iZotope: Iris 2 Synth $10 (93% Off) at Plugin Boutique

[abacab]

 

[daveiv]

11 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

A very similar story here. Of course, every instrument's value is subject to our personal taste, but for me, who bought this synth a couple of years ago, $10USD for a synth of this quality is a no-brainer. To David, it's completely reasonable that you have a different opinion,  but to Doug's point, it would be more valuable to get your thoughts on why you have such a strong dislike of the synth. Do you dislike the patches, how it runs,  etc.? I'd suggest that anyone even mildly interested should check out the videos and audio demos. If you like what you hear, it's a good quality synth and Izotope makes very good plugins and has solid support in my experience. I've been a customer many years and would recommend them. 

You know what, I will give Iris another go when I have time. If it's so praised here, maybe I overlooked something.

[Starship Krupa]

I've found some great pads and happening basses among the presets. As far as learning how to craft my own sounds, I can get about as far as turning off the internal reverb (which is important to me).

When I've watched people do tutorials, it looks like they're scribbling in the little blue window or something? I couldn't figure it out. I have so many synths that I can always find a sound that fits in the factory presets of one or the other of them. When I dig more deeply, it's not into something as idiosyncratic as Iris 2

Just like Chromophone and bx_oberhausen and other CPU-hungry synths, if you cut the # of voices down, things get a lot better, and I usually can't hear a difference. I don't play 2-handed chords with lush pads anyway. Those pads have some looooooong release tails.

[Doug Rintoul]

4 hours ago, daveiv said:

You know what, I will give Iris another go when I have time. If it's so praised here, maybe I overlooked something.

Hey man, why the thumbs down? What part of my comment did you have trouble with? I truly was interested in what you did not like about Iris 2, because yours was one of the few descenting opinions and it is always good to get different perspectives even if one does not agree with them. 

[User 905133]

22 hours ago, daveiv said:

This synth is just a waste of space, bandwidth, and carbon emission. I'd better spend that $10 on a dozen of kazoos.

16 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

It would be more helpful if you told us why you feel this way . . . . If you have had a bad experience with it, it would be useful to know what it was you hated about it. 

JMO: I find the comments in the Deals section are helpful for making consumer decisions (to buy, or not to buy) when fellow forum members help me to understand what products offer, how they can be used, features they have or don't have compared to other similar products, specific drawbacks users have had, specific genres of music that might match what a product offers, etc. 

Edited September 7, 2022 by User 905133
To add a JMO paragraph because just the two quotes might not have conveyed what I was trying to say

[abacab]

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

When I've watched people do tutorials, it looks like they're scribbling in the little blue window or something? I couldn't figure it out.

Editing in the little blue window, the wave pool, is called "spectral filtering".

The main idea with spectral filtering is that you can visually isolate only the frequencies in the waveform that you wish to be audible. The scribbling may not make much sense, but that is just an attempt at randomness hoping for "lucky accidents". Experimentation is rewarded!

So you can easily select a portion of the audio spectrogram and only that part of the sound is instantly mapped across your keyboard.

The whole idea for the Iris synth got started over 10 years ago when a dev (Dave Spiers - GForce Software) was playing around with an early version of iZotope RX audio editor that had the spectral filtering mode, and then imported the spectrally edited samples into several hardware samplers so that he could layer the results. Thus began the idea of bolting together several sampler modules in a software instrument ... details in the following interview:

 

Edited September 7, 2022 by abacab

[Chris Yuzik]

On 9/6/2022 at 10:07 AM, daveiv said:

Jus' sayin'

 

 

OMG, my mind is blown. A kazoo. With some effects on the sound. Incredible!

[PavlovsCat]

9 hours ago, daveiv said:

You know what, I will give Iris another go when I have time. If it's so praised here, maybe I overlooked something.

That's the coolest post I've seen all day, @daveiv. I mean, I think it's completely fine for you to not like this synth or anything else -- we're all individuals with our own tastes and that's great (I've always been a bit of a non,-conformist,  so I especially love seeing those with differing views than the rest of the group step up to voice those views). Just because some other folks like it doesn't mean you should feel you have to like it too (why does that remind me of peer pressure among kids, -- you know, like, "Come on Dave, just have one. Everyone else at school is doing it..."), . But I think it's great to see an open mind with your willing to give something a second try after seeing how other folks here like it (me included). 

Now maybe when you try it again you will like it and maybe you won't like it. Either way, it's great that you kept an open mind and have decided to give it a second  after seeing how much others like it.  I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts after giving it a second try, regardless of whether you like it or not. Please share the results with us. 

Edited September 7, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[antler]

19 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

it's a good quality synth and Izotope makes very good plugins

Completely agree, but Iris was a little too heavy for my CPU when I tried it last. Might give it another go at some point too.

[abacab]

10 minutes ago, antler said:

Completely agree, but Iris was a little too heavy for my CPU when I tried it last. Might give it another go at some point too.

Some Iris 2 presets killed my 3rd gen i3 CPU (2012 era). Iris can be very heavy computation-wise. I had to set it aside for a while until I got a newer system, 6 generations of hardware down the road. But it is unstoppable now on my 9th gen i5 (2018 era), running at 3.7GHz, turbo to 4.6 GHz.

So honestly, YMMV depending on your computer. But I would be surprised if it still had major issues with a recent CPU.

There are some suggestions for CPU Optimization in the 2014 Iris 2 Reference Manual, starting on page 70, but are most likely not relevant for modern systems with enough CPU horsepower to handle the load.

 

[daveiv]

On 9/7/2022 at 7:00 PM, PavlovsCat said:

That's the coolest post I've seen all day, @daveiv. I mean, I think it's completely fine for you to not like this synth or anything else -- we're all individuals with our own tastes and that's great (I've always been a bit of a non,-conformist,  so I especially love seeing those with differing views than the rest of the group step up to voice those views). Just because some other folks like it doesn't mean you should feel you have to like it too (why does that remind me of peer pressure among kids, -- you know, like, "Come on Dave, just have one. Everyone else at school is doing it..."), . But I think it's great to see an open mind with your willing to give something a second try after seeing how other folks here like it (me included). 

Now maybe when you try it again you will like it and maybe you won't like it. Either way, it's great that you kept an open mind and have decided to give it a second  after seeing how much others like it.  I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts after giving it a second try, regardless of whether you like it or not. Please share the results with us. 

Glad to hear you felt that way.

I'm in the process of migrating to another computer, so it's gonna be a while until I can re-embrace Iris, and write a thorough review.

[fret_man]

Sarah is kazooing into the mic to get the sound. I wanna know what that thing is plugged into the "membrane  port" of the kazoo.

[Grem]

25 minutes ago, fret_man said:

Sarah is kazooing into the mic to get the sound. I wanna know what that thing is plugged into the "membrane  port" of the kazoo.

I am thinking it's a piezo mic?

I did enjoy that video. 

The music was good too!!

[abacab]

32 minutes ago, Grem said:

I am thinking it's a piezo mic?

Maybe something like this? https://piezobarrel.com/

"PiezoBarrel pickups are designed to be attached to wind and brass instruments to pick up the relatively high pressure standing wave inside the instrument near the mouthpiece end. This has the benefit of allowing the instrument to be amplified without feedback or interference from other sounds outside the instrument. Anything that creates a sound from the instrument also affects the air column inside the instrument."