Tone2 will release Icarus - 3D WaveTable Synthesizer

[Ingonator]

More or less i had mentioned it alraedy but recently at Facebook Tone2 replied to a question about the wavetable editor:

Question: "Will there be an additive editor within the wavetable editor. Where we can create sounds out of bins!"
Answer from Tone2: "Yes. Icarus will come with a very powerful wavetable editor, where it will be possible to create additive sounds from a spectum."

link: https://www.facebook.com/Tone2Audiosoftware/


The wavetable editor will be quite powerful (i admit i am not even close to have fully explored it yet) and waveforms could be craeated from WAV files, the additive style editor or with free drawing (or first import a WAV and then edit it).
It will also include a bunch of tools to edit waveforms and/or the wavetable further including several features that are comparable to the oscillator morph modes.
It will be also possible to import a wavetable from e.g. Serum, edit the waveforms and trim or expand the wavetable where necesary. You could also create a collection of single cycles by saving certain waveforms from existing tables as single waveform WAV files. You could then create a new table with only the waveforms you really need (or cut out parts that you don't need existing wavetables which will also save disk space as wavetzables are saved with teh patches).
A nice (and disk space saving) feature is to cut out the current waveform from the table if you do not need the full table but only that single wave. That way you could then also save/export that single waveform.

The "Fade" knob in the oscillators controls the interpolation/crossfading quality for the wavetable playback (highest value is best) so it should be also possible to get quite smooth results with just a few waveforms in the table. Anyway the wavetable editor will also offer a featurre to create crossfading between waveforms where the overall amount of waveforms in a table is limited to 256.

The "Wave" selection knob in the Oscs will display values based on the actual size of the table (maximum value 256.00) instead of fixed maximum values for all tables like e.g. 0 to 100 (in Waldorf Nave it seems to work in the same way). The value after the comma (example 10.30) will then represent crossfading between two waveforms.

[Ingonator]

good news
Best service news:

ICARUS by Tone2
3D Wavetable Synthesizer

Tone2 expanded the wavetable concept, allowing to cross-blend waveforms with an additional dimension for morphing.

Next to its wavetable capabilities it also offers resynthesis, true stereo architecture, hypersaw oscillators, a wavetable editor, modular effects, a vocoder, dual filter section, programmable arpeggiator and a comfortable patch browser

ICARUS by Tone2 € 149 Release May 2016

Icarus is also mentioned along the Musikmesse 2016 News from Best Servive:
http://www.bestservice.de/en/news.html# ... _and_deals

As i mentioned earlier Icarus should be also shown at the booth of Best Service at the Musikmesse.
I'll check that when i visit the Musikmesse tomorrow.

[Frantz]

Is there anything Electra2 can do that Icarus can't do? In other words, can Icarus replace Electra2?

I'm not very interesting in wave morphing. I wish Tone2 would create a first rate analog filter. Something as detailed as Monark. I know about Saurus and the so called Moog filter in Electra2 but I find them unconvincing.

[Cinebient]

More or less i had mentioned it alraedy but recently at Facebook Tone2 replied to a question about the wavetable editor:

Question: "Will there be an additive editor within the wavetable editor. Where we can create sounds out of bins!"
Answer from Tone2: "Yes. Icarus will come with a very powerful wavetable editor, where it will be possible to create additive sounds from a spectum."

link: https://www.facebook.com/Tone2Audiosoftware/


The wavetable editor will be quite powerful (i admit i am not even close to have fully explored it yet) and waveforms could be craeated from WAV files, the additive style editor or with free drawing (or first import a WAV and then edit it).
It will also include a bunch of tools to edit waveforms and/or the wavetable further including several features that are comparable to the oscillator morph modes.
It will be also possible to import a wavetable from e.g. Serum, edit the waveforms and trim or expand the wavetable where necesary. You could also create a collection of single cycles by saving certain waveforms from existing tables as single waveform WAV files. You could then create a new table with only the waveforms you really need (or cut out parts that you don't need existing wavetables which will also save disk space as wavetzables are saved with teh patches).
A nice (and disk space saving) feature is to cut out the current waveform from the table if you do not need the full table but only that single wave. That way you could then also save/export that single waveform.

The "Fade" knob in the oscillators controls the interpolation/crossfading quality for the wavetable playback (highest value is best) so it should be also possible to get quite smooth results with just a few waveforms in the table. Anyway the wavetable editor will also offer a featurre to create crossfading between waveforms where the overall amount of waveforms in a table is limited to 256.

The "Wave" selection knob in the Oscs will display values based on the actual size of the table (maximum value 256.00) instead of fixed maximum values for all tables like e.g. 0 to 100 (in Waldorf Nave it seems to work in the same way). The value after the comma (example 10.30) will then represent crossfading between two waveforms.

Thank's for all the info!
Until now i find all wavetable synths including Nave, Serum, Falcon too "steppy" even at the highest quality for interpolation. Only Dune 2 sounds very smooth between the waveforms without those microstepping sound for me. Even with just 2 or 4 very different waveforms it creats very smooth transitions, far better than Serum and Falcon f.e.
I hope Icarus nailed it here, then it's an insta buy since i sold Dune 2 and miss it now

[wagtunes]

Here is a little teaser for the Icarus-only album I'm recording so you can hear some of the patches I've designed for it.

PLEASE NOTE:
1 - both the sounds and music are in the Ambient/Berlin School genres, so obviously those of you who are not interested in these kinds of music should wait for proper demos in other genres to be posted before judging whether Icarus is for you or not

2 - the tracks I've taken these bits from were recorded with the first sounds I created with Icarus (yes, it's that intuitive), and therefore they only use a very small part of its potentialities

3 - no external fx of any kind were used during the mix phase, only my usual tools during mastering, so what you hear is what you get

4 - even now after months of playing with it, I definitely feel I've barely scratched the surface of this instrument, so much more is possible

5 - as I finish the other tracks for the album, I'll post more bits for those of you who are interested in these kinds of sounds

Thanks

https://soundcloud.com/macnight/icarus-teaser-01

Finally got around to actually listening to this thing. First off, nice track. Very well done.

My impressions of the synth.

The first thing that strikes me is that it doesn't have the harsh sound of Serum. It's a very clean sound. I guess that's good or bad depending on what you're trying to accomplish. For certain things I would still turn to Serum for that sound. But for other things, where I want something more clean, I'll turn to Icarus.

I do have a question. When you create a wavetable for Serum, the WT is embedded in the path. Is that how Icarus works or do you have to port the WT in a folder along with the patches in order for someone to be able to use it?

Just want to know in advance should I get Icarus and create my own sound library.

[Ingonator]

I wish Tone2 would create a first rate analog filter. Something as detailed as Monark. I know about Saurus and the so called Moog filter in Electra2 but I find them unconvincing.

The Saurus filters are quite good IMO (they are also zero delay fedback ones) and some of the filter modes in Icarus seem to be based on on those Saurus filters.

Besides many other modes Icarus has a bigger amount of diferent Lowpass filters.

Is there anything Electra2 can do that Icarus can't do? In other words, can Icarus replace Electra2?

For example Icarus has no sample playback, no layers and could not do FM and Sync between two oscillators while FM and Sync in Icarus work in a different way (with additional Oscs using a few fixed waveforms like e.g. Sine, Saw or Square).

In Icarus The Hypersaw and Supersaw modes (in te Unison modes) do work with all waveforms while in Electra 2 they are mostly limited to the Sawtooth.

Currently Icarius seems to include more Filter modes than Electra 2.

[Ingonator]

I do have a question. When you create a wavetable for Serum, the WT is embedded in the path. Is that how Icarus works or do you have to port the WT in a folder along with the patches in order for someone to be able to use it?

In Icarus wavetables and single waves are saved with the patch files (= *.fxp files) so you just have to share a single file for each patch.
If you just need a single wave of a wavetable or just a small part of a wavetable you could cut/edit the wavetable to use only the necessary parts which also saves disk space when saving the patch.

Wavetables that are in "Serum format" (which is mostly having a size of 2048 samples per waveform and a maximum of 256 waveforms) could be directly loaded without the need for using the Resynthesis modes.

[wagtunes]

I do have a question. When you create a wavetable for Serum, the WT is embedded in the path. Is that how Icarus works or do you have to port the WT in a folder along with the patches in order for someone to be able to use it?

In Icarus wavetables and single waves are saved with the patch files (= *.fxp files) so you just have to share a single file for each patch.
If you just need a single wave of a wavetable or just a small part of a wavetable you could cut/edit the wavetable to use only the necessary parts which also saves disk space when saving the patch.

Wavetables that are in "Serum format" (which is mostly having a size of 2048 samples per waveform and a maximum of 256 waveforms) could be directly loaded without the need for using the Resynthesis modes.

Thanks Ingo. Appreciate the response. I'm really liking the way this thing sounds and am looking forward to its release.

[Frantz]

For example Icarus has no sample playback, no layers and could not do FM and Sync between two oscillators while FM and Sync in Icarus work in a different way (with additional Oscs using a few fixed waveforms like e.g. Sine, Saw or Square).

In Icarus The Hypersaw and Supersaw modes (in te Unison modes) do work with all waveforms while in Electra 2 they are mostly limited to the Sawtooth.

Currently Icarius seems to include more Filter modes than Electra 2.

Thanks for the detailed response. I still wonder if the new features of Icarus could have been bundled into Electra as Electra3. The two synths seem to have a lot in common based on what I've read.

[Mac of BIOnighT]

Finally got around to actually listening to this thing. First off, nice track. Very well done.

Thank you I see Ingo has already replied to your question, so no need for me to. Icarus has a very clean, detailed sound, yes Of course, that is the kind of sound I like to get from it, but it can also create other kinds of sound, it all depends on the person programming it. It's got several ways to add distortion etc to make the sound more aggressive and nasty, so don't think of my own patches as "the way Icarus sounds," of course that's just one of the ways it can sound

[recursive one]

Electra2 has sync and FM between two oscillators?

Should check out the demo again.

[Sampleconstruct]

And Electra is one of the rare species which allows samples to be a carrier for FM synthesis which can lead to very interesting results.

[recursive one]

It's got several ways to add distortion etc to make the sound more aggressive and nasty, so don't think of my own patches as "the way Icarus sounds," of course that's just one of the ways it can sound

That's good to know.

I'm actually curious if the combination of Electra2 and Icarus could eventually replace the Virus for me. I'm totally in love with the sound and programming abilities of Virus, but the limitations of this TI thing compared to purely ITB workflow are bugging me. Judging from the fetaure set, Electra and Icarus should potentially cover the same grounds but large part of the sweetness of Virus' sound is provided by it's filter saturation and distortion. Your Icarus demo sounds nice, but too clean/characterless, I wonder if there are ways to dirty up the sound in a pleasant way

[Mac of BIOnighT]

I wonder if there are ways to dirty up the sound in a pleasant way

Yes, of course

[Frantz]

I wonder if there are ways to dirty up the sound in a pleasant way

Electra2 has a Drive knob on the filters with various saturation algorithms. However, I don't think Tone2's analog-type algorithms are anything special. I prefer to add saturation insert effects from another vendor.