The Hydra by bdEnergy

[Frits van Zanten]

I liked the idea and was intrigued. I experience it as well made and it looks beautiful. My first pick from the lot.

Still I feel no click. There seems to be no manual, and there are things i don't understand/get to grips with (at least not instantly). I have no education in sound/audio.

The description says there's a 'Depth' knob, but I can't find that. There's an XY-pad (X= harmony bloom, Y= spread (stereo I guess, I have only one ear at the moment)). With the cursor fully at the left side turning the knobs at the left have no effect, my scope shows a sine wave. How do XY-pad and knobs at the left side relate? I think one needs some thorough knowledge about synthesis and sound/synth theory to know what one is doing. Here a manual would come in great; what do 'inversion' (and its settings) and 'harmonic tilt' do/mean? Also, what does the 'snap' button do?

The waveform in the pad is nice, but it is in constant movement, so not very informative. A freeze function would be nice, although I realize that (only) holds (not) in specific cases.

So despite the philosophy, for the theoretically untrained user (no offense) this might not differ from any distractive subtractive synth, you can make sounds by turning knobs (probably stupid remark), and the video shorts show you can make great sounds with it.

It is beautiful, can do nice/great things, works well, has all my sympathy, but for me it needs to be imbedded in some additional material to support the philosophy.

[Cuauhtli]

It is a fairly simple synth with few controls. As far as the x/y pad goes, full left seems to be only the fundamental sine wave and moving right adds more overtones/harmonics. The controls on the left relate to the harmonics so they have no effect when the x/y pad is full left. Up and down seems to be more of a tonal shaping effect, favoring the higher harmonics vs the lower harmonics.

It's one of those synths meant for one to just fiddle with the controls and see what sounds you produce. It also benefits greatly with the addition of a good reverb (with long tails imo).