Waldorf Iridium

Incredibile, una tonnellata di suoni e di possibilità

Superlativo, facile da programmare intuitivo e lineare, solo il motore kernel deve essere studiato per essere capito ( e non è detto che lo si capisca appieno ), fare modulazione carrier con una wavetable ha dei risultati difficilmente prevedibili ma questa è la sua magia. Fosse stato multitimbrico a 4 parti avrebbe toccato la perfezione.

Non eccezionalmente solidi i 6 encoder a lato del display. a voler essere pignoli è l'unica pecca, ma stiamo parlando di una macchina davvero libidinosa

FUTURISTIC SOUND

Iridium is complex sound design but not complicated and excellent for the sound quality. This gears is categorize as Lamborghini/Ferrary or HERMES of Sinthesizers.

Fantastic synth

What a beast this synth is! I hesitated a little after reading some horror stories about quality and white screens but am very happy that I went for it. My iridium doesn't have any quality issues; it's built like a tank, a hefty peace of equipment. During the past three weeks in operation it only crashed (white screen) on me twice.

Pros:

- Very knobby interface - easy to change parameters on the fly

- Pretty intuitive for such a deep synth engine, the UI is very helpfull

- The granular implementation is a blast; load a sample tweak and get instant results

- It imports DX7 patches; just stick some sysex files on a usb thumbdrive and you can import them straight away!

- It's got close to 2.5 GB of flash RAM to store your own samples

Cons:

- You spend hours tweaking and loose track of time

- Program change only works for 128 "favorite" patches; this could be improved in a firmware update hopefully.

- Like with so many other offerings sysex seems to be abandoned; I'd love to be able to dump the current selected patch to a DAW to store it as part of the project I'm working on.

Amazing sound design tool with a few sharp edges

Iridium is an imperfect masterpiece. Despite the significant complexity of the available synthesis algorithms, sound shapers, audio effects, etc. the UI never feels cluttered or overwhelming, and it often leads you to the right place if you pay attention. Synthesis flexibility is as good as it gets - after six months of ownership and hundreds of patches created, I still feel like I'm at the surface of the sounds Iridium is capable of producing. Even synthesis methods that don't appear to be directly included (ex. multiple operator FM) actually are, in the form of kernels that allow you to define 8 oscillators (wavetable, granular synthesis, or VA) with independent amplitude EGs within each of a voice's 3 oscillators, and to define modulation (phase FM, true FM, etc) between them and even in feedback. The downsides: CV interaction works well, but unlike Hydrasynth, Iridium can't trigger an envelope from an external gate (too bad). The mod matrix is remarkable and powerful, but it can be clunky to set up a new modulation

(again, vs. Hydrasynth's shortcut mechanism, Iridium leaves something on the table here). Browsing the patch library is painful, and sample management even moreso. But! But. The sounds it makes are simply incredible. Once you click with it and start to figure out how it wants you to work with it, you may also find yourself forgiving Iridium its little frustrating issues because of the incredible sounds you are able to make with it.