ASM Hydrasynth Keyboard

A new player in the synthesizer market

A well-established ecosystem has developed on the synthesizer market, into which it is not so easy for someone from outside to break through. But the Chinese non-names from ASM a couple of years ago brilliantly succeeded in such a feint. With veteran Glen Darcy of Arturia and Elektron co-founder Daniel Troberg as the inspiration, ASM got off to a solid start with the release of the cool wavetable synthesizer Hydrasynth. We tested the version with a keyboard, but you can also find a more compact and affordable rack version on the market.

The best wavetable synthesizer of recent years?

What is interesting about Hydrasynth and what caused the hype in the circles of musicians? At first glance, this is just a very powerful synth with 3 oscillators, two filters, a built-in arpeggiator, an advanced modulation matrix, and a pair of CV inputs and an output for using external modulation. But that's not the point. Chip "hydra" is the maximum ease of setting sounds. Thanks to universal encoders, the user can instantly switch between oscillator and filter control modes, or quickly transfer settings from one block to another. The same applies to the modulation matrix — if you need to transfer the settings of the oscillator with all the LFOs involved, this is done by pressing literally a couple of buttons.

Randomizer is our everything

You can edit stock or downloaded wavetables using one of the specialized processes (FM, Wavestack, Hard Sync, Pulse Width, PW Squeeze, PW-ASM, Harmonic Sweep, etc.) that radically change the character of the original timbre. Effect blocks include chorus, flanger, rotary speaker simulation, phaser, Lo-Fi, tremolo, EQ and compressor. Well, the icing on the cake is the randomizer sewn into the engine, which randomly changes either all the settings of the patch, or the settings of a single block. As a result, from the sum of a well-thought-out interface, an intelligent sound engine and a neat randomizer, a unique preset machine was born that allows you to wind up interesting sounds in just a matter of minutes. The picture is completed by regular updates of the digital engine, which constantly expand the possibilities of interaction with the synthesizer. The only negative is that all these features take time to learn, if you just jump in and try to spin the Hydra like a normal subrustive synth, you can be a little disappointed at first.