Looper Construction Kit

What Is It?

The Looper Construction Kit^TM (LCK) is an add-on product for Symbolic Sound's Kyma system. So...what's a Kyma?

Remember Tinkertoys? You had a collection of differently shaped wooden blocks and rods. By fitting the rods into the blocks you could make shapes and designs of any sort. Kyma is like Tinkertoys for sound design.

Kyma is a visual sound design language that operates under Windows or Macintosh with an attached hardware accelerator. The accelerator (named the Capybara) contains 4 to 28 digital signal processors (DSPs), 4 or 8 I/O channels of analog or digital audio, and a MIDI and computer interface. It provides massive computing power dedicated exclusively to audio processing.

Kyma furnishes several hundred "modules," each of which represents a specific signal-processing task. For example, there are modules for filtering, mixing, reverberation, delaying, saving a sound to disk, spectral analysis, et cetera. With Kyma's signal flow editor, you drag and drop Kyma modules into place and "wire" them together. Visually, the modules appear as box-like icons on the screen connected by lines.

The Looper Construction Kit includes about fifty new Kyma modules:

The modules represent highly optimized DSP programs tailored for real-time looping. By arranging the LCK modules in various fashions, you can construct loopers of widely varying properties, behaviors, and capabilities. Indeed, the LCK includes models of several existing hardware loopers, such as the Akai E1 Headrush, the Boomerang, and the Line6 DL4.

But the unique power of the Looper Construction Kit is not in emulating existing devices. With the LCK you can design your own ideal looper. You don't even have to start from scratch! You can copy and modify all the examples supplied in the Looper Construction Kit. Be your own Dr. Looperstein as you combine the arms of a Lexicon JamMan with the head of a Akai Headrush and the body of a Boomerang. "Maximum power, Igor!" (Just watch out for those torch-bearing villagers...)

Once loaded into your computer, the LCK modules are fully integrated with the standard Kyma modules. The LCK is a looper-oriented "power booster" for your system, permitting you to build on top of your existing Kyma knowledge.

Technical Support

The LCK includes two years of technical support for registered users. Support is provided through this website and via email.