Tone2 will release Icarus - 3D WaveTable Synthesizer

[Mac of BIOnighT]

Been making factory sounds for it and like how everything is immediately intuitive/easy to figure out. The sound engine is clean, not colored/processed like in some of their other synths, which is a big improvement in my book.

+1

[recursive one]

Audios or stop teasing!

[Mac of BIOnighT]

As soon as I find a few minutes, I'll put together some excerpts from the album I'm recording using Icarus only, all I need is those few minutes ;-P

[Stopani]

I'm really intrigued to hear Tone2's take on the re-synthesis side of things. Are there any release date rumours?

[Ingonator]

Are there any release date rumours?

At Facebook May 2016 was mentioned as the Release. Not sure how far it will be possible to do it earlier.
As it was also mentioned that 50+ sound designers are working on presets it will also take a longer time for Tone2 to check all those presets properly and do a selection for the factory presets.

Tone2 at Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Tone2Audiosoftware/

[Ingonator]

I'm really intrigued to hear Tone2's take on the re-synthesis side of things.

Concerning custom wavetables Icarus wil include multiple options:

- Loading wavetables in "Serum format" directly without Resynthesis (also includes wavetables exported in Audio Term using taht format and also the Galbanum waveform at the new WAV wavetables format ): Actually "Serum format" means having a size of 2048 samples per waveform while both 16-bit and 32-bit seem to be possible (and multiple sample rates seem to be possible too).

- Import single waveforms in WAV format

- Resynthesis of longer samples and/or wavetables in WAV format (multiple Resynthesis modes depending on the source and/or target)

- The combination of a wavetable and the advanced oscillator mode ("Morph modes") in the currently selected oscillator (Oscs 1-3) could be rendered to a new wavetable

- Creating wavetables based on loading multiple single cycle WAV files

- Creating wavetables from scratch using the built-in wavetable and waveform editor (could be combined with loading single cycle WAV files and editing those after the WAV import is possible too)

I could not tell more details about the editor yet but hopefully official informations about this will follow ASAP. What i could tell is that the editor will include a collection of advanced features for the wavetable, a selection of waveforms in the table and single waveforms.

Saving/export of wavetables or single waveforms is done as WAV format too, not in a synth specific format.
Due to that wavetables created uin Icarus should be usable in other synths that support WAV wavetables.

[Echoes in the Attic]

how long of a sample can be resynthesized?

[fluffy_little_something]

54 sound designers?! That probably means there will be thousands of presets Good idea to spread the risk and prevent stepping into the genre trap

[Ingonator]

how long of a sample can be resynthesized?

Have not really tested the maximum yet but will maybe check ASAP.

A short calculation:
An Icarus wavetable could have up to 256 waveforms, usually with 2048 samples per waveform.

At 44.1 kHz this coresponds to a WAV file of (2048 * 256) : 44100 = 11.89 seconds
This corresponds to the size i see in such a WAV file when opened in Wavelab Elements 7.

[Krakatau]

so not a thing in common with Alchemy, Harmor, Cube, etc...

[Ingonator]

so not a thing in common with Alchemy, Harmor, Cube, etc...

Icarus is a wavetable synth and not an additive synth. A wavetable synth like Icarus splits a sample into a wavetable with up to 256 single cycles while that sample could be a wavetable saved as a WAV file. For example i had created a sample of a wavetable sweep (using an envelope) from another wavetable synth and imported it by Resynthesis.
An additive synth more or less creates a single sound/waveform while at complex engines like in Alchemy each partial has it's own envelope which is very difficult to program from scratch.

In wavetable synths usually the Resyntheis of a vocal sampüle gives "robotic/vocoder like" sounds at wavetable playback but with the proper Resynthesis mode in Icarus it seems to be possiblöe to get coser to a more "natural" playback of vocal samples. I found a few nice examples in the current version of the included factory library (that is far from being complete yet and includes many patches from Markus).
Of course you could also get the typical robotic/vocoder like sounds while with Icarus you usually should be able to understand the resulting synthetic speech properly. could be also interesting to play such speech patches in legato without re-starting the speech at each new note.
As this is no sample playback at lower or higher pitches/octaves you could get some funny results this way while at the "middle key" you should be able to do playback at the original pitch.
I admit that importing vocal samples so far was not my favorite way of using Icarus as there are tons of other ways of using wavetables. In the future this could be more intersting for me.

The playback quality also depends on the "Fade" knob taht adjsuts the interpolation quality of the wavetable sweeps.

Icarus imports the single cycle waveforms of a table as additive partials + phase informations (while it exports WAV wavetable files) but you could also import without phase informations. In both cases all single waveforms of a wavetable could be edited in the built-in waveform editor and/or created from scratch, also see one of my posts above).

[Cinebient]

I just hope it has more than 3 LFO´s!!!!!!!

[Ingonator]

I just hope it has more than 3 LFO´s!!!!!!!

The 4th LFO is a Step LFO with 16 steps. If you hold the right mouse button you could freely draw a shape with those 16 steps. Using the left mouse button you have to adjust each step individually.
All 4 LFOs go up to 440 Hz so they could work at audio rates.

Like with some other Tone2 synths you also got additional simple LFOs and envelopes in the mod matrix (as sources. Those got fixed shapes (e.g. Sine) and a certain fixed speed (e.g. 1/8 or 4 Hz). Those mod sources are called e.g. "Sine 2.8Hz" or "Decay 0.5s" and are independent from the full featured LFOs and the 4 AHDSR envelopes.
As you got 18 mod matrix slots you could use up to 18 of those additional simple LFOs and envelopes.

Besides those 18 slots in the oscillators and filters certain parameters got mod amount knobs hard-wired to a certain LFO or an envelope.

Interesting results are also possible with the "Random", "Flip Flop", "Pink Noise" and "White Noise" mod sources that could be routed to all possible mod destinations.

[Cinebient]

I just hope it has more than 3 LFO´s!!!!!!!

The 4th LFO is a Step LFO with 16 steps. If you hold the right mouse button you could freely draw a shape with those 16 steps. Using the left mouse button you have to adjust each step individually.
All 4 LFOs go up to 440 Hz so they could work at audio rates.

Like with some other Tone2 synths you also got additional simple LFOs and envelopes in the mod matrix (as sources. Those got fixed shapes (e.g. Sine) and a certain fixed speed (e.g. 1/8 or 4 Hz). Those mod sources are called e.g. "Sine 2.8Hz" or "Decay 0.5s" and are independent from the full featured LFOs and the 4 AHDSR envelopes.
As you got 18 mod matrix slots you could use up to 18 of those additional simple LFOs and envelopes.

Besides those 18 slots in the oscillators and filters certain parameters got mod amount knobs hard-wired to a certain LFO or an envelope.

Interesting results are also possible with the "Random", "Flip Flop", "Pink Noise" and "White Noise" mod sources that could be routed to all possible mod destinations.

Thank you!

[fluffy_little_something]

Can one use half a dozen effects simultaneously, unlike with Electra?