All the Power of the Hydrasynth in a Portable Format
The Hydrasynth Explorer gives you full access to the renowned 8-voice sound engine of the original Hydrasynth in a compact, scaled-down package. Featuring 37 PolyTouch-enabled slim synth keys and battery-powered capability, the Hydrasynth Explorer is a grab-and-go sound lab for intrepid synthesists. Like the 49-key and desktop Hydrasynth models, the Hydrasynth Explorer boasts 8-voice polyphony; each voice serves up three WaveScane oscillators offering 219 different waveforms, with four Mutators total for extensive waveshaping. There's a ton of potential for creating nuanced, nonlinear sounds. The five ADSR envelope generators offer delay and hold and can have either linear or exponential curves between stages, and the five LFOs offer a total of 11 waveshapes plus delay, fade in, and smoothing. Throw in a highly responsive pitch-bend strip and a mod strip with LED depth indicators, and you’ve got a compact performance synthesizer with endless sound design capabilities!
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Extensive modulation capabilities
With its 32-slot modulation matrix, Hydrasynth Explorer empowers you to create incredibly nuanced and expressive sounds. Synthesists at Sweetwater are particularly impressed with its envelope generators (five per voice), which offer delay and hold in addition to ADSR stages. Each stage of the envelope can sweep through exponential and logarithmic curves, which offers big creative potential for long, evolving modulations.
Like most of the functions on Hydrasynth Explorer, envelopes can be locked to bpm for tempo-synced modulations. Combined with the looping function, you can use the envelopes as LFOs with interesting waveshapes. And speaking of LFOs, Hydrasynth Explorer offers five LFOs per voice with 11 total waveshapes. That includes the 8-step LFO, which allows you to create custom waveshapes.
Amazing performance potential with PolyTouch
Whether you're performing or recording, Hydratouch Explorer delivers an incredibly expressive playing experience, especially when you dig into its PolyTouch capabilities. PolyTouch is a new method of polyphonic aftertouch sensing. You have full control over aftertouch curves, offsets, and release times, giving you big creative potential when using aftertouch to manipulate your sounds. Plus, you can expand your performance even further with the highly responsive pitch and mod strips!
Deep synthesis with an intuitive interface
While the Hydrasynth Explorer engine is remarkably powerful, it's relatively simple to find and tweak the parameters you're looking for. On the front panel, you'll find a graphic representation of the audio path, with buttons to select each section (individual oscillators, mixer, effects, and so on). Selecting a section brings its associated parameters to the display, with eight encoders ready to tweak. In other words, every section of this synth can be accessed with a button press — no menu diving required!
Advanced real-time control via eight macro controls
One of the most popular aspects of software synthesizers is the ability to control multiple parameters simultaneously via macro controls, and the Hydrasynth Explorer gives you that creative power in hardware form. You can customize its eight macro controls to tweak up to eight destinations simultaneously. With a total of 170 modulation destinations to explore, you can easily use the macro controls to warp between completely distinct sound variations on the fly.
ASM Hydrasynth Explorer Features:
- 37-key virtual analog synthesizer with polyphonic aftertouch
- Combines multiple synthesis methods like wavetables, linear FM, WavePWM, subtractive, and more
- 8-voice polyphony, with 3 oscillators per voice and 4 Mutator waveshapers total
- 7 types of Mutator waveshapers: FM-Lin, WaveStack, PW-Orig, PW-Squeeze, PW-ASM, Harmonic Sweep, and Hard Sync
- WaveScan oscillators offer a total of 219 waveforms
- Dual filters: 1 multimode (11 types) and 1 variable LPF-BPF-HPF, with series/parallel routing options
- 5 envelope generators (ADSR) per voice with delay, hold, and looping abilities
- Envelopes can be locked to BPM (MIDI Clock) for tempo-synced modulation
- 5 LFOs per voice, with 11 waveforms: Sine, Triangle, Saw Up, Saw Down, Square, Pulse27%, Pulse13%, S&H, Noise, Random, and Step
- Powerful arpeggiator with 8 modes, including chord and phrase modes
- 32-slot Mod Matrix provides ample options for manipulating your sounds
- CV/Gate connectivity for integrating with modular/semi-modular synthesizers
- 8 insert effects, with Chorus, Flanger, Rotary, Phaser, Lo-Fi, Tremolo, EQ, Compressor, Delay (5 types), and Reverb (4 types)
- 8 Macro controls allow you to tweak multiple parameters simultaneously
- Can be powered by 8x AA batteries for on-the-go fun!
