Hikari Instruments Duos, a new experimental Synthesizer with an unpredictable signal path powered by lowpass gates, feedbacks, and more.
The Synthesizer market is dominated by the big players. However, the small companies are often responsible for the special moments. Often only led by one or two people, they release products with fresh, experimental ideas which opens the sonic door in new direction. These are the products that make our eyes shine.
Hikari Instruments is a developer from Japan who has released some crazy instruments in the last few years. With the Duos he continues his design language and shows us another “unorthodox” synth release.
Hikari Instruments Duos
Duos is the latest experimental Synthesizer release from the Japanese developer Hikari Instruments. The stereo engine is very special and unique. It is driven by the pulse of two internal resonant lowpass gates (LPGs) and an unpredictable signal path. It is based on a mixture of shift registers and multi-feedback loops.
The interface is split into two equal VCO sides: each gives you controls over the rate of the internal LFO, FM, chaos modulation rate, resonance… On the bottom, you can also change the pattern of the chaos modulator that outputs a pseudo random waveform. The big knob in the middle adjust the frequency of VCO 1 and VCO 2.
The synth is based on the concept of exploration, experimentation, luck, horrible sonic accidents and some human intervention. There are no presets. Thus you create your sounds on the fly. And the results range from wild, crazy, noisy, up to glitchy. Hikari Instruments says:
Duos is capable of creating soundscapes that range from zero-visibility blizzards of sounds to glitched-out pulse-clusters of yearning from the heart of your-lost mother computer.
On the back, you have two mono outputs (L/R) for stereo operation, a single stereo output, and different analog connections. Including a clock out, CV out, and CV ins for the rates and frequency. These allow you to communicate with external devices and go further by creating addition feedbacks. Plus there is an option to hack the device but without details.
With the DUOS, Hikari Instruments has released another experimental Synthesizer release that is utterly unique. Certainly not a synth for the mainstream, but super exciting for everyone who love to make experimental sounds like drones, noise etc. with hands-on device.
Hikari Instruments Duos is available now for JP¥33,00 ± 254€.
More information here: Hikari Instruments
Available at my partner
Despite the sounds it produces: it has thick solid wooden ends, so it has to be a good synthesizer 😉
And unlike the Monos CV, which only has audio and two CV inputs in addition to its single audio output, the Duos can be connected to itself, so the audio and CV outputs can feed back into the CV inputs for added unpredictability.