The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Strategies for Non-real-time
In some situations, after the Sound has been loaded, you may see a warning informing you that your
Capybara is close to the limit on computation time. If this happens, go ahead and listen to the Sound
anyway. Kyma is set to be slightly conservative on this warning, so it could be that the Capybara is still
able to keep up with real time. If you have given the Capybara more than it can consistently do in real
time, you will hear digital clicks and breakup in the sound. In general, the further it is from being able to
compute in real time, the more clicks and pops you will hear; you may also hear something that sounds
like granular time-stretching. But don’t despair! There are still quite a few tricks you can employ in order
to get around this.
What Influences the Real-time Capabilities?
Using DSP Status
Record to Disk
Disk Caching
Whether a particular Sound can be realized in real time or not depends on several factors:
♦ What kinds of modules are in the Sound (some of them require more computing time than others)
♦ How many modules are in the chain (the more modules, the more computing time required)
♦ The polyphony setting on any MIDIVoices, MIDIMappers, or AnalogSequencers in the Sound (the
number of modules in the chain to the left of a MIDIVoice will be multiplied by the amount of polyphony
that you request)
♦ The number of expansion cards in your Capybara (if Kyma can split the computation among several
cards rather than having to schedule all of the modules on a single card, then the Capybara can do
more real-time computation).
Take a look at the DSP status window while you are playing your Sound. If the usage bar for the last
(rightmost) card is fully in the red, ‡ it is usually a sign that you are requesting something beyond what
your Capybara can compute in real time; it indicates that Kyma tried to find resources for the Sound on
the first card, second card, etc., and when it couldn’t find enough resources anywhere else, it just tried to
schedule it on the last card because there were no other choices left.
The quickest solution is to select the Sound, go to the Action menu, and select Record to disk…. This will
record your Sound to the disk (don’t worry if it still sounds like it is sputtering; it will really record it onto
the disk without the breaks). From then on, you can play the digital recording using a DiskPlayer, Sample,
or GenericSource.
This is the quick and easy solution for Sounds that do not require any live interaction from MIDI or the
audio inputs. Even if your Sound is being driven from a sequencer, you can export the sequence as a
standard MIDI file, check the box that says to read MIDI from a file rather than from the live inputs, and
then record the Sound to disk.
But what if you are performing one of the parts live from a MIDI keyboard, controlling some of the faders
in real time, or using the microphone inputs as sound sources? Or, barring all of that, what if you don’t
really want to record the entire Sound to disk just because it would take up too much disk space? There
are some alternate solutions!
One approach is to record sub-branches of your Sound on the hard disk, and read the samples from the
disk from then on, thus freeing up time on the Capybara to compute the rest of the Sound in real time.
Place a DiskCache just to the right of the branch that you have decided to record to disk. Then play the
‡ When the digital interface is selected for audio input and output, the rightmost bar in the DSP status window will
always be in the red, regardless of the actual usage on that card.
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