Cyma Forma ALT

A fully analog hardware synthesizer built for drones, soundscapes, and generative melodies, from French maker cyma-forma. €1,279, available through retailers like Thomann. Its hook — “a synthesizer with eyes and ears” — is literal: it senses its environment and turns that into control.

Eyes and ears — sensor control

• Ears: an onboard microphone that triggers voices and modulation from ambient sound.
• Eyes: light sensors that turn it into a theremin-like instrument, mapping light level to master pitch and volume.

This gestural, environment-driven input is a different answer to “who moves the controls” than either modular-routing‘s patched automation or the manual studio‘s hands-only approach — here the room plays the synth.

Sound engine

• Voices: five oscillators, each with independent waveform, frequency range, pan, and detune, and each tunable to one of 14 scales — supporting just intonation as well as equal temperament, so microtuning is built in, not bolted on.
• Alter: two multimode stereo filters in series, inspired by the KORG MS-20 circuit (LP/HP/BP, self-oscillating to add voices), plus an infinite-feedback delay and an external audio input for processing.
• Movement: a modulation matrix with two audio-rate-capable LFOs, sample-and-hold, and an envelope follower; a “strange arpeggiator” that triggers voices from modulation amplitude.

Routing & control

A physical pin matrix handles hands-on modulation routing — another instance of the spoke’s modular-routing thesis, at the patch-matrix scale. Full CV and MIDI (four MIDI modes, including voice splitting and chord progressions), plus “Ripples” and “More” performance buttons.

Notable contrast

Where filtopia wires its filters in parallel (five at once, for formant timbres), the ALT stacks two MS-20-style filters in series — the two founding all-analog synths take opposite structural bets on the filter section. See synthesizer and synthesis. Coverage from gearnews.com (same outlet as one Filtopia write-up) → T3; specs are the maker’s/press’s, not independently measured.