IRIS is not meant to compete with hardware or software samplers. It is completely different animal capable of doing things and creating sound in a completely diofferent way and should be thought of as such.

Just curious to those who own the full version of Alchemy. (I dont, I have the player only and even that is very impressive) How does the Spectral editor in Alchemy compare to IRIS after all it looks like it can do the same thing, yes!

Here is some stuff I picked up on the KVR forum. This guy is not all that impressed with IRIS and he says it needs further development. I would be interested to hear how those of you have been using IRIS feel about this guys comments.

Breeze wrote:
While I'm finding it fun to play with, Iris definitely feels like a work in progress to me. Some FR's:

1. Separate filters for each section rather than one Global filter. This puts a real damper on filtering each sample separately. It also means that all the FX sends are PRE-filter unless you use the FX master mode, but then you lose the sends per sample. There should really be one filter per section with an envelope dedicated to each, with a pre/post selection for the sends.

2. Limited Modulation resources. More LFOs assignable to different parameters would be most welcome. It would also be nice to see LFOs affect shape positions and filtering intensity... maybe even groups of them...

3. Macro routines for drawing. For example, if you want to fade in drawn sections (cone shapes) it should be a macro allowing you to rubber-band select the start section to whatever point and execute a fade in from start to selection. It should also be possible to draw straight lines, and other geometrical shapes.

4. The ability to "feather" and create subtle fade in/out effects with the drawn shapes, anywhere and to whatever degree. Currently the method in point 3 is the only way to simulate this, but whatever the shape, whatever is drawn simply plays at full volume.

5. Save of filter patterns. I can see the reuse of certain patterns with different content, which currently means re-drawing them every time.

6. Import of graphic images as filter patterns, with full transform and editing capabilities. Of course

I really hope they don't take all our ideas and the put out a $999 version like someone else mentioned, although you have to admit, as much as it's infuriating, that it's not a bad commercial strategy...

Also some are saying on the KVR forum that it takes such a CPU hit that it glitches when using sounds with slow attacks and slow releases even on an 8 core Apple Mac! Sounds with very slow releases are hard on any synth because the voices will overlap and build up quite quickly and before you know it you are using a lot of voices at once. I like creating very ambient sounds with very long releases so I am interested to see how it performs with these types of patches.

Who said IRIS was meant to be a sampler? It simply has some sampler-like features that are quite nice and could be resampled into another full-featured sampler.

The Radius function is brilliant and while I think there are other samplers that have a similar feature, I do not know what samplers they are and they probably aren't $150 (at least while that price lasts).

I'm on budget saving mode.. I'm thinking of stretching out and get this one, while the offer still last.. without getting the glass/wood sound libraries.. 

Will you missed much without those 2 packs ? Perhaps this will encourage me to make some original sound.

Hi tomixornot  Usually a decent virtual instrument will come with a standard library and in this case it's 4G which represents a lot of raw materials to get started with.

Even back in the old days synths with just 8 Meg or 32 Meg of sample ROM could create tens of thousands of presets, all over a wide range of very different genres etc. 4G of data could generate an almost infinate number of patches you could work with.

There will be a lot of sounds to be able to play with I imagine. Think of Glass and Wood as being expansion packs taking a standard library further. But like anything expanding something out to the max is going to give you the best results. eg the standard library with the two extra expansion packs plus your own folder of completely original raw materials.

It is good to keep an eye on future expansion packs to see if they release things that really might take your interest.

Hahahahah!  I hear mostly glass chimes evolving out of ambience!  Is this some kind of joke?  This concept is not new:

This reminds me of Moog-ing, morphing and/or vocoding sounds ... that is accomplished with other VST plugins (Waves and UAD for example)

I suppose this product is great for ambience genres ... those creepy cold, inhuman, robotic sounds that have no beatz nor vocal warmth.  Like applying photoshop to a backround or such.

This product doesn't seem to possibly apply to my mixes ... where human emulations, paintings, brush-strokes, etc. take precedence with live instruments.

Philip - I have taken a cut from a flute and processed it using Iris then used the Radius function to play it and it is remarkably beautiful!  Perhaps you should try the demo and see what you can come up with?

In the end maybe this instrument isn't for you, but it sure works for me.

Phillip it is easy to think that very complex textural sounding instruments are best in that area alone and not so good for more normal musical duties. But all these great instruments have a very straight and musical sounding bank of sounds and presets in there within their library.

Instruments like Native prism and Alchemy have incredibly complex and soundscape type sounds for sure but they are riddled with just great sounding straight up sounds. IRIS has them too. Your music and mixes would more than likely benefit from such use. The quality of IRIS may be better than some of the instruments you are using now and deliver a higher quality sound for normal sounds such as strings, pads, leads etc ..

The way to find out would be to load the demo and work with it for 30 days or so. The standard bundled library would be part of the demo package and I am sure you would at least get if you are going to use it. I think I am going to just jump in and go for it! The only thing for me is that I would not mind knowing how the Spectral editor in Alchemy compares to IRIS and if they are doing something very similar. Maybe Jind might be able to answer that one more fully. I am fairly Alchemy proficient now with the player at least (I have many expansion packs for it) and see the upgrade to the full version a compelling option for me as well.

Jeff Evans


Hi tomixornot  Usually a decent virtual instrument will come with a standard library and in this case it's 4G which represents a lot of raw materials to get started with.

Even back in the old days synths with just 8 Meg or 32 Meg of sample ROM could create tens of thousands of presets, all over a wide range of very different genres etc. 4G of data could generate an almost infinate number of patches you could work with.

There will be a lot of sounds to be able to play with I imagine. Think of Glass and Wood as being expansion packs taking a standard library further. But like anything expanding something out to the max is going to give you the best results. eg the standard library with the two extra expansion packs plus your own folder of completely original raw materials.

It is good to keep an eye on future expansion packs to see if they release things that really might take your interest.

Thanks Jeff. The 4 gig should have plenty of sounds to get started.. I'll try to get the extra 2 libraries if possible.. I'll use Iris to try out sampling real sounds, as it seems easy to map out the pitch.

I'm gonna have to quit coming here...at first I, like several above, thought "harumph, just another sound-design synth...no thanks".  Then I watched several of the video reviews and tutorials.  WOW.  I bet this thing will work for many, many types of genres and styles.  Natch...I ordered the dern thing. 

Phonic


Philip - I have taken a cut from a flute and processed it using Iris then used the Radius function to play it and it is remarkably beautiful!  Perhaps you should try the demo and see what you can come up with?

In the end maybe this instrument isn't for you, but it sure works for me.

Very well, bro,
 
I'll try to download the demo and see what it does to my vox, piano, guitars ... based on you and so many other positive testimonials.  Its just that the Iris videos left me cold.