Glossary
143
Waldorf Kyra
FPGA
Field-Programmable Gate Array. A type of integrated cir-
cuit that can be dynamically configured to perform specia-
list operations, usually with massive parallelism. Kyra is
based on an FPGA.
Front Panel
The assembly containing the OLED display, rotary controls,
push buttons and LEDs. The Front Panel has its own pro-
cessor which can be updated as part of the Software Up-
date.
FX
Shorthand for 'effects'.
Gate Length
The interval over which a note is held by an Arpeggiator,
specified as a percentage of the configured beat length.
Hard Sync
An effect whereby one oscillator is phase locked to
another. It is very useful to achieve tonal variation on
wavetable-based sounds.
Hot
An unusually large audio signal that has the potential to
cause distortion.
Humanising
The practice of making music sound like it is being per-
formed by human musicians rather than computers. This
usually involves subtle randomization of timing, pitch and
loudness of notes and beats. Kyra provides Mod Matrix
agents (particularly the 'Random per Note' source) to help
with this and most DAWs offer timing variation features.
Hypersaw
A sound generation technique using banks of oscillators
generating harmonically-rich sawtooth waves (referred to
as 'partials') tuned and balanced according to a configu-
rable algorithm. The result is a very rich, animated and
powerful sound useful for a wide range of uses. The beauty
of the hypersaw, in addition to its wonderful sound, is that
it is very simple to configure as there's only two parame-
ters, Intensity and Spread. The algorithm used, and the
quality and number of the oscillators determines the quali-
ty of the hypersaw. Kyra’s hypersaw consists of six partials
by standard but this can be doubled to twelve by using
Dual Mode.
