Pre Sale Enquire and Info NEEDED

[A Former User]

Firstly, Please forgive my slightly ranting post im just fed up of trying to get answers on something that should be VERY CLEAR!

I currently have the Akai EWI 4000 and the 5000 both have good points and bad..
The main issue with 5000 is its poor loading of the internal sampled sounds.

However, what troubles me more is the lack of information regarding the Sylpho EWI by Aodyo!
I have been trying to get info on it for sometime now but yet cant appear to get simple answered which is now why i find myself on this forum!

From all i have read so far this appears to be a very expensive controller at best!
I mean if that is true it appears im better of sticking to my Akai EWIs for sure!

However I have read somewhere that it now features internal sound? I just dont understand why this information is not clearer on the website!
What is very clear to me is that it pushes out many cheesy synth sounds which i dont want! and nothing that i do want.

I've still yet to hear a good demo of the Sylpho which truly demonstrates, in simple terms, its internal sounds NOT its midi controlling capabilities.

I get its a controller, big whoop! so are keyboards at a fraction of the price and so are the Akai EWIs at around half the price!
What does the Sylpho truly offer above everyone else!

I have also heard that the Sylpho has very poor latency issues which again puts me off!

To anyone associated with this company that reads this, please dont delete it just because you dont like what im saying, take note and convince me to buy it!

Considering its a Electronic Wind Instrument ive yet to hear any decent realistic sounds coming from it that are not a 3rd part program, plugin or add on.

Can you provide an actual demo of the internal sounds in a video?

thanks!

[join]

From what I understand you'd like to know more about the Sylphyo's unique features and you found our communication lacking in this regard. I hope this post will help you understand the product better, and we will try to communicate better on our product in the future.

First of all, the Sylphyo and the EWI take quite different stances at what makes a good electronic wind instrument. This should not be surprising, as in the acoustic world there are many very different and equally successful designs for a wind instrument too.
What sets the Sylphyo apart from the EWI is that it is designed to fit a wider range of playing styles, notably those of non-reed woodwinds players (more on that later), and to provide greater and more intimate control over electronic sounds.

Several features of the instrument contribute to its design intent. First, as air flows all the way through the instrument, the sensation while playing is much more "acoustic-like", and it allows a greater range of breath control techniques, while retaining the possibility to feel "closed" like an EWI. Then, there are techniques like "key-bend" and "shake vibrato" that are borrowed from some types of flutes. And as an extension of that, the Sylphyo also reacts to gestures on its back surface (the slider) and in the air (elevation, roll, compass control) thanks to its lighter weight. With time and practice it allows you to get much more timbral variations out of your sounds. This is what the Sylphyo aims at: intimate, physical, instrument-like control of your electronic sounds. As they're relatively novel, such features might look like "gadget gimmicks" if you don't think about the instrument as a whole, but videos like the Chat with Pedro series will show you how far you can go with it in a professional setting (of course we'd like to have more videos like this, but the product is still very young and not widespread).

As for the latency issue that popped up recently, this is very likely an individual issue having to do with the specific setup within which the Sylphyo is used. The Sylphyo itself is demonstrably one of the lowest latency controllers out there, even with the wireless option.

The Sylphyo was a wireless MIDI wind controller until around September 2018, where we made two important changes:

• We added an internal sound engine inside the Sylphyo itself.
• We changed the wireless receiver to make it a wireless audio/MIDI receiver.

So what do the internal sounds sound like? There's a pretty long overview of the seven first sounds, and the user guide has an up-to-date description of each sound, along with an accompanying video.
As you have seen, the internal sounds do not aim for realistic reproduction of acoustic sounds. This is for several reasons. First, it is extremely difficult to reproduce the sonic behavior of an acoustic instrument, and it's very computationally intensive, so much so that it'd be really costly to integrate into a mobile battery-powered instrument (and the battery wouldn't last long). We're planning to provide sounds with much acoustically-inspired behavior, but we're not aiming at reproducing some specific acoustic instrument. And the more important reason why we don't do that is that we feel the real power of the Sylphyo lies on the way you can control electronic sounds with it, so it'd be a waste to sacrifice all that control for realism. Acoustic-style rich behavior, that's a better thing to aim at in our opinion.
We're planning to gradually add more sounds and we're currently working on an editor that allows anyone to make presets with the elements of the sound engine we've developed.

Maybe you'll come to the conclusion that there's nothing appealing to you with the Sylphyo. No big deal. People have different needs and it would be a bad idea to try to fulfill them all with a single product! If you just want a more recent version of your EWI and nothing else, then it's likely the Sylphyo will not suit you and that's OK! But if you're looking for something different, the Sylphyo is definitely an instrument to consider.

You'll find some technical details in the user guide, but the best place to get answers is to ask us or our community, either here, in the Sylphyo Exchange Facebook group, or privately (contact@aodyo.com).

[clothear]

@EzRecoridngs I'm not affiliated with Sylphyo at all, I'm just a Sylphyo owner. To me, it's a very useful tool -- your needs are probably different but I'll give my view of it.

The Sylphyo is primarily a MIDI controller. As a MIDI controller it's very good, because compared to the alternatives it:
-- is small and light
-- has no moving or sensitive parts
-- is sensitive to finger movements allowing you to 'half hole' notes fairly effectively
-- has a very generic set of controls and fingering mappings
-- is frequently updated

This doesn't mean it's perfect. But if I could have only one MIDI controller, I'd have this one.

The onboard sounds, as you say, are a bit 'Star Wars'. But they fulfil a useful purpose -- they mean you can play it with nothing but a speaker/phones connection, so you can work out ideas quickly and practise with it.

From my point of view the faults are:
--no bite controller
--occasional latency issues -- I can't be sure if this is my imagination but I feel like it was quicker when it used an ordinary Midibeam, rather than the new controller. I can't prove it though.
--No custom fingerings, and weird omissions with certain fingerings
--The engineer in me is offended and confused that it needs to have TWO mini synths per Sylphyo.

The internal sounds are useful to have but not a core part of the proposition. It's an expensive MIDI controller, but then it's a very good MIDI controller.

[Paul Flute]

This post is deleted!