<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
I love the cyclone - it's an integral part of my rig for both studio and
performance.<br>
Yes the UI is cryptic and it can be flakey at times.<br>
But it's easy to use for the straightforward stuff. You can customize the
settings and have them called up by midi program change. It is easy to sync
up with other gear - the arp starts it's sync (i.e. downbeat) when you hit
the on button. Some arps don't work that way, and it's difficult to get multiple
arps and sequencers / drum machines to sync up properly (especially if you
want to turn them on and off independently of each other).<br>
I've seen it freak out occasionally, maybe when it gets overloaded with too
much midi info.<br>
You're supposed to be able to program the footswitch or incoming midi cc
to mimic any edit function, but I could never get that to work. Also I've
heard that it doesn't do sysex dumps properly.<br>
I don't do alot of complicated stuff with it. If I want complex I get it
by layering multiple simple arps on different devices. The cyclone can do
polyphonic arps, 2 note polyphony works best (more turns into mush pretty
quickly, since 3-note chords don't often transpose into the same key). One
of the presets is a 2-note poly arp that adds some great dynamics you can't
get with conventional arps.<br>
Also, this is very subjective, but I find the sound to be slightly more organic
than other arps I've tried, perhaps due to subtle timing variations of the
older technology.<br>
<br>
The Notron is very cool too, but it's completely different (step sequencer,
not arpeggiator).<br>
For a stand-alone arpeggiator, the Kurzweil ExpressionMate is great, and
has come way down in price lately.<br>
<br>
Tom Moravansky wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid20030215145828.C3DD651650@mulder.intermag.com">
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Ok - I'm going to ask since you've mentioned it twice now.
How do you nbormally use the Cyclone? I've heard some
good things about it, but the reaons I've never picked one
up were that folks constantly harped on 2 main issues:
Cryptic UI,
it constantly crashed their MIDI rigs.
The cryptic UI I could probably live with. The MIDI crashes
are more serious. The basic flavor (dig through groups.google.com
and look for cyclone, Mike Metlay, Nick Rothwell) from the messages
at the time were that as soon as you started to do more with it
than simple arpeggiations (using the more advanced features), you
significantly increased the potential to get stuck notes and lockups.
If I remember, Mike M said it was the only device that could
literally lock up his MIDI rig and require a reboot of the synths.
Now the gear at the time was probably a D-50, U-110, maybe an
Ensoniq and/or Kurzweil, so I don't know if it's changed with more
modern gear. They also mentioned that the 1.10 (I think) OS
improved things a bit over the original OS.
Any comments on the Cyclone? I ended up saving cash up for a longer
period of time and got a Latronic Notron instead.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
</body>
</html>