Available now: Tone2 Icarus v3.2

[Korg Supporter]

Technically: If I can make it work for Icarus or Electra, it should also work for Nemesis, Saurus, Gladiator and RayBlaster.
It will not work for the effects and Warlock, as these use a different SDK.

Cool! I hope this means that you can make the effects not sound clicky anymore when being modulated. Otherwise, I'll just use Infiltrator

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

The plugin format is not related to this.

We (and also most hardware manufacturers) use a trick called 'block processing' to reduce CPU load of our plugins. This means that some parameters like LFOs, MIDI or effect parameters are calculated with a rate of 1.5 kHz while the audio engine runs at least with 88 kHz or 96 kHz. So basically there are two different signals: Audio signals and control signals.
When you use a control signal to change something in the audio signal it can, but must not cause a click. The only workaround is to upsample/interpolate the control signal before you do the calculations.

Many parameters in the effects section already can be modulated without clicks. Some parameters work (like modulation speeds) and some don't (like reverb or delay sizes). Making everything 100% click free would raise CPU demand drastically and would cause occasional critical CPU spikes when parameters are changed. To make things even worse it would mess up the CPU cache which means more CPU demand also for other plugins that are loaded.

The waveshapers, distortion types, the downsampling and lofi effects in the filter section are not and were never clicky as they run with audio-rate. You should prefer these if you want to use and LFO or anything else to modulate them.

[woodsdenis]

delete wrong thread

[Echoes in the Attic]

Has it been a few weeks yet?

[zvenx]

I too keep checking constantly
rsp

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Icarus 3.1 is currently in closed beta.
Release is planned for early June.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Another month and a half to two months! You teased too early!

[ChanceB]

Are we getting additional gui sizes,or was that only for Elektra? I really wish there was an 85% option.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Any chance future upgrade of v.3 to work together with 2.5?
I like low end of 2.5 more,v.3 is more smooth in middle and treble area.
Users are forced to abandon 2.5,which in my opinion has unique raw signature for more smooth v.3.
What about to work together?

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Are we getting additional gui sizes,or was that only for Elektra? I really wish there was an 85% option.

I did run some tests with 7/8 (87.5%) and 5/6 (83.33%).
It did not look good, as many GUI elements in Icarus3 rely on pixel-exact painting. So either the layout if shifted in an ugly way or it looks blurry.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Any chance future upgrade of v.3 to work together with 2.5?
I like low end of 2.5 more,v.3 is more smooth in middle and treble area.
Users are forced to abandon 2.5,which in my opinion has unique raw signature for more smooth v.3.
What about to work together?

I always do big efforts to keep our synths properly downward compatible when there is a update. All songs created with older versions can be loaded to Icarus3 and will benefit from the enhanced sound quality. You do not have to tweak or fix anything in your mix or in the patches.

There was a change in the audio engine with the low end. What I remember is that I changed the default settings of the EQ slightly to make it fit better in the mix. This was a very subtle change and should affect only the 'init' patch, but not existing patches or songs. You can get back the old sound by tweking the EQ slightly. You can build you own init patch with the EQ settings you prefer.

In Icarus 2 many calulations were done in float precision (32 bit). Icarus 3 uses moslty double precision (64 bit). This results in a more clear and transparent sound. It is not possible to make this exchangeable with reasonable effort as bit parts of the code needed to be rewritten.

You can emulate the more grainy/dirty sound of Icarus 2 with several methods:
1) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the filter section. Set drive to a very low value
2) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the effects section. Set drive to a very low value near 0.
3) The glitch sequencer also comes with a bitcrusher. You can use this one if you do not want to use the filter or effects section.

And congratulations to your hearing skills! Only very very few people can note so subtle details in the sound.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Any chance future upgrade of v.3 to work together with 2.5?
I like low end of 2.5 more,v.3 is more smooth in middle and treble area.
Users are forced to abandon 2.5,which in my opinion has unique raw signature for more smooth v.3.
What about to work together?

I always do big efforts to keep our synths properly downward compatible when there is a update. All songs created with older versions can be loaded to Icarus3 and will benefit from the enhanced sound quality. You do not have to tweak or fix anything in your mix or in the patches.

There was a change in the audio engine with the low end. What I remember is that I changed the default settings of the EQ slightly to make it fit better in the mix. This was a very subtle change and should affect only the 'init' patch, but not existing patches or songs. You can get back the old sound by tweking the EQ slightly. You can build you own init patch with the EQ settings you prefer.

In Icarus 2 many calulations were done in float precision (32 bit). Icarus 3 uses moslty double precision (64 bit). This results in a more clear and transparent sound. It is not possible to make this exchangeable with reasonable effort as bit parts of the code needed to be rewritten.

You can emulate the more grainy/dirty sound of Icarus 2 with several methods:
1) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the filter section. Set drive to a very low value
2) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the effects section. Set drive to a very low value near 0.
3) The glitch sequencer also comes with a bitcrusher. You can use this one if you do not want to use the filter or effects section.

And congratulations to your hearing skills! Only very very few people can note so subtle details in the sound.

Thanks for the answer,no doubt v3 is better made synth,the new moog filter is amazing
Cheers

[ChanceB]

Are we getting additional gui sizes,or was that only for Elektra? I really wish there was an 85% option.

I did run some tests with 7/8 (87.5%) and 5/6 (83.33%).
It did not look good, as many GUI elements in Icarus3 rely on pixel-exact painting. So either the layout if shifted in an ugly way or it looks blurry.

Okay,thanks for answering.

[Tj Shredder]

Any chance future upgrade of v.3 to work together with 2.5?
I like low end of 2.5 more,v.3 is more smooth in middle and treble area.
Users are forced to abandon 2.5,which in my opinion has unique raw signature for more smooth v.3.
What about to work together?

In Icarus 2 many calulations were done in float precision (32 bit). Icarus 3 uses moslty double precision (64 bit). This results in a more clear and transparent sound. It is not possible to make this exchangeable with reasonable effort as bit parts of the code needed to be rewritten.

You can emulate the more grainy/dirty sound of Icarus 2 with several methods:
1) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the filter section. Set drive to a very low value
2) Use 'Bitcrush' as distortion type in the effects section. Set drive to a very low value near 0.
3) The glitch sequencer also comes with a bitcrusher. You can use this one if you do not want to use the filter or effects section.

A bitcrusher for going from 64-bit float to 32-bit float seems to make an absolutely inaudible change. I doubt that any bitcrusher can do that at all... And if the setting is lower than 32-bit float, the change would be too big...

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

When you calculate stuff with 32 bit floats there are 8 bits for the exponent, one bit for the sign and 23 bits for the fraction (the number itself). When you do common calculations with floats things usually do get noisy around 22 bits to 21 bits in the number itself. Things get worse when you do mixed calculations with very big and very small numbers. This is usually where also denormalisation kicks in.
These artefacts can get audible under certain conditions like when compressors are used in combination with sounds that consist of pure sine waves. You also need a high-end DA converter and very good speakers to hear the difference.

Velltone wrote the the difference is audible in the middle and treble area. This is also how my perception. 64 bit double calculations sound a bit more clear and transparent to me compared to 32 bit float.