Tone2 support forum
General Category => Icarus => Topic started by: Markus Krause on July 26, 2017, 11:45:17 AM
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Coming soon: Icarus 1.2
The update will be free and 100% downward compatible. All existing song projects and patches can be loaded without any further steps necessary. They will benefit from the enhanced sound quality.
We plan to add those features:
- More FM synthesis possibilities
- More synthesis modes
- Several new effects
- Easy sample import and playback
- Tooltips
- Enhanced sound
- 3 additonal arpeggiators for every single OSC
- Minor enhancements to the drag&drop support
- lots of other stuff
When will it be released?
Autumn/Winter 2017
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awesome 8)
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I´m really looking forward to the new features, sounds great!
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Looking forward to new features.
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Sounds so gooooood!
"- 3 additonal arpeggiators for every single OSC" ??? ??? ???
Never heard of that in a synth before and being an arpeggiator freak myself this sounds just incredible!
(I guess you do mean three additional arpeggiators - one for every oscillator right?)
Also I'm really glad to see improved sound since the sound is already great :D
Much to look forward to in the autumn then!
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This is fantastic news! Looking forward to this!!
Regards! !
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Just for your info:
I am currently working on this update which will be larger than originally planed. It will be HUGE. I will post more details soon.
If you still got feature requests for v1.2, you should post them NOW!
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=2387.0
I always go through all your requests and try to reenact your demands
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You're the man Marcus! Sounds incredible!
I posted a few more in the suggestions thread.
Best
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The current status of the developement. There will be even more.
New features:
- The engine is now able to do FM synthesis (PM) between oscillators. Select 'FM<-Osc1' as morph mode to modulate Osc2 with Osc1
- The synth does now offer classic sample playback. Select The OSC morph mode 'Sample'. The usual wavetable controls do have no effect in this mode.
- Classic samples can now also easily be imported with RESYNTHESIS->'Load a wav sample...'. The sample is automatically tuned on import.
- The engine is now able to do amplitude modulation between oscillators. Select 'AM<-Osc1' as morph mode to modulate Osc2 with Osc1
- New effect: 'Delay Wide' is a broad sounding delay with Hi Damp and Low Damp filters
- New effect: 'Stereo Width' allows to spread the panorama from mono to surround
- New exclusive effect: 'Laser Punch' adds additional punch. Use it with a sawtooth to gereate a zzapping 'Rubber Bass' sound
- Tooltips with info are shown when the mouse is hovered over a button or control
- Additional buttons: Previous and next Lfo waveform
- Pitchwheel and Modwheel in the patchbrowser is now animated
- Wavetable position in the wavetable editor is animated if you click on th left keyboard
- The patch browser list shows a checkmark for the currently loaded patch
- In the waveform display the mousewheel can be used to pick a wave
- Mousewheel support for the osc's wavetable selector list
- Mousewheel support for the filter frequency display
- Mousewheel support for the patch selector
- A double click to a knob resets it to the default value
Enhancements:
- Enhanced sound of Reverb Medium, Reverb Big, Reverb Plate, Reverb Glass, Reverb Infinite, Reverb Trance: Less detuned sound, smoother tail and more punchy early reflections
Fixes:
- The 32bit Mac version did not show a line when drag & drop modulation was used
- Fixed a possible crash, when the down arrow is pressed within the patch browser
- The text label for 'HP Analog 12/24 dB' was swapped
- Fixed a crash that could happen if the synth was flooded with midi program change messages
Changes:
- Category is now placed above patch selector
- More aggressive focus for the mousewheel
- 'One Shot' has been renamed to 'One Shot Wave'
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Sounds beautiful Marcus! Thanks so much for listening.
What does "- More aggressive focus for the mousewheel" mean?
Enhanced precision? Mouse wheel is really far too sensitive (on Mac). Both my mouse and trackpad are set to a very comfortable sensitivity (not fast at all) for overall use and both are much too sensitive to be of real use in Icarus.
It would be great if the stereo width effect can also go from stereo width to mono so that we can lessen the extreme width of most unison modes.
Looking immensely forward to this update!
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super excited about the samples and lazer punch! Keep up the great work and thanks for keeping us updated on it.
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FM and AM between osc's! Stoked!!!
Double click to reset a parameter! Stoked x2!!!
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FM and AM between osc's! Stoked!!!
Double click to reset a parameter! Stoked x2!!!
Yeah totally!
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What does "- More aggressive focus for the mousewheel" mean?
Enhanced precision? Mouse wheel is really far too sensitive (on Mac). Both my mouse and trackpad are set to a very comfortable sensitivity (not fast at all) for overall use and both are much too sensitive to be of real use in Icarus.
It will be a change in the Windows version. It does not affect Mac. Focus does mean that the window gets active when you click on it.
It would be great if the stereo width effect can also go from stereo width to mono so that we can lessen the extreme width of most unison modes.
It will be able to do this
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Thanks but no change to the extreme mouse wheel/trackpad sensitivity on Mac? And as I mentioned the direction needs to be reversed on Mac since it works upside down ATM.
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I will check this out.
- What mouse do you use? Is it from Apple or another company?
- Is "scroll direction natural" enabled or disabled? http://taylorjasko.com/how-to-disable-inverted-scrolling-on-mac-os-x-lion/
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Hi Markus
- What mouse do you use? Is it from Apple or another company?
I use a Logitech Ultrathin Touch Mouse but it is exactly the same when I'm using my built-in trackpad.
Note that the trackpad on the New Macbook Pro's is much larger than previous ones. Still the mouse should work fine.
- Is "scroll direction natural" enabled or disabled?
"Scroll direction natural" IS enabled yes.
Disabling it wouldn't make sense at all since the scroll direction everywhere else on my Mac would be reversed.
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OMG! I am so not regretful of buying this VST, for me the best!. Thank you so much to the Tone2 team for developing such an amazing VSTi Icarus. Just to let you know is so hard to find companies with similar support as Tone2. The follow up level is up to the sky. This is what makes a company successful, listening to its customers!!!! that's the secret and Tone2 is doing it so well!!!! WELL DONE!!!!
Just a quick question, so from the next update we will be able to load samples as a sampler, right? I want to have real sounds that sounds, for example,. like a piano.
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@Soarer: 'scroll direction natural' is currently still not supported. You're the first users who requests this. I will take a look at it.
@jcmos:
Yes. It will be possible to load and play samples without the resyntheisis.
Please note: Importing sounds like a piano is already possible with the current and the older version. Watch this video here:
https://www.tone2.com/icarus-resynthesis.html
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One of the updates is the sound enhancement. How can be possible if the sound is already good? Are we expecting fat sounds with more body?
A guy told me today that a hardware synthesizer will always be much be better than a VSTi.
Do you know what I answered to that? a soft synth is not really software, is the combination of hardware and software (no kidding). If we are talking about a hardware host with an i7-7700k CPU, just it, contains more processing power than thousands of synthesizers put together!!!. You pay $2500 for a good PC plus the vst software. It is similar price to those who pay for an external keyboard synthesizer. So bottom line we are talking about the same thing, there is not such a thing as a soft synth.
Markus, how do you do it guys? how do you work together? the IT guys are not sound engineers and the sound engineers are not IT guys, or are they?
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- Enhanced sound of Reverb Medium, Reverb Big, Reverb Plate, Reverb Glass, Reverb Infinite, Reverb Trance: Less detuned sound, smoother tail and more punchy early reflections
- There are also several new effects available
If you open a hardware synth you will just find the usual computer components. Hardware synths still did sound better than software synths in the year 2005. Now we got 2017 and much more powerful multicore CPUs in our computers. The softsynth developers also have learned and gained experience. Many of them are working on a very professional level.
I started developing software synthesizers at the age of 13 on DOS and soundblaster cards. There was not much software available in these days and we musicians had to build the stuff for ourselves. Later i studied electronic engineering, phonetics and software engineering. Since 2001 i am developing VST plugins on a commercial level. Now i am soon getting 40 :-[
Troels did start as a hobby musician and did study audio engineering and game design.
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I am really excited for this release!!
Regards!
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I had the impression that hardware digital synths are sounding better since they have a dedicated hardware digital chip for the oscillator so is that completely wrong?
I surely prefer the convenience and ease of using software but many times I have wondered if I was missing out on something soundwise. That's happening much less since I got Icarus though.
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There are some youtube videos comparing vst sound to one from a hardware synth. If you can detect the difference, you are a genious!
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No matter what kind of processor you use: All digital components sound exactly the same. That's the nature of digital signal processing. Processors differ only in their instruction set and speed.
In digital hardware synthesizers and vst plugins the quality of the sound does only depend on three factors:
- The skill of the programmer
- The speed of the processor
- The quality of the DA converter (soundcard)
Two years ago I purchased Ingo's Access Virus TI, which was used as inspiration for Icarus. If you do scientific measurements and show the spectrum of both synths, you can see that sound quality of the TI is worse than Icarus. The frequency response is not linear (dropoff and ripple around 13khz) , the hypersaws have more amplitude peaks and there is more digital dirt in general. Furhermore the filter resonance of the analog filter is not behaving as expected at high cutoffs. I did notice that the programmers had to do tradeoffs between sound quality and CPU speed in many places. The sum of all these tradeoffs is audible.
I do not want to bash the Virus, which is a great synth with character in my eys. I just want to show that the assumtion 'hardware always sounds better that software' is a myth and not longer true in these days.
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I am so glad to read this Markus! I actually find it really inspiring and it helps me discard these erroneous concepts and move on in the DSP world with confidence. It is probably the crispy character of the TI that is still tricking me. However, I always knew that one day software would become as good as or surpass hardware.
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Let me chime in and say that icarus does indeed sound special to my ears. I've been a virus user and fan for many years and icarus has a very similar character, especially noticeable if you load TI wavetables into it.
I think the virus fx are better than icarus though but maybe that will change in next update.
Still I think the core engine and filters sound fantastic and better than any digital hardware synth I've ever played.
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I will have to agree with Markus on this. "Soft" synths are taking over as technology in this context gets better.
There will be a point where there will not be as many tradeoffs as now as CPUs get faster and faster.
I heard some reviews out there that Icarus is amazing and the only weak point was the FX which is already being taken care of.
My advise?
Get a good hardware host (ie: i7-7700k + Mobo with Tunderbolt support + Focusrite Clarett) and use Icarus!
on Studio One 3. You cannot get it wrong!
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v1.2 is currently under heavy development.
I added more new features than originally planed.
- You will now also be able to do excessive waveshaping between oscillators.
- Furthermore the giant menus have been reworked (sorry about this mess). Everything is now sorted to submenus.
- I've also added a couple of new effects
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Sounds like we will have incredible sound design possibilities with the new update!
Keep the good news coming Markus!
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maybe a bigger (just a bit) UI? ;D
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Hooray for the submenus! I have hundreds of sorted wavetables I made in audio that I haven't saved in the synth because of the giant WT menu so this should help me loads. Thanks again for the hard work.
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I am excited to hear about all these enhancements.
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This update became so big, that we will release it as v1.5. The beta is online now.
http://www.tone2.org/forum/index.php?topic=2517.0