cool demo for sure.

[Guy Rowland]

Denis made a good post at KVR that sheds a little more light onto Wormhole's development, thought there's no harm in stealing it wholesale as part of this discussion:

Just back from Messe, sorry that I couldn't stop by and satisfy your curiosity earlier

Indeed, Messe was....loud. And I mean loud as in "we literally had 95dB+ of background noise in our booth" -- no joke. It was pretty much impossible to show our stuff in any reasonable fashion, as I wasn't even hearing what I was doing. I stopped doing video demonstrations during day #2 because as you point out -- they don't do our stuff justice *at all*. Started losing my voice after day #1. It's *never* been THIS bad at a show TBH.

Of course there will be official videos when we approach release – large parts of the team were down with a flu right ahead of the show so time was really too short for finishing the videos before Messe.

WORMHOLE's WARP section is indeed a zynaptified PIWARP, reworked from the ground up to be fully floating point precision, new upward- and reworked downward-TILT functionality, new POLES parameter (kind of an iteration depth thing), the reverb was replaced with one built on the one we made for MORPH 2, new, much cleaner LPF switchable pre/post the TILT section, new glitchless parameter changes, double buffered crossfades when changing parameters that are by their nature discontinuous (we do have a very high resolution on the sliders though!), support for high sampling rates, 64bit and all plugin formats.

The UNPROSONIQDERIVED new SHIFT section features +- 4 octaves of pitch shift and +-4k of frq shift, which in this design are two sides of the same coin (one process does both), and which are built in a way that is different from any other design I'm aware of. Which translates into a different sonic characteristic as well as different strengths and weaknesses im comparison. The frq shifter has around 96dB of modulator and sideband suppression, and is completely aliasing-free, giving it a very, very clean sound and a much broader range of useful settings than many other designs give you. Check it out, it's really cool

You can, of course, switch the processing order of the WARP and SHIFT sections.

So yeah, it's partly based on PIWARP but it's really evolved significantly, not "recycled". Hence we felt it would do the product more justice to give it a clean start.

That said, there will be an update path for PiWarp users, regardless of platform, version number etc -- like we did it with MORPH 2. The renaming doesn't chop off the update path, basically, that's TOTALLY not the point of the name change. We don't believe in making people pay twice for the same thing, and whoever was using PiWarp back in the day is obviously cool – and gets our full support :tu:

[wst3]

Zynaptiq is not only a cool company because they create clever, and useful plug-ins, but I'd put them at the top of the list for taking care of their customers.

Very cool!

[Guy Rowland]

Zynaptiq is not only a cool company because they create clever, and useful plug-ins, but I'd put them at the top of the list for taking care of their customers.

Very cool!

Seconded!

[Udo]

FYI Stephan Bernsee (original name Stephan Sprenger), co-founder of Zynaptiq, was the founder of Prosoniq.

[wst3]

indeed - the version I heard was that Prosoniq became Zynaptiq... they have said they are going to bring back all the cool Prosoniq plug-ins over time. Or so I was told<G>

[givemenoughrope]

I'm demoing Morph 2. Pretty incredible. Playing a guitar with a bow through channel A and sample material/textures through channel B. A lot of possibilities.

[wst3]

Morph is endless! Maybe not quite as endless as the late, lamented Kantos, but darned close!!!

And it can be used subtly as well, I've used it as a gate to link a bass drum to an electric bass (and the other way around) with great results. Tried the same trick with a drum kit and a rhythm guitar part, never quite got the sound I heard in my head, but it was way better than using an expander or gate.

Fun plugin!!!

[Udo]

Morph is endless! Maybe not quite as endless as the late, lamented Kantos, but darned close!!!

And it can be used subtly as well, I've used it as a gate to link a bass drum to an electric bass (and the other way around) with great results. Tried the same trick with a drum kit and a rhythm guitar part, never quite got the sound I heard in my head, but it was way better than using an expander or gate.

KANTOS didn't get close to what Kyma morphing can do.

Didn't you see what I posted in the other thread? This shows KYMA 4 way 3D morphing between Tuva singer, bongo, flute, angry cat, female voice, violin, cat meow, and shakuhachi using Kyma Control on an iPad.:

Although I have Kyma, with morphing that's in a class of it's own, I still bought Zynaptiq Morph 2, partly because it's more convenient to do some things and I quite like it. Morph 2 can do pseudo 4 way, but it's really A - B to B - A.

[wst3]

I saw your post - I've used Kyma, I'm well aware of at least 10% of what it can do... but it is beyond my means, Kantos wasn't<G>!

I will, eventually, get my hands on a Kyma system...