Thanks for sharing your insights in the iridium.
I was on the brink if buying one, but this thread and the increased price makes me look out for another hardware synths with polyphony, granular synthesis and without any touch screen… any recommandations?
Thanks for highlighting this. One, it provides some examples of the thing being used in a slightly more ‘tasteful’ context; two, it’s quite interesting that he described it as gluing together a half complete record. Most videos demonstrating the synth are quite full throttle, and even when impressive they did make me concerned about the ability for it to sit in a mix without everything becoming the Iridium Show.
Yeah, very well said. Having paid attention to mostly modular, and now turning back to ”traditional” synths, synth demos and presets seem pretty horrendous. It’s neon lights, fireworks, tuned cars… the works. Cortini understands aesthetics.
Well, after a full day of reading everything on the internet about this guy, the sheer number of horror stories of broken screens, blasts of noise and other glitchy mishaps has scared the GAS right outta me. Probably good for my bank account, maybe I’ll check in on it again next year and see if people have more confidence about the build quality. In the meantime I’ll try and see if I can switch out Cycles for Pigments to get my granular kicks in a way that doesn’t devastate my cpu + investigate the GR-1. Watching everything I could find about Iridium, I’m not actually convinced the granular engine was up to much on the unit anyway, though that resonator engine did seem reeeeal cool…
For what it’s worth, I spent a few days reading every post I could find from beginning to end, and was on the fence for the same reasons, but if you look at the number of issues against how many units have likely been sold, it’s not that high, and certainly not any higher than typical. Many of the issues were from early models. Happy users rarely come online to tell they don’t have issues.
Mine arrived last week, I loaded the latest beta OS right away, it hasn’t had a single issue so far. I, couldn’t be happier with my purchase.
My only small nitpick so far is that there are some parameters that I’d love to be modulation destinations that aren’t, but they’re all assignable to cc, so I’m modulating them via a CV to midi converter (CV thing) from my eurorack rig.
Keep in mind that people who don’t have problems with their Iridiums are less vocal, so issues seem more widespread than they actually are. I recently sold my Iridium (for reasons unrelated to reliability – I ended up not clicking with the user interface) but in the time I had it, it was totally rock-solid. There were a handful of crashes in an old OS but these have been subsequently fixed.
Anyhow, if you’re interested in one I’d say go for it.
Sold the GR-1 for a quantum and no regrets. I do wish the quantum had more grains, thats where the gr1 excels.
Yeah, you guys might be right there. Will sit on it for a few more months as I just spent a chunk of the earmarked cash on a GR-1 instead, since most of all I wanted to ‘solve’ my Cycles problem.
Uh oh 
Puscifer also used the Iridium a loooot for their latest album – that “concert” is super awesome - love it
Quantum too.
I’m away from my Iridium right now, but was surprised how “steppy” the filter sounds in this video compared to the M:
https://youtu.be/z8r69_FStZc?t=1723 @ around 28:43
Edit: Never mind, I figured it out. It’s just that he turns the Iridium encoder slower so that you hear the partials transition more. You hear the same thing on the M, and there is a brief moment when he slows down and you hear the same “steps”. I just tested this on my Iridium and it’s smooth and not steppy.
Happy holidays everyone. I’m in the market for a nice poly and the Iridium is really appealing to me. I like the capabilities a lot, I want a module, and friends tell me that MPE is working now in beta.
But, I can’t go try one in a store. Here’s what I want to know:
—how much do you have to use the touchscreen? I’ve performed live with an iPad before and have decided I’m not a jam-and-tweak touchscreen kind of guy. I don’t mind it for deeper settings and naming patches, etc., but would want to be able to use knobs when jamming.
—relatedly, would you say it is fun to program? I’d mostly build my own patches and love the idea of mixing samples and synthesis. But for instance, Loopop seemed to grumble a bit about the mod matrix in his review.
—can you get it to sound dirty or nasty? Seems like there are lots of options on the synth, but I haven’t heard much of this demos. Lot of huge pads and ambient stuff but that’s not what I’m after.
Of course, I can also run it through distortion afterwards, but that’s a different thing.
PS— I asked a similar question on the Super 6 thread.
Mine is working just fine now since 2020 Xmas.
Most things can easily be done without.
Yes! It’s intuitive and straight forward.
But - yes, as loopop said, it is a bit a shame that knobs can’t be just touched and assigned as destination. Nevertheless it is still fun to program and to see all that displayed on screen.
Yes, most certainly. Without any problems.
Just wanted to share that in my setup I have the USB port on the Iridium plugged in to my computer, and it has this slight buzz that I could hear when the volume was up fairly high.
I got one of these from Amazon, thinking it would do nothing, but it fixed the buzz completely: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MQ29B2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I need to do more tests tonight to make 100% sure, but I was really surprised it made such a clear difference.
Edit: I confirmed this tonight, and it’s now silent. It so silent that now I can’t tell when my system is on (which is a great problem to have). The Iridium works fine, and is getting USB midi. Best $4 I’ve spent in a long time 
I had te same buzz issue with the Elektron machines via USB Overhub. It was just connected, I dont use Overbridge.
The beauty of ferrite chokes! I’ve built ferrite chokes before but it was for HF frequencies with amateur radio gear and that application of ferrites would not work for this particular situation. Thanks so much for posting about this USB cable!
The Amazon funky prices algorithm:
~500% x, WTF!
Need to find a different source.
(Never ordered from Amazon US to ship to Italy BTW)
Just received a e-mail from Rolf, 3.0 beta 12 is relaesed for the beta testers. (Iridium & Quantum)
