La Voix du Luthier Intros Pyramide Essential Acoustic Resonator

At the 2021 NAMM Show, La Voix du Luthier introduced a new version of its Pyramide acoustic resonator – the Pyramide Essential.

In the video, Christophe Duquesne demonstrates the Onde, the Pyramid and a new Slim Continuum controlling Jordan Rudess’ Geoshred application, with video mapped to the Onde & Pyramid resonators.

The sound generation comes from a layer of a Continuum preset and Geoshred. The audio is 100% acoustic and is recorded with a Zoom IQ7 and a Zoom H2. It is raw audio, direct from the mics, without any editing, and it is a one take live shooting.

The Pyramide Essential as an acoustic resonator – a device that essentially turns your electronic instrument into an acoustic one. It does this by using the signal from your instrument to vibrate wood acoustic resonators, similar to the way a guitar string causes the body to resonate. This approach means that your sounds are affected by the resonances of the Pyramide, which adds a physical dimension to your performances. This also makes it idea for electronic musicians wanting to perform with acoustic musicians.

Pyramide Essential differs from the original Pyramide by eliminating the integrated amplifier of the original. You can use it your own amplifier, similarly as passive speakers, but with a true acoustic sound (each Pyramid is stereo, and offers 2 voices that can be bridged to make it mono, 8 Ohms or 4 Ohms).

Pricing and Availability

The Pyramide Essential is available via La Voix du Luthier for 1 195,00€.

51 thoughts on “La Voix du Luthier Intros Pyramide Essential Acoustic Resonator

  1. “The Pyramide Essential as an acoustic resonator – a device that essentially turns your electronic instrument into an acoustic one.”

    So it’s a speaker? Made with wood?

    1. Lots of clueless comments on here.

      This is not a speaker – its an acoustic resonator. If don’t know what this means, check out the Onde Martenot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot) – a pioneering electronic instrument which used three different types of resonators for different effects.

      The difference between this and a speaker is that the Pyramide essentially becomes the instrument, which you would mic and add effects to. And it’s not designed to amplify your sounds to be ‘loud’, it’s designed to vibrate like the body of a guitar or piano.

      It works amazing with patches that that emulate wood instruments, ethnic instruments, etc.

        1. Well, you may be clueful, but the comments were indeed clueless.

          What is the difference between an acoustic guitar, and an electric guitar with a DI fed to a PA speaker?

            1. Sounds like you are guessing the answer to a different question than the one I was asking.

              CLUE: the electric guitar with a DI doesn’t have the usual tone-shaping that comes with either a resonating body, or the voicing of a tube amp.

              1. Leaving the amping part aside for a second, all solid body electric guitars have their own characteristic tones (which are significantly different between brands and models) due to many design related factors including the “resonant” frequencies of the woods, plastics, metals, tone circuits, coils etc., and the overall construction. So are the hollow body electric guitars and other hollow body instruments.
                And yes an acoustic guitar would sound differently compared to a solid body electric guitar, when played through hypothetically non-coloring mic+PA and DI+PA systems (respectively). So what?
                In practice electric guitars are played through a zillion fx pedals, amp+cabinet simulators or amp+cabinet combos (some gigantic, some pocket size) all of which have these mostly wanted and sometimes unwanted “resonances”; so is the device in question.
                Thus, a better/life-like analogy might be “what is the difference between a solid body electric guitar played through a zillion fx pedals or amps+cabinets AND a solid body electric guitar barely played through the device in question?”
                Please feel free to replace the “solid body electric guitar” part with your preferred instrument.
                There would be a difference, but is it categorically a better difference?
                I don’t think the critical comments were made towards the device itself here, I think they were about the description or differential positioning (or against the comments naming people clueless and so called Dunning–Krugered).
                Otherwise it looks like a nicely built device which may be enjoyed by many.

                1. My post was in response to “So it is a speaker made of wood?”

                  Actually, that comment isn’t wrong or clueless. It’s cheeky and sarcastic, perhaps, and especially useful, but ok, kinda fun.

                  In that sense, the resonating body of an acoustic guitar, violin, viola, cello, banjo, etc, etc, etc, is a speaker made of wood.

                  Yes. And your points about various qualities of electric guitar are all valid. I should have stated my question: “What is the most significant difference…?”

      1. Huh? If I attach my synth to a wood resonator, there will nothing to hear even if I send enough power to start it burning! If otherwise, please explain it to my clueless ears.

        1. Think about how a violin works.

          A violin string vibrates and makes a tiny sound. The bulk of the sound of a violin comes from the resonating body, and how the player’s performance interacts with the violin’s body. That’s why a Stradivarius is highly valued – it’s considered the ideal violin because it resonates in ways that have made it the ‘gold standard’ for violins.

          Now imagine you have a tiny electromagnet that you can attach to the violin’s body. If you feed it with a sine wave, you’re not going to hear a sine wave – you’re going to hear the sound of a violin body resonating. If you do this with a crappy violin, the results will probably be crappy. And if you could do this with a Stradivarius, the resulting sound would probably be musically interesting.

          The resonating body of the violin – and many acoustic instruments – affects the resulting sound a lot. This is a desired characteristic of acoustic instruments, and generally the opposite of what you want in a speaker.

          You’re also never going to make this custom violin especially loud, because the sound is being generated by the violin body resonating. Again – the opposite of what you want in a speaker.

          So resonators are NOT a solution for accurately amplifying your sound. The La Voix du Luthier guys would probably tell you to get a good loudspeaker for that.

          But what if you want to play your theremin with a piano? Or play your synth in an acoustic ensemble? Or your ondioline with an orchestra?

          You don’t see these things happening very frequently – and part of that is because loudspeakers are a crappy solution for these types of situations.

          But this is where the acoustic resonator approach gets interesting.

          With something like the Onde or the Pyramid, you can mount it on your instrument or put it right by you – and sit next to the piano or in the middle of an ensemble or an orchestra – and the sound is coming from you and from your instrument, instead of from a speaker at the edge of the stage.

          And you can balance your sound acoustically with the other instruments. And your timing is synchronized to the performer next to you – not to a speaker across a stage or venue.

          Unfortunately, there may be a bit of the Dunning–Kruger effect in some people’s reactions to these resonators. If you’re not playing theremin with a piano, or trying to work your synth into an ensemble or to play an ondioline in an orchestra, you probably have no idea of the problems that standard loudspeakers introduce.

          So, if you actually want to understand these things and why they might be useful, get input from the types of musicians that would actually use them – and look at how they use them.

          Here’s an example that absolutely blew me away:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVue-QsxuzA

          1. These problems you speak of don’t really exist.
            Since when doesn’t an electric guitar with amplifier and speaker work with an acoustic piano or big band or something in the same room? Huh?
            Who says the speakers need to be stereo and on the other end of the room and u need to sit in the middle of the speakers? 😉

            1. Sit on your keyboard amplifier/monitor, plug your iPad in and join the acoustic jazz trio with fluffy granular pads. No big deal. And no stupid resonance you can’t change. 😉
              You really inhaled to much advertising talk.

                  1. A resonator you cant pitch isnt useful for electronic sound.
                    I prefer a physical model of a resonator over an actual box any day,
                    because I can adjust the pitch/size of the model to fit to my sound/what I am playing and I dont have to run around like an idiot with a microphone.
                    But you are way to biased to even think about that.
                    Have a nice day.

                1. Sounds like it’s not a device you would use. Question is, why would you go to all that effort to convince others it’s of no use to them either? Did you just assume we all make music in the same way? What the hell is wrong with you

  2. With a slight difference: speakers are not supposed to add resonance to flavor and color the sound (though they generally do). This product appears to be designed to act like the body of an acoustic instrument and probably imparts its own personality even moreso than say the filter on an analog synth.

  3. Mums 5 € kitchen radio resonates too. It just doesn’t come with a lot of blah blah about electroacoustic shenanigans that got grandpa excited. Meh.

  4. BTW. The sounds have reverb and delay on them and are then send through the speaker.
    As the idea is to simulate acoustic stuff you are not supposed to do that;
    and if you do that without the fx you can hear the mediocre thing the speaker adds to the sound. 😉

  5. There are several points that make them different from traditional speakers: as explained by @Clif they are coloured, you can in fact say tuned, as for the soundboard of a piano, violin or guitar (the wood and building technic are exactly the same as for an acoustic instrument and everything is done by a skilled stringed instrument maker); the second main point is the way they spread the sound: a traditional speaker is mono-directional (that’s why you need that triangle position for optimal listening condition) where such a resonator spreads the sound in all directions like any acoustic instrument. This last feature allows to easily integrate an electronic instrument together with acoustic ones, furthermore, it allows a proper use of the acoustic of a classical venue where you can hear a instrument on stage from far, even at low levels.

  6. This demo completely misses its point, the micing of this recording is terrible. This kind of product needs to be recorded professionally in a acoustically pleasing space such as a concert hall if we are to gain any understanding about the intended sonic effects.

    I’m intrigued about this tech but there’s no way I’d drop that much money based on such terrible demos.

      1. I listen to Classical orchestra recordings (recordings, not records) quite a bit in my day job. Sorry to say but that recording is not a very good one.

        1. It’s all relative.

          Most of the recordings I hear that people make with their iPhones sound terrible to me. This sounds better than that.

          However, I was not so excited about the overdriven sound that was layered in with the Karplus Strong tone. It think a cleaner tone might have made for a better example, IMHO.

  7. Having heard the Pyramide in person at SuperBooth, I can genuinely testify that it adds real physical spatial presence to the sound, and does give it that lower-end body you get from a guitar – not something you can easily replicate with equalising and stereo speakers. Whilst maybe this isn’t so useful for digital streaming, it’s fantastic for live performances & installations.

    1. Then you’d have a static resonance that did not respond to the space you are in or your performance.

      And then you’d still have to amplify it, and it would sound like an electronic sound coming out of a speaker, vs an acoustic sound coming out of a physical instrument.

      1. If you have some of them and love the sound – I’m really happy for you – But essentially its a box around a speaker – So is a cathedral / hall / inventive space of your choice (and unless you change the materials, internal damping or dimensions of any of these boxes while playing, the resonances of all of them will be static) – And as to your second point – They do say that you need to add your own amplifier.

      1. Aaah – My mistake – I obviously need to clothe my IR plate reverbs in rich dark wood sustainably sourced by native americans surfing on pods of killer whales to the organic sounds of the ocean –

    2. Jay is right. You could achieve a similar result using convolution with some IR of a resonator body, then run that into an amp/speaker. You could also accomplish this by buying a beat up cello, damping the strings, and mounting a transducer/driver (like a tactile transducer, or “bass shaker” but full range) at or near the bridge.

      Resonators are more accommodating to some frequencies than others. Hence a resonator does two big things, EQ and resonance. Of course, the EQ profile you could simulate with an EQ. The resonance part means that the entire spectrum of vibrations will “ring” to varying degrees, giving you a different tone, and a significant “release ring” characteristic. The build-up at some frequencies can give the sound character and fullness.

      Pyramide Essential looks like an interesting functional and aesthetic design and a well-crafted object. It is also a very clever way to take a synthesized sound and bring with it some natural character, radiate it in a performance space, and provide a surface upon which to project a light show.

      It’s thinking inside the box (?)

      1. are you sure that’s right? I would have thought the resonator was not LTI (linear and time invariant), ie not defined by its impulse response.

        1. That may be so. However, I have used convolution with impulse responses from resonators and it does what it should. So it must at least have some LTI elements. It’s very similar to those speaker IRs, but with a bit longer tail.

  8. Beautiful to look at, but sounds more like a headache for sound engineers. It would be really interesting to hear what korg ms-20 or some other analog mono synth would sound like with these resonators without any fx

  9. Leaving the amping part aside for a second, all solid body electric guitars have their own characteristic tones (which are significantly different between brands and models) due to many design related factors including the “resonant” frequencies of the woods, plastics, metals, tone circuits, coils etc., and the overall construction. So are the hollow body electric guitars and other hollow body instruments.

    And yes an acoustic guitar would sound differently compared to a solid body electric guitar, when played through hypothetically non-coloring mic+PA and DI+PA systems (respectively). So what?

    In practice electric guitars are played through a zillion fx pedals, amp+cabinet simulators or amp+cabinet combos (some gigantic, some pocket size) all of which have these mostly wanted and sometimes unwanted “resonances”; so is the device in question.
    Thus, a better/life-like analogy might be “what is the difference between a solid body electric guitar played through a zillion fx pedals or amps+cabinets AND a solid body electric guitar barely played through the device in question?”
    Please feel free to replace the “solid body electric guitar” part with your preferred instrument.

    There would be a difference, but is it categorically a better difference?

    I don’t think the critical comments were made towards the device itself here, I think they were about the description or differential positioning (or against the other comments calling people clueless and Dunning–Krugered).

    Otherwise it looks like a nicely built device which might be enjoyed by many.

  10. It’s a box of a certain size, hence you can’t raise or lower the resonant pitch of it.
    As a synth can produce any pitch in the audible range you probably don’t want to add the very same beep to any sound. 😉
    It’s a one trick pony.

    1. “It’s a one trick pony.” That’s perfectly true. But this also holds for my acoustic pro guitars. If this one trick sounds excellent, mission accomplished! If not, it is for the bin anyway. 😉

    2. I just want to address this idea that a resonator has a single “pitch”. Acoustic resonators are usually designed to avoid having a narrow, specific single frequency, but rather to resonate in such a way as to have more of a spectral shape (like an EQ shape). This usually has some low range that is boosted, and yes, it will have a point of loudest resonance that could be called it’s “fundamental”, but they usually try to design it so that is minimized, and spread out a bit. Other resonant peaks above the fundamental also give some character, but again, they aren’t as some specific note. Otherwise acoustic guitar levels would jump all over the place when you play a scale.

      Perhaps the larger point you are making is that you’d like to be able to take that spectral shape and shift it up or down to make it larger or smaller. Ok. Yes, you can do that with an IR.

      1. I guess our opinions are close to each other. For acoustic guitars, you are also right, there are a number of tricks to avoid too much “jumping up and down”, like the shape and the additional wood on the inside.
        Could be that you have to damp that behavior for the pyramid, if it would show up.

        Of course, like with all additions, no matter if physical or electronic, the final question is: How does it sound in the whole musical impression. That’s also always a risk when listening to stuff e.g. at Superbooth. Even if it sounds interesting standing alone, will it fit in, or is it just a gimmick.

    1. Yea, it’s funny. People got pretty heated up and defensive.

      There’s often a bit of reaction when a product that seems kind of boutique also has a pretty high price tag. Which follows with a kind of sloppy exploration of whether it’s worth the price– and that get’s to this subjective question of “Why would anyone want this?” as if there is a right and wrong answer to that question.

      When companies release 100’s of subtractive synths or emulations thereof, or bog-standard MIDI controllers, or vintage compressor simulations, etc. etc., we don’t have similar rioting.

      I think the Pyramide is easy to dismiss, either on the grounds that it is an oddity, a luxury, and/or pointless.

      However, I love that people innovate, and try things, even weird things, and embue the product with different values– in this case: as a sound-coloring element, as a sound projecting device, and an aesthetically pleasing sculpture.

      1. “However, I love that people innovate, and try things, even weird things, ”
        Yes! I think we (and I include me) think too often like “do we need that” from a more or less technical point of view, and forget that producing and even more performing music is about all this stuff: How it sounds, but also how it looks like, how it feels to work with it, how to show off with it on stage, what relationship we build to our instruments, and many more things.

        1. Agreed. The creative process includes what is referred to as “content” i.e., the rhythms, melodies, harmonies on one hand, and the sound generation and processing that comes after it, on the other hand, and the “other hands” have to do with the audience’s shared experience with the creator.

  11. True-:100 yearold house on pier foundation, band mates and I were killlin time on the front porch, I was laying down so I rest my (electric) bass guitar body on the porch below me while we wiggled through some whatever, unplugged. Blew my mind, the bass became omnipresent, sooooooo cool! I can put my bass guitar body against a sheet rock wall and it’s kinda the same effect. Doesn’t get louder, it’s like the sound of the buzzy strings is overshadowed with tone, wooden speaker! It’s the sheet!,-rock, haha. The principles of these wooden speakers (pyramide) is way over my head but I still get weird ideas of of actuators and resonance for exploration, it’s a lot to rest sharing music on the ability to plug something in. Magnet, wire, resonance (whatever that is called ) and solar panels or at least hamsters on a exercise wheel

    1. @Lee I SO know what you are talking about. Just leaning the headstock against the drywall and you get this weird resonant almost chorused sound as it vibrates a little bit differently than the bass. Such a cool effect.

      I know this topic is pretty far down, now. But I kinda wish La Voix du Luthier would create & release a really high-fidelity impulse response from the Pyramide. Record it using a sine sweep, and Mid-Side mics. Deconvolve it properly and sell the IR for $20. I’d buy it.

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