I think it’s more of a sound design workstation than your average synth, and that seems to be what’s driving the price. It’s got a bit of everything - wavetable, FM, granular (as far as I’m aware that’s mostly relegated to VSTs, modular and pedals these days), sampling, mod matrix, touchscreen for drawing envelopes, and their new kernal tech (sub oscillators driving each other). It’s like Serum in a box, and a pretty nice box at that. If the demos of the Quantum I’ve heard are any indication, it’ll sound great.
I’m honestly way out of touch with the latest advances in hardware, but it sounds like it does a lot of stuff in one place, more so than the usual $1000 offerings. I may be way wrong on that, though. Regardless, I can’t imagine trying to manage all that on a tiny screen with a bunch of knobs. I’m sure someone will get sounds out of it, but I doubt it’ll be me.
I was pretty into the idea when it was first announced, just because I haven’t had a hardware sampler that I like yet and this thing looked like it would encourage me to experiment with that and a lot of other non-subtractive synthesis. Kinda like an overgrown Microfreak (which I like to noodle on). But I have an Osmose on order from like last year, and that has a pretty well developed digital synth engine (with lots of pretty crazy stuff of its own) inside of it so I’m going to wait until that gets delivered and see if I feel like I might still be interested in this. Hopefully not.
As someone who has purchased a couple synths and items in the $500-1000 range, and almost considered buying a Behringer X32 for $1800, sometimes you have some money, and you just want to buy the most awesome piece of gear that you’ve always wanted. I guess that could be considered being “rich”, but I definitely am not THAT well off.
For me, it’s just the ability to have access to a device that sounds great and has the features that I need in a physical device that you have physical knobs, buttons, switches, faders, and sliders on to control everything. A lot of synths in the <$500 can be somewhat gimmicky or cheap, in their buttons and build, to the sound. But some of the nicer devices are built better and feel better and are just more fun to mess with.
When I’m on my computer I’m not really doing live performance type stuff, unless I’m recording. I like being able to have something I can take somewhere and play without bringing my computer out. Using a dedicated device is a lot quicker and less complicated than a computer to set up, and also less prone to crashing. Plus, dedicated devices are designed to operate well on their own and take full advantage of their specific hardware, whereas computers by definition are general computing devices, meant to handle a broad array of different tasks well, but not especially designed for specialty tasks (i.e. bit coin mining can’t be done very quickly on a CPU but a GPU is able to handle the type of calculations much more efficiently).
I sold a blofeld, regretted it ever since and just bought an other one recently, never letting that happen again! That synth is so good fo the price. And I actually like the editing matrix paradigm that Waldorf have.
Let’s exchange sample…I’ve given the netlabel the ones I think are worthy…If you want…I dont mind. I think it’s easier to exchange samples than it is to collab, but yes dm any tips you have for setting up a midi controller keep in mind I have a 10 year old hp laptop…I may need to upgrade my machine.
As a somewhat reformed hardware junkie, as cool as that looks I have to say unless it was REALLY immediate and didn’t have a ton of menu diving just give me Serum and I’m good. I pretty much have no interest in digital hardware synths unless they’ve got some analog guts giving them a special sound. Maybe, maybe if I got into doing hardware jams/live stuff again.
Yeah, the Tasty Chips was the first thing that came to mind for me. Also anything using FPGA for it’s synthesis engine should be able to pull off granular if someone’s taken the time to program it. I think Norns and Organelle both have some granular functionality, but they aren’t full blow granular synthesis engines. To be fair, the Iridium wraps up granular as part of it’s sampling, so I have no idea how full blown it is.
Dude. The Micro Granny is such a nifty little lo fi box of goodness. It is one of those quirky, kinda one trick pony, little boxes that I just loved. I think I’ve owned one at least twice if not a third time along my hardware journey. There is kinda no reason to own one if you do most of your work in a DAW but that is one fun box to smash buttons on.
Ultimately, it probably boils down to what one is going to do with the synth.
So while the younger side of me says “Oh, man - it’s gorgeous hardware, it’s from a great brand, must have NOW!!” the older side says “C’mon, you know you’re never going to spend anywhere near half the time you should spend on such a machine… it’s just going to sit there, making you feel guilty more than anything else” (not that I wouldn’t want to spend time on it but demanding full-time job + wife + too many VSTs = hardly any time left at all in the day/at the weekend). Live gigs are not an option either, so yeah, I can hardly justify buying this or other pricey-ish hardware… but damn, they’re shiny
I think gear like the Iridium isn’t really marketed to most of the people here - amateurs, hobbyists, people just starting out. $2500 isn’t all that much to a working musician that’s going to spend a month programming it to their liking and then take it on tour (and then write it off on their taxes). Or for a sound designer that sits using it for 40 hours a week. It’s also chump change for an established studio to have around for extra sounds or for clients to use. My guess is they’ll sell a fair bit of them, just not to us. If we’re lucky, the tech will trickle down to cheaper units, Behringer knockoffs, and VSTs in a couple years.
I damn near talked myself into getting one while playing Waldorf apologist for all the new features. But honestly, I’m in the same boat as you - I’d get it, spend a month learning it, another month playing hard with it, and then it’d slowly start to gather dust. Then I’d sell it for a 1/3 what I paid and feel real stupid.
It’s undeniably a cool chunk of tech, but at the end of the day I doubt it’s going to do anything I couldn’t pull out of something like Omnisphere or Serum and a couple of plugins. I can’t justify that sort of money to recreate the wheel.
Agreed. Plus, from the early demo vids I listened to, it sounds pretty great. Not that I have followed it closely. I could see putting one on my desk too at some point. I mean, having HW is about having something to PLAY with, and this looks like fun.
@IO_Madness you beat me to it! I like the purple and some interesting functional updates : )
Also, those DAW mixer control surfaces look awesome. If I had the room I’d really love one specifically made for FL Studio. Is that smaller one you got MIDI? How does it recall controller positions per project?
The X Touch works over MIDI using either MCU or HUI. When you have it connected and start up a project, the DAW sends out a message to the controller that updates the fader positions, and continues to do so while you use it so you can see the faders move as you play a track (which is awesome)! I love the tactile control it gives you, I use it right now with Reaper and it works fantastic. On Linux, there’s a few bugs in the mappings here and there, but overall still very usable.
I haven’t used it with FL Studio, tho I do have FL Studio on my computer. I could probably open it up later and check to see how it works with that app, but MCU is a fairly standard protocol.
EDIT: Also, yeah, the Bass Station looks slick and the AFX mode sounds interesting for developing cool noises. My first thought was that it was like a prepared piano, but like as a synth. I think I can manage something similar with the software and controllers I have, but I wouldn’t mind taking one for a spin.
