---
title: Kurt Hebel
description: Kurt Hebel, co-founder of Symbolic Sound and designer of Kyma’s sound engines, the Paca that Sarth Calhoun has run on stage since 2008.
url: https://www.sarth.net/conspirators/kurt-hebel/
credit: Kurt Hebel designed the Paca and Pacarana, the Kyma hardware Sarth Calhoun ran with Metal Machine Trio, on Lou Reed’s 2011 tour and on Lulu; Calhoun beta-tested Kyma.
author: Sarth Calhoun
---
[Conspirators](/conspirators/) / Kurt Hebel

Conspirator

# Kurt Hebel

Co-founder of Symbolic Sound and the designer of Kyma’s hardware: the Capybara, the Paca and the Pacarana.

> Here's Sarth preparing his rack-mounted Pacas for the tour.
> 
> [Symbolic Sound, the eighth nerve, July 26, 2011](https://news.symbolicsound.com/2011/07/lou-reeds-euro-tour/)

Kurt J. Hebel is co-founder and vice president of Symbolic Sound Corporation, founded in 1989 with [Carla Scaletti](/conspirators/carla-scaletti/), and the hardware and DSP designer behind Kyma’s sound engines: the Capybara and the later Paca and Pacarana. He holds a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois, where he taught digital audio engineering before joining Symbolic Sound full-time in 1995; at the CERL Sound Group he built, with [Lippold Haken](/conspirators/lippold-haken/), the Platypus DSP in 1983.

## The orange boxes

The Paca, his dedicated DSP hardware for [Kyma](/devices/), is what I ran on stage: two on the [Metal Machine Trio](/conspiracies/metal-machine-trio/) tour, rack-mounted Pacas on Lou Reed’s [2011 European tour](/conspiracies/lou-reed-2011-european-tour/), and a Continuum with Kyma and a Paca in the Metallica sessions for [*Lulu*](/conspiracies/lulu/). I beta-tested Kyma and am credited on the Kyma X startup screen.

The credit: Kurt Hebel designed the Paca and Pacarana, the Kyma hardware Sarth Calhoun ran with Metal Machine Trio, on Lou Reed’s 2011 tour and on Lulu; Calhoun beta-tested Kyma.

The profile is from public sources, linked where they appear. What we made is the record on this site and the sources cited above.