{"id":343,"date":"2021-08-14T03:14:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T03:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=343"},"modified":"2021-08-20T04:52:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T04:52:11","slug":"tone-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/tone-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tone 2 \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unashamedly Digital<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The other day I saw a review that complained the Tone2 synthesisers were \u2018unashamedly digital\u2019. Which introduces shame<\/em><\/strong> into how you make bleep-bloop noises. Could we just say \u2018proudly digital\u2019 or better still not clutch our analogue pearls about this odd little woody\\tinny dichotomy? Bloody hell people.
Tone 2 seems get a lot of stick from the bleep-bloop community, partly for some copy protection which is very very unfair to thieves. A larger stick comes from some bombastic claims they make in their advertising. Does Icarus2<\/em> really have 54 unique methods of sound creation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Harmonic Content Morphing\u2019 was mentioned back in 2008 for Gladiator<\/em>, which seems first to offer the technique later popularised by Serum<\/a><\/em> in 2015. It starts with wavetables \u2013 up to 256 harmonic snapshots of an evolving sound wave. The harmonics of the wavetable can then be modified by two modulations into sonically interesting shapes \u2013 one can for example impose a \u2018supersaw\u2019 and a \u2018harmonic boost\u2019 over any existing table. A second wavetable can then be combined using numerous techniques such as interlacing odd and even harmonics, and the result passed through a third modulation. That is complicated\u00ad and I think a skeuomorphic interface is justified in understanding the flow. Gladiator <\/em>is skeuomorphic to the gills \u2013 straight out of the Reason<\/a><\/em> camp. But it works, I quite like seeing the waves on the little screens and have some insight into what I\u2019m creating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Icarus2<\/em> is definitely a response to Serum<\/em>. It comes a year after and picks up the currently cool flat interface. \u2018Harmonic Content Morphing\u2019 is now \u20183D wavetable synthesis\u2019 \u2013 much the same process \u2013 wavetable and modifications, but all in real time. (Note that Tone2 counts \u20183D wavetables\u2019 and \u2018classic wavetables\u2019 as two kinds of synthesis, which starts to put the \u2018bom\u2019 in the \u2018bast\u2019). There are three oscillators, two filters, a plethora of modulators and reasonable effect rack, the most interesting aspect of which is that it has a feedback path. There are similarities to Serum, Pigments<\/a>, Dune<\/a>, Europa<\/em> et al. I will only note the differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resynthesis is quite clever in Icarus2<\/em>. I have a sample of a guitar pluck with a strong 7th harmony, it causes Serum<\/em> to bleat helpless warbles but Icarus2<\/em> managed to figure it out. Same with a small section of Andy Williams singing Old Man River<\/em> which ended up a bit watery but fixable. There are also additive and granular modes which so far haven\u2019t worked as well for me. When you use the resynthesis macro, it sets up the main LFO to move through the wavetable at the correct speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A special case of resampling, Vocoder loads a voice sample and processes it to sound like a traditional 70\u2019s vocoder sound (like the Radias<\/a>). There are other things that vocoding can do that are not clearly supported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the other alleged techniques are performed by the filters, which in some ways are the best bit of Icarus2<\/em>. These appear to be convolution impulses, and include standard types, vowels, combs, ring modulations, and one called \u2018boobs\u2019 (which surely is designed to appeal to female synthesists). For some reason we are told it\u2019s \u201ca best-of selection of over 300 filter-algorithms that were developed by Dipl. Inf. Univ. Markus Krause<\/em>\u201d, in which case 237 of those must have sucked. My highlight are the fractal filters. These aren\u2019t described in the manual but possibly are the same as in Tone2\u2019s Electra<\/em> \u2013 the explanation of one is \u201cModels a real crazy analogue circuit which cannot make up its mind! It simply can\u2019t decide if it wants to be a square wave, a sine, a sawtooth, noise or feedback. PW controls it\u2019s undecided mood. The tuning mostly follows oscillator pitch<\/em>.\u201d Which seems accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few filters aspire to emulate physical modelling with some success, which is counted as another of the 54 synthesis techniques\u2026 I should really just pause for a moment and answer the question \u2013 no, Icarus2<\/em> does not<\/strong> have 54 unique synthesis methods. Tone2 also has a nasty habit of claiming that no other tool can do this or that \u2013 which is bullshit. Instead Icarus2<\/em> is able to achieve a wide range of sonic outcomes that compares well to many other one process machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t space to do more than mention the arpeggiator and a glitch sequencer which you can see on their website anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really like Icarus<\/em>. It\u2019s more pleasant to use than most of the other comparable boxes, in that your fingers will go the right direction most of the time to make the changes you expect. Serum<\/em> is very close, Pigments<\/em> nowhere near. If I was forced to recommend only one wavetable synthesiser it would be a high contender. Just stop sticking the cucumber down the pants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unashamedly Digital The other day I saw a review that complained the Tone2 synthesisers were \u2018unashamedly digital\u2019. Which introduces shame into how you make bleep-bloop noises. Could we just say \u2018proudly digital\u2019 or better still not clutch our analogue pearls about this odd little woody\\tinny dichotomy? Bloody hell people.Tone 2 seems get a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[13,6],"class_list":["post-343","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","tag-spectral","tag-wavetable"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}