This one in via Brian Comnes:"Antares, the folks who brought you the ever famous "Cher-effect" with Autotune have apparently dropped their Kantos product. It is nowhere to be found on their site.
This is one weird softsynth and it has my all time favorite user interface, a copy of which is below for your posterity files. I see it and I think of Will Smith in the Martian cruiser in Men in Black.
Kantos used audio in as the driver for a 2 oscillator synth and a whole lot of other sound shaper/benders, the characteristics of the sound in could be used as a mod matrix for any and all of the parameters in the tool. Needless to say it produced weird stuff. On my more cynical days I would take George W. Bush sound clips on the Iraq war and turn those into break beats. If i can find one I'll send it later. I also use it to take my guitar to strange strange places.
My guess it is it did not sell well and hence the withdrawal.
For those who want grab some history, those wonderful Wisconsin folks at www.novamusik.com are having a blow out sale for $49. Warning: It has that BS online challenge response authentication so it is limited pretty much to one computer and I worry for how long they will support that, 'cause I get a new computer about every 18 months
Peace
Brian"
Kantos died a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteThey've just buried the coffin, filled it in and left no tombstone.
Most unusable interface ever, imho...
It tracked badly unless I just didn't know how to use it. I'm sure someone looking to make random glitchy un-nerving music could make use of it but someone looking for tight effects using a variety of mono sources probably wouldn't get what they were after much of the time.
ReplyDeleteWell when I said favorite interface , I didn't mean that in a usability-sense...but it does have a unique esthetic that fits the sounds it puts our...and after you play with it a while those green lines start to make sense and make it easier to remember where they are...it never tracked polyphonic sounds worth beans, nor sounds with noisy chaotic attacks ... but that was well documented, rhythmic voices seemed to generate useful stuff however ...I liked the randomness but then I have a very low threshold for novelty too....
ReplyDeleteman i hate that GUI.. always gave me a "wtf were they thinking" moment each time i used it
ReplyDeleteI just took a MAX/MSP class in Toronto for the last 4 days. After the second day, I was making polyphonic harmonizers that did pitch tracking on incoming audio.
ReplyDeleteSo there's no real need for Kantos for me anymore.