Introducing ASM’s Hydrasynth, an all new 8-voice wavetable monster
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Introducing ASM’s Hydrasynth, an all new 8-voice wavetable monster

Ashun Sound Machines (ASM) are a relative newcomer to the block – in fact, this is their first ever product – but they’re certainly aiming for the big leagues with the Hydrasynth. Boasting a digital polyphonic engine, the 49-key Hydrasynth allows for up to eight simultaneous voices, with up to three oscillators per voice should you choose. There’s also a whole heap of knobs and buttons – most of which are LED ringed for performing onstage.

 

Those three oscillators can take on a whopping 219 waveforms which are packed into the unit, and you can also use the synth engine to manipulate these sounds further with mutators for FM synthesis, pulse width modulation, hard sync and harmonic sweeps. There’s even a Wavestack function to create five copies of a wave and detune them for huge, cavernous pad sounds. There’s also two filters which can be run in series or parallel; the first featuring eleven filter modes and the second being a variable multimode filter. Huge. 

 

 

In the modulation department, the Hydrasynth provides five loopable envelopes and five LFOs which can also act as step sequencers or one-shots. These are all packed into the Modulation Matrix which has 32 slots to disperse the movement into as many destinations as possible. There’s also an incredibly powerful arpeggiator with controls for Ratchet, Chance and Gate as well as multiple modes, octaves, division and swing – pretty cool.

 

 

The ASM Hydrasynth is set to ship in both keyboard and desktop module forms, and should be in stores by November. It’ll be really interesting to see how this one goes, particuarly given that it’s coming from such a new company. We’re getting major Waldorf vibes!

 

Find out more about Ashun Sound Machines and their upcoming Hydrasynth here.