Judging by their back catalogue of high quality plugins, their latest foray into synthesis should hopefully be equally high in calibre. Combining a sleek, user friendly GUI and packed with innovative new sound mangling capabilities, it looks like a very promising synth for anyone who wants to try something a little different.
Iris is powered by (what isotope call) their Visual Feedback Technology. Put simply this means that instead of the usual waveform generating oscillators found in your average synth, Iris has 3 empty banks into which you have to import an audio sample to produce a waveform that it can use to generate its sound. Each of these banks has an LFO section, Amp Envelope section, 4 pre-defined FX sends and the piece de resistance, a Spectrogram.
The Spectrogram (a visual representation of an audio signal) can be used to shape, edit, layer and manipulate the audio file with various tools that are at your disposal. Think of it almost like a sketchpad or paint canvas (for anyone familiar with Adobe's photoshop). You can draw, lasoo, copy, paste and erase parts of the canvas to create truly unique sounds. Add to this a more standardised Sub oscillator for layering in some nice subby sine waves or whatever else takes your fancy, and you have a synth that really is quite limitless.
It comes shipped with a huge array of samples already in its arsenal (4gb to be exact) and there are already 2 available expansion libraries (Glass & Wood) with more planned for the future.
Available now for the introductory price of just $149 USD or $199 USD (until the 30th of this month, so be quick!) with both expansion packs Iris looks like it packs some real punch for the money.
Follow us at Core for a full review very soon.
