Why musicians should know about Icarus

Icarus is an exceptionally powerful, new synthesizer with ‘3D wavetable synthesis’. It offers a fresh signature sound, which quickly catches your audiences’ attention. The innovative resynthesis can rebuild any sound with a mouse-click. An easy to use interface and a massive amount of inspiring factory sounds allow you to create professional tracks rapidly and with very low effort.

The sound quality surpasses conventional synths, however you don’t need to own a NASA computer to be able to use Icarus, since it offers the best possible sound qualityand low CPU requirement.

What’s new with ‘3D wavetable synthesis’?

Icarus is a ‘3D wavetable synth’, because we extended the popular traditional wavetable synthesis, which is capable of cross-blending waveforms, with an additional dimension for morphing. Together with many other innovations, this is one of the secrets, why Icarus can create sounds with lots of dynamic expression and movement. Many ‘Icarus sounds’ can not be created by other synthesizers. Get instantly inspired by a massive amount of fresh sounds and create tracks with an unique character!

Is Icarus the most powerful synthesizer?

Icarus offers the power of hardware and the flexibility of software. It offers a huge sonic range and is extremely versatile, but still remains very easy to use. The exceptionally powerful audio engine is able to reproduce all important synthesizer sounds. As a result you can replace a very expensive collection of hard- and software with a single synthesizer. Furthermore you do not longer have to deal with a large number of different and complicated user interfaces.

This synthesizer can do: All classic synthesis methods, 3D wavetables, morphing, resynthesis of samples and speech, vocoder …  It has: 53 effects, 3×10 stereo oscillators with hypersaw, dual stereo filters with 62 filter types, a powerful wavetable editor…

Reviews

“It’s a really amazing synthesizer. Tone2 have done a wonderful job at crafting this great synth which is for sure a game changer. Icarus is an incredibly versatile synth and able to produce awesome sounds in a jiffy. It’s a must-have.”
Best Software Synthesizers 2016

“A truly powerful beast with nearly endless combinations of sound manipulation capabilities. I really like the vocoder’s sound, and the resynthesis they’ve included is easy to use. It has awesome waveform/wavetable editing, tons of high quality presets, and its huge number of filter and effect types really make this a knockout synth you simply must try for yourself.”

More reviews will be available soon…

Create great songs quickly and with low effort

If you want to save time you need audio products which are reliable and efficient to work with. Furthermore you need instant access to a great and inspiring library. Discover over 1000 production-ready sounds with Icarus’ comfortable patch browser. Each sound has been carefully built by a professional sound designer and has been crafted with lot’s of love and great attention to detail. The patches are very easy to mix, because they’ve been carefully EQed, pre-mastered and are running in perfect sync to the tempo of your track.

The powerful arpeggiator instantly creates inspiring and wonderful melodies. Smart playing aids like autochord speed up the production process and assist you whenever you wish this. All patches can be morphed with the modwheel. This makes it easy for you to add exciting movement to your tracks.

A customizable interface allows you to select your favorite color. With several instances of Icarus loaded at the same time, it’s even possible to show single instances with different colors. This helps you to keep the orientation, when you’re working on a complex project with many tracks.

Why you need vocals to create a chart hit

If you listen to successful chart hits, you’ll quickly notice that nearly all of them use lots of vocalic sounds. We humans instinctively love them, because they are close to our speech. But adding unique vocals to your tracks is difficult and requires lots of work: You need lots of time, a singer, a microphone, a recording studio, you need to cut samples and finally process the “not so” talented singer with autotune…

With Icarus you can avoid this hassle, because it can sing hymns for you! All you need to do is to pick one of the vocoder patches and play a melody on the keyboard. But these sounds are not just a bunch of ‘vocal samples’  – this is real speech synthesis. That’s one of the secrets why these vocal chants are never out-of-tune. Like magic they are correctly time-stretched for the ‘right groove’ and synchronize to your song automatically!  With the built-in vocoder module you can easily create your own phrases and make yourself sound like a robot.  It has never been so easy to create professional tracks with vocalic sounds!

Entertainment with effects

Icarus comes with a mighty and flexible effects section. 53 different effects can be combined in modular slots to build new and exciting effects. Save them to your harddisc, use them to tweak existing patches or simply get entertained by your own creations!

Discover the wonderful world of synthesis!

Don’t miss the experience of creating your own sounds! With Icarus and a little patience anyone can become a great sound designer, since tweaking the intuitive user interface is fun and very easy to learn. Many animated displays give you visual feedback and make tweaking accessible to anyone, regardless of the skill level. With Icarus you can always instantly see and hear what you’re doing.

The innovative resynthesis function in Icarus allows you to rebuild nearly any sound with a single mouse-click: Simply click on the resynthesis button and select a wav file. Like magic, Icarus will automatically assemble a patch, which sounds very close to the original sound. Our new algorithm gives better results and is easier to use than traditional methods.  You can shape your sounds with many exciting morph modes, rich oscillators, a massive amount of wonderful filters and a modular effect section.

A mighty wavetable editor is available for experts. It includes a massive amount of professional tools to tweak wavetables, like an additive spectrum editor or the possibility to paint waveforms with the mouse.
If you design your own sounds, they are automatically stored within your tracks. There will be no broken songs because there are files missing on your hardisc. This means that your musical creations will be always safe. Also, your own patches, waveforms and wavetables can be saved to fxp or wav format. This makes it easy for you to manage your own creations. Exchange your sounds with friends, export them to 3rd party software or create your own sets.

Spice up your tracks with exciting movement

Modulation is where the true power of the synth emerges. Do you want to use the LFO to wobble your filter? Simply turn a knob and you’re on your way.  Modulation can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. By using the modulation matrix, Icarus allows you to connect dozens of modulation sources to all important sound parameters. Modulate almost any parameter, well into audio-rate speed, from internal modulation sources like LFOs, punchy envelopes, gates, step sequencers, and a wide variety of MIDI signals. We’ve also included midi-learn, so assigning CC’s is as simple as a right-click.

Is Icarus ready for the future?

Icarus comes with free personal support as well as frequent, free updates and improvements. It will be extended with new features and additional sounds regularly. This synthesizer has been designed in a way that it can be expanded easily. The open structure allows you, Tone2 and 3rd party developers to extend it with new content.

Features & technical details

  • 3D wavetable synthesizer: Wavetables can be morphed in several dimensions
  • Powerful and flexible sound engine with true stereo architecture
  • High-end sound quality with low CPU requirement
  • Easy to use interface with direct visual feedback
  • Huge sonic range
  • Many exclusive sounds, which are not possible with other synthesizers
  • Perfect for modern, as well as all other music styles
  • Over 1000 sounds by professional designers
  • Patch browser and flexible preset management
  • New resynthesis method, which is easy to use and gives good results
  • Modular effect section with 53 effects
  • High quality vocoder with 1024 bands
  • 3 oscillator blocks, each offering up to 10 stereo oscillators, which can play hypersaws, unison, stacks or chords
  • 54 different morph modes (FM, PWM, formant, phase distort, sync, …)
  • All morph modes can be combined with any kind of wavetable or hypersaw
  • Wavetable editor with many features
  • A wavetable generator can create completely new wavetables
  • Waveforms can be painted using the mouse
  • Additive spectrum editor
  • Import and export of wavetables/waveforms from other synthesizers
  • Dual multi-mode filter section with 62 filter types and 8 distortion types
  • Arpeggiator with advanced features like chords, glides, swing & shuffle
  • Fast and punchy envelopes
  • LFOs with audio-rate modulation speed and BPM sync
  • Flexible mod matrix
  • Midi learn support
  • Dynamic microtuning to enhance chords
  • Customizable user interface with 40 colors schemes
  • Expandability
  • Detailed manual in English and German

  • Video tutorials

    Resynthesis
    Arpeggiator
    Vocoder
    Oscillator section
    Filter section
    Effect section
    Wavetable editor

    More video tutorials will be available soon.

    System requirements

    PC: Windows XP / ME / 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / Vista (32 bit or 64 bit)
    Mac: Mac OSX 10.5 or higher
    Processor with 1Ghz or faster

    PC formats: 32-bit VSTi, 64-bit VSTi, 32 bit standalone, 64 bit standalone
    Mac formats: 32-bit VSTi, 64-bit VSTi, 32-bit Audiounit, 64-bit Audiounit