SOMA Laboratory Expands Color Palette for its COSMOS Drifting Memory Station

Five new colors for SOMA's creative, continuously morphing soundscape machine

July 13, 2023

Warsaw, Poland, July 13, 2023 — SOMA Laboratory, maker of experimental synthesizers and sound machines including the inimitable LYRA-8 Organismic Synthesizer, announced that its COSMOS Drifting Memory Station is now available in five new colors: orange, pink, blue, green and white.

Cosmos, originally launched in 2021 in classic black, is the ultimate sonic morphing machine — capable of evolving and shapeshifting a myriad of sounds that lead to unexpected and inspirational musical outcomes. Inspired by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp's Frippertronics and tape looping work that originated in the late '70s, COSMOS is a highly creative tool for guitarists, synthesists and a range of other instruments.

Rather than functioning like a traditional looper or delay pedal, COSMOS takes the original signal — be it an electric guitar, synthesizer, electronic percussion — and generates constant 'recombinations' of this sound source to create an ever-changing soundscape. This is done by shifting timing relationships among delay lines, usage of an asynchronous LFO and modulation with a slowly changing chaotic signal. The result is an unconventional and refreshingly non-repetitive amalgamation of sound.

Re-inventing looping techniques
Cosmos is built with four different algorithms, which process at 32-bit/48kHz. There are two or four delay lines, which can morph in relation to one another. Additionally, the reverb in Cosmos is very uncommon and due to its enormous buffer size, can simulate the echo of a hall several kilometers in size. As a result of this, early reflections sound like individual echoes, which merge very slowly into the finely dispersed noise intrinsic of a reverb.

Each of the (5) foot switches on Cosmos provides access to the most important functions, and crossfading between on and off states facilitates ultra-smooth transitions. The Record footswitch enables quick and spontaneous recording of a new signal into the buffer. For further sonic shaping, Cosmos contains a high and low pass filter each containing three cutoff frequencies, and a Reverse switch enables seamless reversal of an incoming audio signal. The Erase switch allows the user to eliminate certain parts of a loop, or erase the entire buffer if required.

With its Blur, Drift, Drive and Suppressor/Compressor knobs, the user has an entire range of sonic shaping facilities that can blur and smear a sound source or produce intermodulation and panning effects. With Drive and Suppressor/Compressor, a range of distortion and limiting / auto-leveling possibilities expand user control even further — the only limitation is your own imagination.

With COSMOS' latest firmware update, users can work within clearly defined tempos and rhythm parameters, and also access functionality to make COSMOS behave as a regular looper. Further, the latest firmware also makes it possible to align two COSMOS units for use in a quadrophonic set up or performance.

Each of the new colors for COSMOS are now shipping and are priced at €xx.xx. To learn more, please visit https://somasynths.com/cosmos or visit an authorized SOMA Laboratory dealer.

About SOMA Laboratories
SOMA laboratory was founded by Vlad Kreimer in 2016 after success with the LYRA-8 synthesizer. We are a small boutique company of like-minded people who are in love with expressive high-quality sound and are ready to spend all our time and energy to realize our vision and ideals. Our developments combine an experimental innovative approach with the simultaneous use of the best technologies of the golden age of analog synthesizer manufacturing. In addition, we provide not only a unique design and production quality but also a personal, attentive approach to each client, making the entire process from the first soldering to shipping warmed with human heart and hands.