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So lets load it up then...

• Basic Kyma System - $3470
  
  A basic Kyma System includes a CD-ROM containing the Kyma X software (for both Windows and Macintosh platforms) with over 1000 presets and 350 prototypes, the Kyma X Revealed! book, a Kyma FireWire interface with 3 meter FireWire cable and 0.5 meter Capybara cable, a Capybara320 sound computation engine with four processors and 96 megabytes of sample RAM, four channel 24-bit A/D and D/A converters (up to 100 KHz sample rate), dual two channel 24-bit AES/EBU digital audio interface (up to 100 KHz sample rate), word clock input, VITC and LTC time code inputs and outputs, and MIDI In/Out/Thru. Available with desktop or rack-mount side-panels.
  
• Upgrade to 4 Audio Channels - $995
  
  An I/O module adds 4 more channels of 24-bit 100 KHz A/D, D/A, and AES/EBU audio I/O to a basic Kyma System (for a total of 8 channels). One (1) is the maximum number of I/O modules that can be added to a single Capybara.
  
• Capybara 320 Expansion Card - 12 (max) @ $595 apiece = $6426
  
  Each card provides two additional processors and 48 megabytes of sample RAM. Up to 12 expansion cards can be added to a Capybara320, giving a maximum of 28 processors and 672 megabytes of RAM. (There is a 10% discount for orders of 4 or more cards.)

Total price - $10,891.00

But what does that all mean...

• 4 processors
• 96 MB sample RAM
• 12 expansion slots
• I/O and external sync (see below)
• External rackmount or desktop case (protects the DSPs and converters from the electrically noisy environment inside your personal computer, and leaves valuable slot-space free to use for other cards on your host computer)

• 2 processors
• 48 MB sample RAM (per card)
• Up to 12 cards can be added

• 4-8 channels
• 24-bit 32-100 kHz sample rate
• Balanced Analog & Digital (AES/EBU or S/PDIF), XLR connectors
• MIDI in / out / thru

Measurements are in A-weighted dB and were made with an Audio Precision Portable One Dual Domain audio analyzer.

External Synchronization

• Word Clock input
• VITC & LTC time code input

To give some idea of the Capybara320's capabilities:

You can create a real-time 66-band vocoder on a basic system. On a fully loaded system, you can create a 600-band real time vocoder.

On a basic system, you can perform additive synthesis with 192 sine wave partials, each sine having its own independent frequency and amplitude envelope with any number of breakpoints in it. On a fully loaded system, you can perform real-time additive synthesis with 1743 partials.

You can generate a granular synthesis cloud with 93 simultaneous grains on a basic system. A fully loaded system can generate clouds of 837 simultaneous grains.

You can use 60 voices of samples on a basic system, and a fully loaded system gives you 545 voices.

this is a serious synthesis and sound design workstation, and trust me when I say that the price is well-justified for the performance, capabilities, and IMHO, ease of use (i was a TA @ clark University computer music studio, and used one on nearly a daily basis.)

So lets load it up then...

• Basic Kyma System - $3470
  
  A basic Kyma System includes a CD-ROM containing the Kyma X software (for both Windows and Macintosh platforms) with over 1000 presets and 350 prototypes, the Kyma X Revealed! book, a Kyma FireWire interface with 3 meter FireWire cable and 0.5 meter Capybara cable, a Capybara320 sound computation engine with four processors and 96 megabytes of sample RAM, four channel 24-bit A/D and D/A converters (up to 100 KHz sample rate), dual two channel 24-bit AES/EBU digital audio interface (up to 100 KHz sample rate), word clock input, VITC and LTC time code inputs and outputs, and MIDI In/Out/Thru. Available with desktop or rack-mount side-panels.
  
• Upgrade to 4 Audio Channels - $995
  
  An I/O module adds 4 more channels of 24-bit 100 KHz A/D, D/A, and AES/EBU audio I/O to a basic Kyma System (for a total of 8 channels). One (1) is the maximum number of I/O modules that can be added to a single Capybara.
  
• Capybara 320 Expansion Card - 12 (max) @ $595 apiece = $6426
  
  Each card provides two additional processors and 48 megabytes of sample RAM. Up to 12 expansion cards can be added to a Capybara320, giving a maximum of 28 processors and 672 megabytes of RAM. (There is a 10% discount for orders of 4 or more cards.)

Total price - $10,891.00

But what does that all mean...

• 4 processors
• 96 MB sample RAM
• 12 expansion slots
• I/O and external sync (see below)
• External rackmount or desktop case (protects the DSPs and converters from the electrically noisy environment inside your personal computer, and leaves valuable slot-space free to use for other cards on your host computer)

• 2 processors
• 48 MB sample RAM (per card)
• Up to 12 cards can be added

• 4-8 channels
• 24-bit 32-100 kHz sample rate
• Balanced Analog & Digital (AES/EBU or S/PDIF), XLR connectors
• MIDI in / out / thru

Measurements are in A-weighted dB and were made with an Audio Precision Portable One Dual Domain audio analyzer.

External Synchronization

• Word Clock input
• VITC & LTC time code input

To give some idea of the Capybara320's capabilities:

You can create a real-time 66-band vocoder on a basic system. On a fully loaded system, you can create a 600-band real time vocoder.

On a basic system, you can perform additive synthesis with 192 sine wave partials, each sine having its own independent frequency and amplitude envelope with any number of breakpoints in it. On a fully loaded system, you can perform real-time additive synthesis with 1743 partials.

You can generate a granular synthesis cloud with 93 simultaneous grains on a basic system. A fully loaded system can generate clouds of 837 simultaneous grains.

You can use 60 voices of samples on a basic system, and a fully loaded system gives you 545 voices.

this is a serious synthesis and sound design workstation, and trust me when I say that the price is well-justified for the performance, capabilities, and IMHO, ease of use (i was a TA @ clark University computer music studio, and used one on nearly a daily basis.)

So lets load it up then...

• Basic Kyma System - $3470
  
  A basic Kyma System includes a CD-ROM containing the Kyma X software (for both Windows and Macintosh platforms) with over 1000 presets and 350 prototypes, the Kyma X Revealed! book, a Kyma FireWire interface with 3 meter FireWire cable and 0.5 meter Capybara cable, a Capybara320 sound computation engine with four processors and 96 megabytes of sample RAM, four channel 24-bit A/D and D/A converters (up to 100 KHz sample rate), dual two channel 24-bit AES/EBU digital audio interface (up to 100 KHz sample rate), word clock input, VITC and LTC time code inputs and outputs, and MIDI In/Out/Thru. Available with desktop or rack-mount side-panels.
  
• Upgrade to 4 Audio Channels - $995
  
  An I/O module adds 4 more channels of 24-bit 100 KHz A/D, D/A, and AES/EBU audio I/O to a basic Kyma System (for a total of 8 channels). One (1) is the maximum number of I/O modules that can be added to a single Capybara.
  
• Capybara 320 Expansion Card - 12 (max) @ $595 apiece = $6426
  
  Each card provides two additional processors and 48 megabytes of sample RAM. Up to 12 expansion cards can be added to a Capybara320, giving a maximum of 28 processors and 672 megabytes of RAM. (There is a 10% discount for orders of 4 or more cards.)

Total price - $10,891.00

But what does that all mean...

• 4 processors
• 96 MB sample RAM
• 12 expansion slots
• I/O and external sync (see below)
• External rackmount or desktop case (protects the DSPs and converters from the electrically noisy environment inside your personal computer, and leaves valuable slot-space free to use for other cards on your host computer)

• 2 processors
• 48 MB sample RAM (per card)
• Up to 12 cards can be added

• 4-8 channels
• 24-bit 32-100 kHz sample rate
• Balanced Analog & Digital (AES/EBU or S/PDIF), XLR connectors
• MIDI in / out / thru

Measurements are in A-weighted dB and were made with an Audio Precision Portable One Dual Domain audio analyzer.

External Synchronization

• Word Clock input
• VITC & LTC time code input

To give some idea of the Capybara320's capabilities:

You can create a real-time 66-band vocoder on a basic system. On a fully loaded system, you can create a 600-band real time vocoder.

On a basic system, you can perform additive synthesis with 192 sine wave partials, each sine having its own independent frequency and amplitude envelope with any number of breakpoints in it. On a fully loaded system, you can perform real-time additive synthesis with 1743 partials.

You can generate a granular synthesis cloud with 93 simultaneous grains on a basic system. A fully loaded system can generate clouds of 837 simultaneous grains.

You can use 60 voices of samples on a basic system, and a fully loaded system gives you 545 voices.

this is a serious synthesis and sound design workstation, and trust me when I say that the price is well-justified for the performance, capabilities, and IMHO, ease of use (i was a TA @ clark University computer music studio, and used one on nearly a daily basis.)

Not always. Software should only do them if you don't want speed. For example, no old 8086 (even if produced at high clock speeds) will run software that can be reasonably compared to a box full of Motorola DSPs. Sure, you could make a box full of general purpose processors but: 1) power consumption and heat generated would be outrageous; 2) price would be REALLY outrageous. What has been determined is that multimedia is important enough that dedicating hardware to it is a good idea. Of course, I'm not defending MMX or 3DNow. ;-) If you're going to dedicate hardware to something, do it right.

With all the talk about sound software recently, this reminds me of signal flow, which is put through a patch bay in an analog setup.

So, imagine a *nix GUI that involved a CLI, but allowed you to visualize the "signal flow" as you typed. Look at this example from Symbolic Sound. This would allow very complex CLI commands, and you could modify them by moving around the blocks in the visualization (see above example). Something similar to "round trip" HTML editing in Macromedia Dreamweaver, but hopefully better implemented.

With all the talk about sound software recently, this reminds me of signal flow, which is put through a patch bay in an analog setup.

So, imagine a *nix GUI that involved a CLI, but allowed you to visualize the "signal flow" as you typed. Look at this example from Symbolic Sound. This would allow very complex CLI commands, and you could modify them by moving around the blocks in the visualization (see above example). Something similar to "round trip" HTML editing in Macromedia Dreamweaver, but hopefully better implemented.

A Linux cluster is an expensive, ridiculously overpowered and basically silly way to provide what you need. Professional solutions already exist for massive audio processing.

Symbolic Sound, for example, makes a box called the Capybara which is comprised of 4 DSPs (expandable to 28) and a bunch of RAM, all of it specifically designed for sound computation. This is the box that sound designers for Star Wars, etc. use. Why bother with spending tens of thousands of dollars on a Linux cluster when one Capybara will probably offer more effects power than you'll ever need?

Or, get Pro Tools and use TDMs. Those sound better anyway. :)

"This seems like an expensive and inefficient solution for the problem you describe. PCs are actually pretty bad at doing signal processing; there's a whole class of chips (DSPs) that are optimized for it. There are almost certainly DSP-based hardware boards/widgets that will handle a lot of these effects for you, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there was a general-purpose programmable DSP card on the market too. Researching this before you spend money on a cluster would be a Good Idea."


Yup. Here's some links:
Symbolic Sounds Kyma system, a DSP-based programmable hardware solution for audio.
Details on the Kyma system (drool!):
http://namm.harmony-central.com/SNAMM00/Content/Sy mbolic_Sound/PR/Kyma5.html

Hardware DSP hacking tools:
Analog Devices EZ-SHARC/EZ-KIT DSP experimentation board (which screams for Linux support, incidentally)

Are you kidding me? The NeXT was the greatest computer music platform ever designed! Stanford's CCRMA was (and may still be) using NeXT machines a couple of years ago. Only the Capybara has exceeded the power of the NeXT. The MusicKit (designed by David Jaffe and Julius Smith) is a hallowed word in DSP circles. IMO, the DSP was the most significant piece of equipment in the package.