Tone2 will release Icarus - 3D WaveTable Synthesizer

[kokotte]

Ingo"Concerning the advanced oscillator modes that are used in combination with a certain Osc + wavetable (independent for each Osc) there is a certain way to use multiple of those modes with a single wavetable"
that's interesting !

[stillshaded]

well, I will definitely give it a shot. I'm a wavetable fanatic. Virus TI is still at the top for me. Someone on here said that a guy from waldorf designed the wavetables on the Virus, so maybe that's why? But that could be BS.

I love dune 2 overall.. but for some reason I find the wavetables a little lack luster. I don't know if it has something to do with the quality of the wavetable engine itself, or just the composition of the wavetables. If the engine is fine and it's just that the wavetables arent' so great, then I guess I just have to wait until someone makes some wavetables I like for it because I don't feel like learning how to do it.

Another one that I'm not so fond of is Zebra. Yes Zebra.. crucify me now. I do like Zebra overall, but I always fee like the oscillators are super brittle sounding. Am I the only one??

I do remember demoing blofeld and thinking they were good. But the interface was super weird... can't remember what it was but it was really giving me a hard time.

Synthmaster is pretty good. The playback engine seems very high quality, but you have to make your own sets of wavetables, and the wavetable sets I come up with always seem to not be very cohesive. If they would come up with some good preset for it, that would be great.

And serum.. well, the wavetable sound good, but i'll be damned if that synth doesn't just sound.. flat. I've got a bunch of tricks up my sleeve about getting a lively sound, but that one just always sounds flat.. And I'm talking about for poly's and expressive leads. Obviously it's great at wubwub's and sound effects, but that's a different animal.

Also, codex seemed pretty good, but it's very limited, and the interface is lol. some of the features seemed unusable.. Like the drive on the filter I think it was. And for reverb there's just a knob that says "reverb" lol. wtf.

So, will icarus be my knight in shining armor??? I hope so.

[goldenanalog]

For someone like me who is seriously involved with Icarus testing those picture are not funny at all...

Lol! Probably the funniest thing that I've read yet!

Realistically: You're marketing an audio software with no demo/no video's/no audio clips - not even a decent picture(!) - on behalf of a company that shall we say: somewhat 'overdoes' their product descriptions on a regular basis -

I'm sure that everything will work out perfectly fine when Tone2 finally releases Icarus - and Ingo: I sincerely hope that you're fairly compensated for all the verbiage that you've written about a product that while certainty imaginative, is vaporware for the rest of us at this point in time -

[recursive one]

would u guys hate me if I said massive is still my favorite wavetable softsynth?

It's weird.. the oscillators sounds brittle and harsh by them selves.. and the filters sound brittle and harsh.. but for some reason i like the sounds i get out of it the most. they cut and don't have that phony sound that gets to me.

I love Massive, it's one of my 4 most used synths. I didn't try all availbale wavetable synths, though. But still, Massive may not have the cleanest osicllators, the best up-to date filters but the whole thing just sounds good, very characterful - that's what I love about my synths.

I love dune 2 overall.. but for some reason I find the wavetables a little lack luster. I don't know if it has something to do with the quality of the wavetable engine itself, or just the composition of the wavetables. If the engine is fine and it's just that the wavetables arent' so great, then I guess I just have to wait until someone makes some wavetables I like for it because I don't feel like learning how to do it.

Some further wavetables are available here. http://forum.synapse-audio.com/viewtopi ... =7&t=11108

But as regards Dune2. I dunno... It gets musch use here, I've made a whole track with it as the only synth (and it was released at beatport - as if it were saying something ). But I allways had the feeling that I love the useability and the interface but the sound is OK rather than great.

I do like Zebra overall, but I always fee like the oscillators are super brittle sounding. Am I the only one??

No.

And serum.. well, the wavetable sound good, but i'll be damned if that synth doesn't just sound.. flat. I've got a bunch of tricks up my sleeve about getting a lively sound, but that one just always sounds flat.. And I'm talking about for poly's and expressive leads. Obviously it's great at wubwub's and sound effects, but that's a different animal.

I couldn't agree more. It is technically high quality sound, but I just don't like it, it evokes no emotions in me. "Lifeless" is the very definition I gave it myself after messing around the demo for several months. Last time I've demoed it again several days ago, tried hard to make something I'd like and ended up buying a Virus instead

Even at wubwubs (I use them sometimes) Massive sounds better to me. Hell, even my old Z3ta+ sounds better to me, frankly - it has crappy filters and the sound easily falls apart as you start tweaking this or that knob or make heavily modulated sounds but as long as you are staying in its sweet spots, it sounds nicer than Serum.

All in all, I start to think that "techncial sound quality" and "perceived sound quality" are two different things, and two different tasks for the developers. Like removing any aliasing from the sound is a clear technical task with measurable results, and incorporating the aliasing into the sound so that to make it sweet is a different thing where it may be much harder to say if you've actually succeded.

[jk-cream2]

You seem to have blue knobs and grey knobs. Does this difference in colour mean anything? Most of the grey knobs seem to be bipolar?

[Ingonator]

Just noticed some additional infos at the Tone2 Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Tone2Audiosoftware/

This mostly includes infos about the filters:

Tone2 Icarus will come with a powerful dual stereo filter section. It will include over 60 different sounding filter types: Vocal, Fractal, Analog, Digital, Resonator, EQ, Ringmod, AM, FM, Phaser, Comb, Z-Plane, Multimode, Resampling, … All filters offer the highest possible sound quality and many of them will be exclusive to Icarus.
The flexible routing allows you to route every oscillator individually to filter1, filter2 or bypass.
An animated display visualizes the frequency response in realtime. Two stereo distortion sections with 9 different modes allow you to shape the sound further.

filter section screenshot (3D rendered, the actual 2D GUI looks slightly different):

[fmr]

Just noticed some additional infos at the Tone2 Facebook page:
This mostly includes infos about the filters:

Tone2 Icarus will come with a powerful dual stereo filter section. It will include over 60 different sounding filter types: Vocal, Fractal, Analog, Digital, Resonator, EQ, Ringmod, AM, FM, Phaser, Comb, Z-Plane, Multimode, Resampling, … All filters offer the highest possible sound quality and many of them will be exclusive to Icarus.
The flexible routing allows you to route every oscillator individually to filter1, filter2 or bypass.
An animated display visualizes the frequency response in realtime. Two stereo distortion sections with 9 different modes allow you to shape the sound further.

FWIW I already mentioned here that Icarus will include over 60 filter modes...

Is the Z-Plane similar to the E-Mu Morpheus filter, or something different?

[recursive one]

60 filter modes

A bit too much. Some devs today seem going "quantity over quality" route, throwing everything they can imagine into their porducts and not actually caring how good this all will sound together.

Well, still all the actual info about the synth leaked here seems very exciting. This thread drags on so long that I managed to buy a Virus as it goes, I hope I won't regret it because I due to this I wont be able to buy any single plugin in 2016

What is Z-Plane filter btw? A kind of multimode LP/BP/HP? Also I have no clue what may the fractal and resampling filters be, but this is under NDA again, I guess.

[Ingonator]

edited. nvm

[Frantz]

Dave Rossum (the inventor of Z plane filters) is showing a prototype of a Eurorack Morpheus filter module at NAMM. It is based on the original Emu design. I can't provide a link now because I'm on a tablet.

[Ingonator]

edited. nvm

[fluffy_little_something]

What do EQ, ringmod etc. have to do with filter modes?

I agree that 60 filters is probably too many. I would spend too much time trying different filters.

When a synth has one good-sounding 2- and 4-pole LP filter, I am already very happy

[Ingonator]

edited. nvm

[fluffy_little_something]

Yes, might be funny stuff for certain genres, new toys to play around with

But looking back in synth history, the most important and musical synths were rather simple in terms of filters, the M1 only had a single LP filter I think, without resonance even

But since you are a commercial sound designer, I suppose you see these things very differently than people like me do

Anyway, when will they launch it already? I still have lots of download traffic left this month

[bmanic]

I've always liked the Tone 2 filters. They were at the top of the filter game way before many others, in my opinion. Even the original Gladiator had filers that were vastly superior to the competition and was many years ahead of it's time (that whole synth was way ahead of it's time).

It's definitely not a quantity over quality thing in their camp. ALL of the filters in Electra X and Gladiator are very distinct sounding and useful.