I think Iridium sounds fantastic – you can get beautiful grit in the wavetable mode with drive & aliasing, absolute mayhem from the kernel mode, or smooth VA sounds in analog mode. The filter drive also sounds really good. The problem is that the videos on youtube only show the Iridium’s polite/clean side, which makes it look meeker than it really is. It can get quite dirty & characterful.
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I can believe that. I actually thought there weren’t enough M videos that showed sounds I’d actually use. I saw more randomly on IG than YT.
i feel the same way op does. in theory, its my dream synth, but i’ve never heard one demo i liked.
where i differ is that i feel the same way about waldorf m demos. i havent heard many if any demos i liked from that either
i do think that it would sound fine through a boum because my hydra explorer did, but i have a hard time mixing “thinner” digital sounds in my mostly analog setup
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Thats the problem with Demos. They influence you. I haven’t heard many demos i like.
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demos have also helped me a lot, since i dont have many places to test synths in person. so i usually have to buy something to try it for myself. i’ve been doing it long enough that i know to be skeptical but theres usually at least a few that are appealing.
for example, the peak demos never appealed tome and once i got one, despite the fact that i never liked the sound in demos, it sounded exactly as i suspected. and i sold it. the behringer pro-1 and crave would have never been on my radar, then i saw dymtns videos and i bought both and they sounded better than i could have ever imagined
So what do you want from a synth? What kind of sounds and sonic character do you gravitate towards?
i want the exact features and synthesis that the iridium/quantum offer, but i’d like the core sounds/tone to be “good” sounding to my ears. i like the Take-5 mostly, i like the way the super 6 seems to sound. the hydra is ok but i prefer the digitone, although the digitone is a little too “weak” for mixing alongside analog gear without multitracking into a daw and doing a lot of individual track mixing/eq’ing/etc
just because a synth has certain features, doesn’t make it sound good. mutable instruments seem to have the ability to code digital synths to sound unique and also very pleasant
i dont think the point of the thread is that its a bad synth. i think its about the conflict when choosing synths where there always seems to be a compromise. the reason i keep hyping up the take-5 is because it has the best core sound, rich and deep and unique and modern and vintage at the same time but also super flexible (as far as analog synths go). i’d like more flexibility in a synth with a nice strong oscillator engine behind it or some kidn of vca/compressor/saturation/filter that helps with the overall character of the synth. the virus ti sounds ok i guess? i dont know. i havent tried many digital synths that i love
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But do you think the Iridium/Quantum sounds good at certain things, like pads and atmospheres etc, but not leads, bass, for example, or do you simply not like it’s tone, full stop?
its hard for me to articulate the types of timbres i gravitate toward. i think every demo ive heard makes it sound just like a peak or hydra. i dont hear anything specific about it or any tones that you couldnt get out of something like a wavetable synth plugin.
so yeah i guess its the tone in general? when i think of good granular, i think of the miso cornflakes, which has to do with the headroom compression i think, plus even moreso the window shape which makes the texture more glass “shard”-like. when i think of interesting additive synthesis, i think of the Loom vst, which results in a sound more characteristic than even analog sometimes does. when i think of fm or phase distortion, i think of something like the ssf zpo which produces wild timbres that can stay within a musical range without being useful only for percussive atonal sounds or the telharmonic, which sounds like a modern cz-101. its unlike anything else, but it has character. and i realize im using that term a lot, but i cant think of a good synonym. even the digitone does fm in a unique way, since its subtractive and has options for saturation and filtering. so you can capture the resonance and texture you want, then reign it in or a more natural organic tone that works in a musical context. it somehow sounds warm and cold at the same time. same with the take 5 and its brassy rich saw waves combined with the ultra sharp wooden fm sine wave tones
people say the virus c has character. i dont know what that particular sound is, but i understand what they mean in general. this one to me has nothing i can grasp onto. nothing grabs my attention about its capabilities or sound in general. i guess the demos are mostly ambient pads. if i had one in my hands, i’d first try making buchla style plucks, testing the envelope articulation/response, testing how far i can push that core timbre with each waveform and modulation method, then how to mix that with osc sync and further processing up until the point where it sounds unusable or non-musical. then i would see if it can do pads that transform and move and evolve without sounding stale. i want a synth to sound organic and “warm” but also have the ability to produce timbres i’ve never heard before
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If you were painting a Picture of the Isolation and loneliness of the Universe would you choose an Iridium or a Take 5(which you like)? Horses for courses.
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Thanks for the explanation.
I find it fascinating how we all naturally gravitate toward different things.
I love the sound of the Iridium/Quantum for atmospheres/soundscapes. Although I find it too complex in synthesis and sonics for my current requirements. I love the Super 6 too, for similar and different reasons. But I’m not so keen on the Polybrute or the Take 5 you mentioned.
And in general I’ve always preferred and owned more Digital Synths.
Korg Wavestation was my first synth, and only synth for a few years. But I remember recording in a studio that had a Jupiter 6 & 8, Juno 60 and I thought they sounded shit, lol! I appreciate them now though but back then the techno I liked used a lot of digital/fm sounds, so I was influenced more by those tracks and sounds.
As a side note, I’m only using 2 x Op-1s currently and I’m more than happy with such a simple setup.
When I was trying to decide between an Iridium and the Op-1s I kept playing demos and looking at this particular Sci Fi cityscape image. And I realised that even though the whole cityscape was beautiful, bright and complex, I wanted to create sounds and music that represented the unseen, the tiny, dirty, dark little details, and that drew me to the Op-1. Apologies for not being eloquent enough the explain/describe that better.
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i can understand the op1 workflow you describe. ive never owned one but it was one of the first pieces of gear i really lusted after before getting my octatrack
i want to love the iridium. and if elektron put an iridium in a digi/a4 box, i’d get it immediately. but i just think i’d have to try one in person, demos arent always great representations of a synth’s abilities, as we all know
i watched your demos when i first opened this thread but i didnt really connect with those either. i think limbic bits or someone made a video about a preset pack that was the best thing i’ve heard from the iridium. if you have any other videos or even things you’ve made with it, you should share them here. i’d love to hear more because it wouldnt take much convincing for me
i have another answer to this question actually. i just learned that the kawai k5000s was additive. i do not know anything else about it but the few demos ive heard sound pretty interesting. can the iridium do whatever the kawai does? i think the resonator and kernals are the most appealing aspects of the iridium.
i love to try and emulate physical instruments by striking virtual resonant bodies, and kernels sounds additive to me, especially if these can be combined, which i think they can, right, since each osc can be a different synthesis type? so striking a resonant osc with particles or kernals, or using va waveforms for additive synthesis might be exactly what im after
also do you have any experience with the korg radias or mutable warps and is there any crossover with those and the iridium?
*another edit. so i was listening to this video from the waldorf iridium official page and i do like a few sounds here. glass pikes, sequik, agital in particular. the problem is, i think other synths, even ones i own can do most of them as well or better. and the other sounds dont beat anything i’ve heard from digitone, hydra, peak, or even sometimes the volca fm (which i love, not meant as an insult). maybe i just dont particularly like waldorf’s digital oscillators:
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I also have to add again that iridium is of course a nice synthesizer that can certainly sound good to me. this is a high-level assessment because i personally want to get the best out of my gear in terms of sound. For me, sound plays a very important role here, purely subjectively, and it has to be fun without getting confused every time whether the synth sounds stupid somehow. In addition, it costs a lot of money, so I have to make a particularly good decision for myself as to whether it fits, and that’s why the questions I’m asking here come up. and it became clear to me that different synthesizers can produce different results. e.g. I just have the take 5 here and it’s funny that I really like the still raw sound from the device, without having edited it much, it fits perfectly with the rytm here. the sound sounds very nice when it is processed properly and it is a lot of fun because everything is immediately to hand.
of course the iridium can sound fantastic, but I think… that it just doesn’t sound that fantastic, like here e.g. the take 5. maybe it needs to be processed more extensively with eq, because it hurts my ears when i hear the demos loud and the sound just sounds totally flat, digital - i don’t know how else to describe it, somehow not cool. there is e.g. a few demos about the very old synthesizers, e.g. waldorf q, that always sounds like longing to me, it sounds somehow strong in character and rough and I just want that kind of sound here, no more. I also like the sound of old records from the 60s and 90s much better. Of course there are still a lot of good things today, but overall I felt that almost everything only sounds like a computer. there are a lot more crass people who put thousands of euros into hardware like eq, compressors, etc. to get a really great sound. and i’m also a freak who likes special sounds and i like turning the controls, the sound has to smoke.
And finally I have to say that I also don’t like it when I have an expensive synth here and then often read in some forums that it’s not the real thing, but that’s the way it is and there’s something good about it , because you then think twice more about whether it is worth the money. In the end, my own opinion counts anyway.
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I’m with you. The M sounds totally analog. (He is too) Thanks to filter/VCA… I can only recommend it. Certainly the sounds of the M are a bit simpler. But the output sounds analog and does not need to hide from the big ones. For me its “the” techno synth.
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couldnt agree more. flat is a good adjective. and yeah for something that costs this much, i have to love it or i wont be able to enjoy it at all and constantly consider selling it for something else
also agree on the take-5 raw sound. sometimes i listen to the init saw wave for hours at a time, playing chords. just playing with the cutoff on my exp pedal or that huge lovely cutoff knob
but yeah this gets to the core of the issue, an instrument should be capable of striking sounds, unique exciting sounds that blow you away. and that includes quality, as well as capability or audio sculpting functionality
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Their inner consumer wants maximum features and their inner listener wants two sawtooths going through a nice warm low pass filter. Why blame the Iridium for being what it is?
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I must admit as an Iridium owner, I first thought this topic was a joke / troll and checked to make sure it wasn’t April 1st 
It is a fair question, just surprised me a bit.
First off, digital can sound great. We are well into hifi digital that rivals the limits of human hearing. For me the best example is Omnisphere. If you just start exploring presets, you’ll find many that will challenge your opinion about digital not being able to do warm analog sounds, etc…
Regarding the quality of digital, someone should tell Mr Rodriguez that this isn’t a real piano, but just a controller and a computer.
On the Iridium specifically, I find that it sounds incredible. It has the widest spectrum of sound of anything with knobs that I’m aware of.
Here’s an exploration I did a while back and it’s 80% iridium:
Note that it’s a single take with no external effects, and it’s while I was exploring the the warm and cool sides of the iridium (multitimbral - 2 patches at the same time playing different parts).
Does the Iridium sound crappy? Only if you want it to, it can also sound warm, bright, dark, sad, happy, thin, epic, and everything in-between. That’s the beauty and flexibility of hifi digital.
Best regards,
Gino
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I have Omnisphere. It gives it a run for the money. But i still think Omnisphere had the edge.
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Gino, this is spectacular and exactly the sort of sound I have been looking for!
I have read the whole thread and it’s funny how I almost every demo I’ve heard sounds amazing to me and sounds far outside the scope of my Digitone, Analog 4, Wavestate or MPC.
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Thanks Rusty!
I think a lot of gear is amazing now days. Digitone is another great example, as many patches on it make it sound like a basic VST IMO. Which isn’t fair because if you start exploring it, it’s a very powerful synth (esp the voice layering and stealing). A lot of it comes down to spending time making the sounds you want to hear. In some cases we are the limitation and not the gear
One area that the Iridum excels is giant pads, as it has 16 voices, stereo filters, and really nice built-in effects (esp the chorus and reverb).
In that Ambient1 track, I started with delivered patches and tweaked them. There are many patches on the Iridium that don’t do much for me, but there are also some that sound really great (like Waveformula by Howard Scarr). I marked the ones I like as favorites, but have not gone through all of them, and there are a ton of patches on it!
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