Foreword
3
Waldorf Kyra
Foreword
Thank you for purchasing the Waldorf Kyra. You are the
owner of one of the most powerful music synthesizers ever
built. We designed Kyra as a tool to craft with, it is highly
capable instrument ready and waiting for you to experi-
ment and create new sounds. Kyra comes with over a
thousand factory sounds that are ready to use in your
productions and performances as well as to provide a
great template for your own sound creations. The factory
sounds are just the starting point that merely scratch the
surface of what the instrument is capable of. Dive in and
experiment, your efforts will be rewarded with new and
exciting sounds, many of which would be very difficult to
create on other instruments. Kyra can cover a very wide
range of sounds from acoustic and electric pianos, lush
pads and strings as well as a wide range of synthetic
sounds.
Kyra is perfect for both performance and studio work. For
live performance, Kyra's superior capabilities, reliability,
interactivity and fast response make it eminently preferab-
le to software synthesizers. For studio musicians, Kyra
offers 8 fully functional and independent multitimbral
Parts with the horsepower to back it up relieving your
DAW of fickle CPU-intensive plugins. With a generous and
transparent voice allocation algorithm it is realistic to
compose for all 8 Parts making Kyra a true composer’s
workstation. Ultra-fast MIDI processing ensures timing
remains tight even with dense multi-part compositions.
Kyra is a true hardware synthesizer. It is not a software
application running on generic DSP (digital signal proces-
sor) devices but a complete custom-designed FPGA hard-
ware engine built specifically for sound synthesis.
What to read?
The biggest problem with any manual is to find a way to
address the needs of absolute beginners and experts alike.
Some people read a manual cover to cover while others
don’t even touch it. Opting for the latter is a poor choice,
especially when the manual describes a Waldorf instru-
ment!
Anyone reading the following manual is in for a lot of fun
while learning about and working with the Waldorf Kyra.
Your Waldorf Team.