Tone2 will release Icarus - 3D WaveTable Synthesizer

[recursive one]

Every time a Tone 2 synth comes out I test it. My initial impression is always that it sounds great, but the more I play with it I realise that it has a 'sound' that I have come to recognise as the 'Tone 2' sound. After a while my ears become tired of that 'sound', and in the end I never bite.

Same here. I was very impressed by these Icarus demos at the first listen, but the more I listen to them again the less I like the sound.

I own one Tone2 synth, Saurus, and it was the same story, I was very impressed by the sound demos on their site, so I bought the synth almost without actually demoing it, but eventually I rarely use it - something in its sound started to bug me after a while, and I also recognize this "something" in the Icarus demos.

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

[wagtunes]

Every time a Tone 2 synth comes out I test it. My initial impression is always that it sounds great, but the more I play with it I realise that it has a 'sound' that I have come to recognise as the 'Tone 2' sound. After a while my ears become tired of that 'sound', and in the end I never bite.

Same here. I was very impressed by these Icarus demos at the first listen, but the more I listen to them again the less I like the sound.

I own one Tone2 synth, Saurus, and it was the same story, I was very impressed by the sound demos on their site, so I bought the synth almost without actually demoing it, but eventually I rarely use it - something in its sound started to bug me after a while, and I also recognize this "something" in the Icarus demos.

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

Tone 2 synths have an unmistakable sound. I happen to like it. In fact, I use their synths on most of my tracks.

Different strokes for different folks.

[chk071]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

What i never really got about Electra2's 12 dB and 24 dB low pass filters is the resonance behavior. It doesn't seem to attenuate the cutoff frequency, but instead seems to add a "synthetic" layer which "sounds" like self-oscillation. Dunno how else i could describe it, it's really a bit weird, and something i have never noticed on other synths. I also hear that in the Icarus demos. Interestingly, the ladder filter in Electra2 doesn't seem to "suffer" from that. It's a bit of a shame, because otherwise, the filters would quite great. They totally fall apart with modulation though. Sounds very lame.

Not to sound too negative btw. Electra2 is still a very nice synth, and ahead of other synths in terms of sound. Just a few niggles always.

[Ingonator]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

What i never really got about Electra2's 12 dB and 24 dB low pass filters is the resonance behavior. It doesn't seem to attenuate the cutoff frequency, but instead seems to add a "synthetic" layer which "sounds" like self-oscillation. Dunno how else i could describe it, it's really a bit weird, and something i have never noticed on other synths. I also hear that in the Icarus demos. Interestingly, the ladder filter in Electra2 doesn't seem to "suffer" from that. It's a bit of a shame, because otherwise, the filters would quite great. They totally fall apart with modulation though. Sounds very lame.

Not to sound too negative btw. Electra2 is still a very nice synth, and ahead of other synths in terms of sound. Just a few niggles always.

Icarus along it's 60+ filter modes got a bunch of Lowpass filters incuding some not included in Electra 2. Some of the new modes seem to be based on the Saurus filters so they should be using zero delay feedback filter technology.

One of the Lowpass filters is a non-resonant one with a variable slope starting at 6dB/oct and the Reso parameter is used to change the slope which could be also modulated. This filter mode is also interesting when combined with others while using both multimode filters in series.

[exmatproton]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

[Ingonator]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

IMO such comments are just wrong before you tried the synth yourself.

Icarus is a very versatile synth with tons of features (e.g. 60+ filter modes...) and due to that it does not really have a very specfic sound that would be obvious from the demos.
The demos are based on patches craeted by the sound designers but of course other people could create very different souns than those used in teh demos or teh presets.
The synth will include 1000+ presets that overall could be quite different but for sure those do not represent everything taht is possible.

Concerning "too clean" sound Icarus offers some features like e.g. adding Aliasing or "dirt" in the Osc Morph modes and also in the FXs.

Concerning adding "Balls" there are a few options including e.g. the built-in EQ, a Bass boost feature and others. Of course this also depends on the waveforms used and also on the filter mode (Icarus for example includes 16 different Lowpass filter modes including different analog models). For example i had used a waveform based on a sample of a real analog synth (Moog Slim Phatty...) that could sound quite "ballsy" compared to more "standard" waveforms.

Icarus also has a full featured wavetable and waveform editor (additive like with lots of partials, free drawing and/or single cycle WAV import) which offers tons of options. Wavetables are loaded and saved as WAV files, comparable to Serum, and Serum wavetables could be imported without the need to use Resynthesis. Same is true for the Galbanum WAV wavetables and wavetables saved with Audio Term using the Serum format.

So the point is that without having used the plugin yourself it is very difficult to draw a conclusion just based on audio demos (which IMO only works in few cases...). even if you find that you do not like the 1000+ presets the synth offers tons of options to create your own sounds.

Last but not least i still do not think that something lie a "typical Tone2 sound" really exists, especially if you do your own patches with those synths. It is maybe possible that multiple Tone2 synths contain a certaon amount of comparable presets but that's a different story.

[Mac of BIOnighT]

I can only quote Ingo .

[chk071]

Last but not least i still do not think that something lie a "typical Tone2 sound" really exists, especially if you do your own patches with those synths.

I do think it exists to a certain degree. For example, the u-he synths also sound in a general similar direction. I noticed that especially when i did a unison saw sound with Tyrell, with plucky envelopes, and realized, that it almost sounds like Hive. But, i believe a lot of the myth around the "typical Tone2 sound" rather hails from the sound demos, which always have certain, IMO, pretty cheesy sounds in them. Don't even know hot to describe those, they're almost synthetic, and kitschy, like J-Pop. There are a few in Icarus' sound demos as well. But, fair enough, i surely won't judge it by the sound demos alone, and i hapen to like a lot of the sounds i hear there actually. So, i'll surely demo it anyway, no worries.

[wagtunes]

As I actually OWN Tone 2 synths, I can comment on the "tone 2 sound".

It does exist. There is no question about it. I call it that "polished plastic" sound. I know that doesn't actually describe what the synths sound like (I have a hard time describing sound) but that's the best way I can put it. They are unabashedly digital sounding, which is not a bad thing. In fact, I love the Tone 2 sound and the only reason I haven't bought even more of their synths is I just feel they're too expensive. Not by a ton. But enough so to keep me from owning the whole collection, because I would in a heartbeat. I love them all.

Yes, I love the Tone 2 sound. It is there and it is unmistakable.

[zerocrossing]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

I think I brought this up in the Serum thread, but at some point the word "wavetable" kind of becomes irrelevant in a software synth. If you want a very smooth transition between two waves in a wavetable there are better ways to do it than traditional crossfading between indexed waves in a wavetable file. I don't know what's going on under the hood on this one but maybe they should have called it "wavemorphing" or something else. What ever they call it, if it sounds good, I'm in. I have plenty of traditional sounding wavetable synths as it is.

[Ingonator]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

I think I brought this up in the Serum thread, but at some point the word "wavetable" kind of becomes irrelevant in a software synth. If you want a very smooth transition between two waves in a wavetable there are better ways to do it than traditional crossfading between indexed waves in a wavetable file. I don't know what's going on under the hood on this one but maybe they should have called it "wavemorphing" or something else. What ever they call it, if it sounds good, I'm in. I have plenty of traditional sounding wavetable synths as it is.

The "fade" parameter in teh Oscs controls how smoth the interpolation will work wit hthe best at a maximum value.
In the wavetable editor you also got a crossfading feature so you could add additional crossfading with adding additional waveorms to the table (until te maximum of 256 waveforms is reached).

[Cinebient]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

I think I brought this up in the Serum thread, but at some point the word "wavetable" kind of becomes irrelevant in a software synth. If you want a very smooth transition between two waves in a wavetable there are better ways to do it than traditional crossfading between indexed waves in a wavetable file. I don't know what's going on under the hood on this one but maybe they should have called it "wavemorphing" or something else. What ever they call it, if it sounds good, I'm in. I have plenty of traditional sounding wavetable synths as it is.

The "fade" parameter in teh Oscs controls how smoth the interpolation will work wit hthe best at a maximum value.
In the wavetable editor you also got a crossfading feature so you could add additional crossfading with adding additional waveorms to the table (until te maximum of 256 waveforms is reached).

Dune 2 is the only synth which can do very "smooth" interpolations between waveforms...even when you just use 2 in a wavetable. Falcon, Serum, Nave etc. all have this microstepping even with the highest interpolation modes.
Dune 2 has no setting for this and i don't know what's under the hood but it's my preference here.
Since i sold it (now i wish i had not ) i'm searching for a new wavetable synth.
I hope Icarus can fill the gap!

[exmatproton]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

IMO such comments are just wrong before you tried the synth yourself.

Icarus is a very versatile synth with tons of features (e.g. 60+ filter modes...) and due to that it does not really have a very specfic sound that would be obvious from the demos.
The demos are based on patches craeted by the sound designers but of course other people could create very different souns than those used in teh demos or teh presets.
The synth will include 1000+ presets that overall could be quite different but for sure those do not represent everything taht is possible.

Concerning "too clean" sound Icarus offers some features like e.g. adding Aliasing or "dirt" in the Osc Morph modes and also in the FXs.

Concerning adding "Balls" there are a few options including e.g. the built-in EQ, a Bass boost feature and others. Of course this also depends on the waveforms used and also on the filter mode (Icarus for example includes 16 different Lowpass filter modes including different analog models). For example i had used a waveform based on a sample of a real analog synth (Moog Slim Phatty...) that could sound quite "ballsy" compared to more "standard" waveforms.

Icarus also has a full featured wavetable and waveform editor (additive like with lots of partials, free drawing and/or single cycle WAV import) which offers tons of options. Wavetables are loaded and saved as WAV files, comparable to Serum, and Serum wavetables could be imported without the need to use Resynthesis. Same is true for the Galbanum WAV wavetables and wavetables saved with Audio Term using the Serum format.

So the point is that without having used the plugin yourself it is very difficult to draw a conclusion just based on audio demos (which IMO only works in few cases...). even if you find that you do not like the 1000+ presets the synth offers tons of options to create your own sounds.

Last but not least i still do not think that something lie a "typical Tone2 sound" really exists, especially if you do your own patches with those synths. It is maybe possible that multiple Tone2 synths contain a certaon amount of comparable presets but that's a different story.

I forgot to put a disclaimer in my comment:

THIS IS BASED ON THE DEMO's + i own all other Tone2 synths + i love Tone2 and the sound (for particular stuff i do in IDM and ambient).

Now, having said that, i heard so much demo's of so much synths (serum, falcon, oddity2, Diva, Vacuum pro, all tone2 products, all native instruments products, all image line products...etc etc etc), it is save to say that my points are quite strong. OR these demo's are just crap by itself, or at least only showing 10% of the synth. Or this synth is just another wavetable synth. With "the Tone2 sound". I think it will be a combination of demo's being 'mwuh' and Icarus being 'just another wavetable synth'.

@balls: You don't seem to understand what i mean with "balls". What it seems to lack, is high quality high end, a fat bottom end (in contrast to Oddity, Serum, Diva, etc); one can have 60 filter modes (which is just stupid and not necessary); when the osc's are just lacking, one can hear this.

@dirt: adding digital noise/random modulation, won't make it "dirty" the way a good filter + resonance would do.

@typical Tone2 sound: there just is this typical Tone2 sound. I have even monitored it. It can be shown in a FFT graph without any hassle. I was comparing all kinds of synths to the Tone2 synths, because i heard a different way they sounded in the higher regions. When i showed all my data to Tone2's Markus, he said it wasn't valid.......whatever. I know what i hear (to a certain extend and saw in the graphs).

I like the Tone2 synths, but not because they sound prestine. They sound peculiar, different and the synths have fun-to-work ui's (except Gladiator, that one is just a pain in the ass). And i will defo demo this one as well. My whole point was about their statement. Which is just funny and not true.

[chk071]

Fourth demo, at 10:07, this resonance is just ugly

I don't think that's resonance. It sounds like a sync funtion.

Listened to the demo's again. I don't hear grit of any kind. It is all washy and 'smooth' in a very additive like way. For me this isn't "the wavetable-killer" synth at all. CODEX, Nave and Serum have way more balls.

This is all very personal. And i do think this is a fun powersynth to play with. With lots of possibilties.
But this (?!?): "It will be our masterpiece and the most powerful wavetable synthesizer on the market." +
"It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences' attention. The easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort. The sound quality surpasses conventional synths."
no, not at all. And it sounds really "Tone2", again....

I think I brought this up in the Serum thread, but at some point the word "wavetable" kind of becomes irrelevant in a software synth. If you want a very smooth transition between two waves in a wavetable there are better ways to do it than traditional crossfading between indexed waves in a wavetable file. I don't know what's going on under the hood on this one but maybe they should have called it "wavemorphing" or something else. What ever they call it, if it sounds good, I'm in. I have plenty of traditional sounding wavetable synths as it is.

The "fade" parameter in teh Oscs controls how smoth the interpolation will work wit hthe best at a maximum value.
In the wavetable editor you also got a crossfading feature so you could add additional crossfading with adding additional waveorms to the table (until te maximum of 256 waveforms is reached).

Dune 2 is the only synth which can do very "smooth" interpolations between waveforms...even when you just use 2 in a wavetable. Falcon, Serum, Nave etc. all have this microstepping even with the highest interpolation modes.

Care to post some examples of "stepping" in those synths? Frankly, i never heard any stepping in any synth interpolating between different waveforms, or waves in wavetable, unless the interpolation is too abrupt, a.k.a., the waves don't morph smoothly enough. Largo definitely doesn't step, it's all very smooth. Neither do the u-he synths which allow morphing between the different waveforms. Unless i miss something here.

[kokotte]

i'm agree with cinebient, i have make a test this morning,before read this,on a vocal wt made with audioterm, importing the same wt in dune and serum and dune some better to me.( perhaps, it's the synthetyze function in audioterm who render better in dune2, i say that because in serum we can make smooth , non steepy interpolation)
i have a question for the beta tester: how sound a vocal wt in icarus, in the demo, voc are vocoding or make with wt, same for a drum loop, how they translate in wt convertion?
cheers