Available now: Tone2 Icarus v3.2

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

The public beta of Icarus 3.2 is available for Mac.
The new version includes 14 new filters, 3 new effects, 6 new additive synthesis modes, a XY pad for the GUI and enhanced sound.
The update is free for all Icarus3 customers.

Download link: https://www.tone2.com/download.html
Details: https://www.tone2.com/icarus-update.html#Icarus_3_2



New filters:

• LP Ladder 6dB: This is a 6dB lowpass Ladder filter with self-oscillation. It sounds analog and uses 0-delay technology.
• LP Ladder 12dB: This is a 12 dB lowpass Ladder filter with self-oscillation. It sounds analog and uses 0-delay technology. BP Ladder: This is a bandpass Ladder filter with self-oscillation. It sounds analog and uses 0-delay technology.
• BP MS-20 12dB: A bandpas filter with self-oscillation. It sounds analog and uses 0-delay technology.
• HP Digital 24dB: This is very a precise digital highpass filter.
• HP MS-20 12dB: A highphass filter with self-oscillation. It sounds analog and uses 0-delay technology.
• Phaser 3x +: Analog 6-stage phaser with positive feedback.
• Phaser 5x +: Analog 10-stage phaser with positive feedback.
• Phaser 2x -: Analog 4-stage phaser with negative feedback.
• Phaser 4x -: Analog 8-stage phaser with negative feedback.
• Formant 1x: Analog formant filter with soft saturation.
• Formant 2x: Analog formant filter with two peaks and soft saturation.
• Formant 3x: Analog formant filter with three peaks and soft saturation.
• Formant 4x: Analog formant filter with four peaks and soft saturation.

New effects:

• Ring Modulation: You can find this new effect under the 'Frequency shifting' menu. It comes with a Damp control for a warmer sound.
• Amplitude Modulation: You can find this new effect under the 'Frequency shifting' menu. It has a more extreme sound than Ring Modulation. It works best for effects, percussive sounds and drums.
• Weaver Shifter: You can find this new effect under the 'Frequency shifting' menu. It works best for effects, percussive sounds and drums.

New additive synthesis modes:

• Add Disharm 4: Plays 4 oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.
• Add Disharm 8: Plays 8 oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.
• Add Disharm 16: Plays 16 oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.
• Add St Dish 4: Plays 4 stereo oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.
• Add St Dish 8: Plays 8 stereo oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.
• Add St Dish 16: Plays 16 stereo oscillators with a disharmonic relationship. You can use the 'spread' knob to control the type and level of detuning.

New features - GUI:

• An XY crosshair is shown when you click with your mouse inside the EQ display.
• An XY crosshair is shown when you click with your mouse inside the filter display.
• New "Metal opaque" skin for the user interface.
• It is now possible to record filter cutoff and resonace with the filter XY-pad.

New feature - XY-pad for the waveform display:

• The XY-pad controls are available when you click and move your mouse within the wavefrom display. They add a new dimention of dynamic expression as you can now manipulate 2 parameters at the same time.
• Context-sensitive help appears as soon as you move your mouse.
• In wavetable mode the X-axis is assigned to the to the morph parameter. The Y-axis is assigned to the wavetable position.
• In granular mode the X-axis is assigned to start position. The Y-axis is assigned to the grain size.
• In sample mode the X-axis is assigned to start position.
• If you play back a single waveform the X-axis is assigned to the to the morph parameter.

Enhanced sound quality:

• Significantly enhanced sound quality in 44 kHz. Reduced aliasing in resampling up to 24 dB.
• Drastically enhanced sound quality in 88 kHz samplerate. Reduced aliasing in resampling up to 40 dB.
• Crossfades in the wavetable engine have more clarity and crispiness.
• Significantly enhanced sound quality of the synthesis mode 'Harmonic Shift'. It is the new default mode for new patches.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Medium. It has better default parameters, a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Swirl. It has better default parameters, a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Infinite. It has a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Plate. It has a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Big. It has a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Enhanced sound of the Reverb Glass. It has a smoother rolloff, less phasing, more detail and more depth.
• Major chords soun better with the microtuning mode 'dynamic silky'.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality of the equalizer.
• More linear freuency response for filter 'LP MS-20 12dB' with high cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'LP Digital 24dB' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'LP Digital 12dB' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'LP Elliptic' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'LP Octave' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'HP Digital 12dB' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'BP Digital 24dB' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'BP Digital 12dB' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Notch' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Peak Tight' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Peak Medium' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Peak Wide' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Shelf Tight' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Shelf Wide' with low cutoffs.
• Slightly enhanced sound quality and stabiliy of the filter 'EQ Bandlimit' with low cutoffs.

Further enhancements:

• Reworked the default skin.
• Reworked the skins "Metal Fire", "Metal Aqua", "Metal Monochorome", "Metal Pink", "Metal Yellow", "Metal Red".
• Better default parameters for the delay effects.
• More contrast for the tap selector buttons.
• Reworked EQ settigs and parameters of the init-patch. It sits better in the mix and has longer release times.
• Setup always selects full installation as a default.
• Updated the texts of some dialog boxes with warnings.
• Slightly enhanced colors and transparency values for the patch browser.
• Many further small enhancements.

Fixes:

• If the mousewheel was used to cycle through wavetables it falsely incremented 2 units instead of 1.
• The diodes sometimes did show wrong values on the Mac.

Downward compatibility:

Icarus 3.2 is downward compatible with all previous versions. All existing song projects and patches can be loaded without any further steps necessary. They will benefit from the enhanced sound-quality.

[sunthief01]

Fantastic news!

Icarus has been a daily driver for me for the past 18 months or so (on Windows). Over the last 3 weeks ive migrated my whole rig onto Linux (Fedora Kinoite) and am glad to report that Icarus 3.1 is running well in Bitwig. Some of the animations aren't as snappy under Wine, but fully functional and good to go.

Adding my voice here just to say that
A) Icarus is a top tier synth and my top choice fop choice for wavetable work
B) if we could ever see a Linux native release that would be absolutely incredible

Markus thank you for interacting with us here on KVR and for the awesome development updates, can't wait to use 3.2!!

[El°HYM]

Adding my voice here just to say that
A) Icarus is a top tier synth and my top choice fop choice for wavetable work
B) if we could ever see a Linux native release that would be absolutely incredible

+1 for Plan B!

[audiojunkie]

Agreed! A Linux native version would be great! There are currently problems with wine with bridging, and problems with JUCE8 that are making it difficult to use bridging of Windows apps on Linux.

[D-Fusion]

Agreed! A Linux native version would be great! There are currently problems with wine with bridging, and problems with JUCE8 that are making it difficult to use bridging of Windows apps on Linux.

I have noticed the same in Linux.
Warlock and Saurus works great and Icarus 3 does also work to some degree with some graphical glitches.

Electra 3 does not work and is very unstable on Linux.
Electra 2 works fine.
So +1 for native Linux support of your great plugins.

[Korg Supporter]

Thank you so much! Icarus has characteristics that remind me of Ensoniq synths and the Novation digital synths (especially Peak). Nothing else sounds like it.

[morphex]

This is easily one of the most addictive synths in my plugin folder. I've been exploring all things additive, and Icarus has an amazing engine for it. The new effects and other additions really kick it up a notch, so I'm downloading now. It's going to be another long night of weird noises coming from my apartment. I'm almost positive that by now, my neighbors think an alien ship accidentally left me behind lol! As always, much respect Markus!!

[Examigan]

How long until a PC beta version is ready?

[Gam456]

Thank you so much! Icarus has characteristics that remind me of Ensoniq synths and the Novation digital synths (especially Peak). Nothing else sounds like it.

What ? No Icarius doesn’t sound like the Summit.

[Korg Supporter]

Thank you so much! Icarus has characteristics that remind me of Ensoniq synths and the Novation digital synths (especially Peak). Nothing else sounds like it.

What ? No Icarius doesn’t sound like the Summit.

I meant to say that there isn't a softsynth that shares Icarus' characteristics. Maybe Vital. But when I rolled the high end a bit and upped the mid a bit, Icarus sounds similar to my Peak (even the detuning and ring modulation) until the filter.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

How long until a PC beta version is ready?

It will be available in a few weeks, maybe earlier. I'll keep you up-to-date with this.

[kraster]

Very cool synth.

I got it before Christmas and only started digging in now.

Sounds fantastic. Big and bold and very tweakable. The wavetable resynthesis is best in class.

It has an incredible range of options to work with. Sightly intimidating but a lot of fun.

In some ways it reminds me of using Vanguard (which I believe was made by Markus) but Icarus is orders of magnitude more refined.

[Tone2 Synthesizers]

Thank you for supporting our small company!
The sound engine of Vanguard was indeed written by me (Markus) around the year 2002. Back in the days computers were still slow and I had to do many compromises between sound-quality and CPU demand and RAM demand. I also had less experience with creating synths. That's why Vanuard doesn't sound as good as Icarus.

[Trancer]

Eagerly awaiting the Windows version.

Tone 2 belongs to a (very exclusive) circle of developers who truly offer us products of immense quality and also provide endless creative possibilities for composition.

Thank you, Markus, for the excellence of your products.

It's a real shame you won't be making any new products.

Given your talent, it's a real pity.

Regarding Vanguard, it was already a great VST back then.

Is a future collaboration with the excellent developer Manuel planned?

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Icarus 4 = 4osc x 4filters will be dope...
Icarus is really unique as character,but where it's unbeatable is experimental ambient corner,where the crazy harmonics are pushed to the edge.
Skip to 4:12 for MS filter oscillation - impressive...
Cheers