I see that this thread has become a bit of a monologue with my updates. Sorry, kinda. I received my new Iridium last night, played around with it for several hours (so much fun to use), and so far, seems to be working great. As I’ve said before, if this is stable, the Iridium is my dream synth for everything that it can do. I was having a blast running a Hydrasynth Desktop through the Iridium Filters and mixing with with two Iridium Oscillators (wavetable and granular particle). I plan to get into live granular mode tonight. Yay!!
For the time being, I am going to wait to upgrade to 3.0. If it is stable at 2.5, I might just leave it there for now until 3.0 comes out of “beta” mode. If it becomes a bit unstable, I will upgrade to 3.0. My main reason for wanting 3.0 is not stability, but MPE. I have a Linnstrument MPE keybed that I want to use with the Iridium.
I’d recommend using 3.0 beta 12 if you have it. It’s more stable than 2.5 in my experience, and has copy and paste in the mod matrix (which I can’t live without). Plus adding things into the matrix from the mod menu sets the slot. Plus MPE, Plus loading samples from SD/USB and many other small fixes and enhancements
@michaeljk1963 I think I need your advice! what would you recommend? I want to buy either the Hydra synth or the Iridium, but after reading your experiences with the iridium i’m pretty unsure what to do. If I go for the iridium the hydra synth will probably be superfluous right?
Go find the people who got a DOA Hydrasynth over in that thread. It goes with the territory. Complex electronic equipment will have a non-zero failure rate. Bottom line is if the basic product is reliable when right, and that the manufacturer stands behind their product you 'll be OK. Seems both Waldorf and ASM back their stuff.
For what it’s worth, I have both, and both have been 100% issue free and reliable.
It’s easy to read through some of the Iridium threads across the internet and get nervous (I did pre purchase), but when you put it into perspective by looking at how many people actually issues, against how many have likely sold the failure/issue rate is very low, and on par with any other complex electronic equipment.
I have both too, and I can back what auditorycanvas wrote. Both are wonderful instruments and if there are any issues, work with the support.
Both synths have been very stable so far for me. So my recommendation would be, go with the one whose sound you like more.
At the moment, I have both the Hydrasynth and the Iridium. Here’s what they have in common. As to sound, they are obviously both wavetable synths that are (as all wavetable synths are) capable of combining lots of different oscillator waves, either in a table or on their own. Also, they both have a definite digital (crisp) sound. You can play around with it in both synths to get something “warmer” if you want. I prefer crisp because I have “virtual” analog poly synths already (MatrixBrute and Cobalt as well as analog synth software in the Kronos and Mac). Also, both are really well conceived in terms of layout and making complexity approachable.
You will hear that the Iridium is much deeper (although the Hydrasynth is no slouch) and that is true. And, of course, this is the reason it is more than three times the cost (I have the HS Desktop). The variability of the Iridium is pretty ridiculous, and therefore much to my liking. If a little of something is good, and more is great, well then, isn’t a whole lot fantastic? Yes. In this sense, the HS is great and the Iridium is fantastic. Here’s the thing, though, with the Iridium they really have done a great job of making all that power and variability in synthesis type and variability approachable and useable, so I get both the immediacy of easily creating usable sounds and the depth to create really complex sounds for years to go and grow with it. I am also not a great fan of having to use a touchscreen, which is why I don’t love the MPC One sitting in my closet right now. The iridium does a brilliant job of giving you great information with the screen, while requiring you to touch it very rarely. It’s all about the knobs and the screen is really there to show you what you are doing with all those knobs. The screen rewrites are also really fast, so when you tweak a filter or envelope or complex LFO shape with a knob you see it in real time with no lag that I can see. Nice job.
If stability works out with my new Iridium unit, then I will have to say that the Iridium is definitely my favored machine. I fear the HS will feel limited pretty quickly, especially now that I have the Iridium. On the other hand the HS does a ton of stuff very well for a lot less money, and has been rock solid for me. Hope this helps.
@plusn@auditorycanvas@Jukka@michaeljk1963
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thank you all for your tips. When reading comments, reviews and opinions, one can get into a dead end from time to time and lose context what to achieve in the 1st place. I think I am back on track now…
Yes, “real” analog (on a circuit board). True. I am old enough to remember analog gear with tubes, so that seems like real analog. Sorry for the misstatement. It also explains why the MB is so big, thick, heavy and expensive.
Actually…i find the price of the MB, just like the price for the Iridium, very very good and competitive. Remember a MOOG Studio bundle with DFAM, Mother32 and SubHarmonicon is all together 2000€…and that´s basically only three monosynths, each with a single osc. No preset patch saving, no FX, no keyboard. So the Iridium and MatrixBrute are featurepacked incredible good sounding, extrem versatile synths.
The Moog Studio bundle mainly has as the biggest selling point, its Moog sound. On both (Iridium and MatrixBrute) you can do Moog-like sounds. Check out the Don Solaris presets on the Iridium (1x00 onward IIRC).
I agree that what I paid for the MB and the Iridium was more than fair, and I am getting a lot of bang for the buck. I was also able to get a steep discount on both, but even at MSRP they are priced fairly for what you get. I even traded in my Mother 32 in order to afford the Iridium.
After upgrading to OS 3.0, Beta 12, I’ve been using the IR (Iridium) several hours for about 5 days now, without a single hiccup. I think this one’s a keeper. I’ve been loading new samples and all of the free presets available at Waldorf’s website, plus purchased two additional preset collections, and been messing around with the samples, and no problems with this unit.
Anyone have a quick reference for adding my own wavetables (e.g. from Serum or Massive)? I haven’t checked the entire manual for that yet, but just curious since I think this was an added feature in OS 3.0.
I’ve had the Iridium for over a year now and I can attest this synth is worth every penny. The deepest synth I’ve ever worked with yet easy to navigate. Never once have I opened the manual. The envelope section is the best I’ve ever used on a synth. The sequencer, the arp, the mod matrix and digital former give you more options than you’ll ever need. This is like owning a wall full of eurorack modules.
Now that I have had a week to spend with mine, trouble free, I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of its capabilities and how just kind of awesome it is.
I have a Linnstrument 128 that I want to use with the Iridium. I upgraded the OS on the Iridium to 3.0. I see a couple of added sources for Mods including y axis, but don’t see all that I’d expect for full MPE integration. I would like to be able to assign separate mod sources and destinations for x axis (not just for pitch bend), y axis, full pressure (not just aftertouch), velocity and note off. Anyone else using an MPE controller with the Iridium? Thoughts?
My only guess is that MPE is unfinished in the beta. For most mod features, the depth is thorough (envelopes, LFOs, etc.), so maybe this is the reason 3.x is not out yet.
I’m not into MPE, so I don’t have any hands on experience to offer.
“TJ on the Road” did a video quite a while back setting up the Iridium beta 3.0 for MPE from a KMI K-Board Pro 4.
He sets the modulation destination for the Y and Z dimensions, but he just uses the X as pitch bend setting, and does not change that. I don’t know if you can’t reset that, but he doesn’t.
Obviously you’ve looked through the modulation matrix settings.
Not sure what you mean by “full pressure (not just Aftertouch)”. The Linnstrument uses MIDI 0xDn (Channel Pressure) for the Z axis, which is pretty much standard MPE.
I got a response over at Gearspace to my questions about MPE. The guy said that Rolf at Waldorf specifically stated that version 3.0 of the OS is not out of Beta yet because they are still working on full MPE implementation.
