Thanks Jon ! yes you perfectly got it. It is also a very nice toy for sound engineers, and it also can be used by studios to offer some alternate sound colors to record synth. At that point the different ways of using it are not “fixed” and we are impatiently to see how musicians will use them (Onde and Pyramid).

great thoughts, thanks for the reply.

Very interesting, too, because it sounds like an acoustic instrument that you haven’t heard before.

What instrument did you play through it?

Wow many thanks for the personal reply. Not that the Ondes doesn’t look like an incredible partner to the Continuumini, it’s just that I don’t have a budget for both at the moment. Looking forward to it!

You are probably right when it comes to miking it. it doesn’t have vibrating strings that can be recorded and them amplified if needed. So it would be more similar to miking the soundboard of a piano for example, and that isn’t how it is typically done.

Probably best captured with a stereo mic set-up at listening position in the room (one of those head-microphones), to capture the room effect, and then going untreated to the listener listening via headphones.

I wish though that more music was captured in that way;
With resonators like this (perhaps a bit more neutral for other types of instruments), and different sorts of speakers, it would then be possible to place sound sources in an actual room and have it spread in a natural way, and then capture it, so it plays back the most realistic way in headphones.
A way to live-record pre-recorded and treated sound.
And since using headphones would be like re-versing the microphones in a head mic, it would be the most realistic way of actually capturing and re-creating a room experience.

There would be no need to pan instruments in the mix, as they would instead be placed in a physical location, thus actually sound like they come from the right location, instead of being panned to feel.

No more room reverb effects used to feel, instead capturing an actual room, in a realistic way…
Sure, that would require access to the type of room one wishes to record. And perhaps even filling it with people or dummies, to capture the sound like it would sound in a crowded space.
If the sound engineer is good at its work, in preparing, the need for access to that room, would be limited. But sure, stadiums would be out of the question for most artists (sure the room could be recorded while booked for a gig, but then, why not just record the actual gig).

The sound would be way more realistic that doing it by feel in the mix.

And I think it could be cool for electronic music as well, putting sounds in an actual space (I think it will open up for way of thinking about placement of sounds in a space that typically isn’t used for electronic music). At times even requiring setting at lot of speakers up in a surround configuration in the room.

Perhaps though requiring a bit of cheating with the low end (perhaps complete low-cut or layering with the clean track). As long as it is beneath 120Hz or so, we can’t locate the sound at all, and it would be possible to go even higher using panning, as our ability to actually pin-point is even higher, so we would not be able to tell it wasn’t recorded at location.

The back side of it, is that we would be back in a situation where doing high quality recordings and mixes would require a bit of money, and a different skill set (being able to mix for playback in a room, with the right type of sound sources).
But I’m sure some independent artists would be able to rent a room that fits (although perhaps not the perfect room), and the needed speakers/resonators, but the skill set of mixing for them and the live-sound engineering would till be needed.

And of course, it would challenge the hifi-speaker industry.
I do love speakers. But headphones are superior in that they remove the room, and that the same kind of quality of sound can be much cheaper.
And it is portable.
And it is the way most people “actively listens” to music today.
I’m sure we can get “augmented reality” headphones, that would enables us to get sounds from the outside in, so that social listening would still be possible.

i think i get it too, that this is a novel way to lend a synth the unique richness/presence/? of an acoustic instrument, and that you have to take it on it’s own terms to appreciate it.

I would love to experience it live. I guess what I’m pondering is the best way to capture it in recording. Seems trickier than miking an traditional acoustic instrument.

Obv this is all based on a youtube-compressed listen and idle speculation, no offense intended.

When I was a kid, I used to see commercials for high quality TV screens on our crummy little family TV. The commercials had images of much better TV screens, but I could only see them on our crummy TV. These resonators have a bit of that problem — they color the sound in a likable way to make it sound more “acoustic-like”, but my favorite part of the Ondes is how the sound emanates from it; it feels like the difference in how an acoustic piano has a different sound-space in a room than an electric piano. That feeling is impossible to transfer in videos, where people are listening through headphones or speakers — so it is a leap of faith the buy into the idea.

We are working on it – hopefully ContinuuMini will launch separately end of next week. Originally we had planned to launch simultaneous with La Voix du Luthier, but Real Life got in the way.

I’m not sure why people would expect this to sound like Genelecs or something like that.

The entire reason for something like this to exist is to explore a different approach and to create sounds that have an acoustic element that you can interact with and explore.

The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the way guitarists use feedback with their amps – that sort of feedback loop is essential to being able to get the sound that they want, though it’s not ‘accurate’ in any way.

Looks like this Kickstarter is going to be a big success – so some people clearly ‘get’ the point of this type of speakers.

i don’t say that as a criticism, just that it made me think that 1) synth sounds with characteristics similar to an acoustic instrument are best suited, and 2) no doubt the sound when actually in the same room is fantastic, maybe best served by binaural+headphones or surround?