iris 2 or kaleidoscope?

[ian]

i'll probably end up getting both of these somewhere down the line anyway but right now i'm looking at these two tools to add to my sound design arsenal and can only realistically afford one. so my questions are: which is more useful for ambient music? which is better for its price range? which has more applications outside of ambient music? are the two even comparable? would i actually benefit from having both? which is easier on cpu? any of you wanna play 20 questions sometime?

thanks.

[aoVI]

Demo'd Kaleidoscope a while back, and own Iris 1, so take my comment with that in mind.

Bought Iris 1 and fell out of love with it after just a couple of months, and didn't click with Kaleidoscope much. I guess that sort of synthesis isn't my thing. I don't do much with samples at all.

Izotope seems to be stalled on Iris 2 fixes, from what little I have followed on the forums.

So my info is limited and negative, sorry....must have just wanted to hear myself type. :biggrin:

[Ahornberg]

Iris 2 is a sampler with a special kind of graphical EQ. So you can play it using a keyboard.
My usage of Iris 2 is to load samples and tweak them to get a pad or whatever kind of sound I imagine, and then I play this sound.
In Iris 2, samples can have a length of 1 minute max.

Kaleidoscope is an effect. You can't play a melody with it.
My usage of Kaleidoscope is to run it over a recording several times with different settings and record the results.
Using Kaleidoscope, the input source can be of any length.

[seismic1]

AudioDeluxe had a flash sale at the end of July and were offering Iris2 for $49. It may be worth waiting for an opportune moment to pick this up.

[ian]

Iris 2 is a sampler with a special kind of graphical EQ. So you can play it using a keyboard.
My usage of Iris 2 is to load samples and tweak them to get a pad or whatever kind of sound I imagine, and then I play this sound.
In Iris 2, samples can have a length of 1 minute max.

Kaleidoscope is an effect. You can't play a melody with it.
My usage of Kaleidoscope is to run it over a recording several times with different settings and record the results.
Using Kaleidoscope, the input source can be of any length.

i know what they do, otherwise i wouldn't be interested in them haha. i'm asking which is better for the time being.

AudioDeluxe had a flash sale at the end of July and were offering Iris2 for $49. It may be worth waiting for an opportune moment to pick this up.

yeah, i'm upset i missed that. i think that is what i'll end up doing. if i can't catch a huge sale like that before the holiday season then i'll wait till then to buy it since it and kaleidoscope are likely to be on sale then. do you have experience with them? what do you think?

[seismic1]

I only bought Iris 3 weeks ago, and haven't yet had any time to check its capabilities out. I had a couple of "tinker" sessions with the various controls and like the results using the supplied samples, so yeah, I could see this being a very useful tool for making textures and backing pads etc. Which is why I bought it.

I haven't tried Kaleidoscope. When it was originally released I heard tales of high CPU usage, which put me off as I only have a quad-core i5. Subsequent releases are supposed to have cut the CPU requirements, so it may be time to take it for a test-drive. I'm planning to buy a new machine in a couple of years, so that may also cause me to re-evaluate things.

[Makrotulpa]

I would say for price and CPU w/regard to ambient music you'd find better value with Iris. It's quite easy to use relative to Kaleidoscope, covers more bases and is generally found around the internets for cheaper. If you have a Mac and Logic X I think Alchemy is probably more useful.
Kaleidoscope is a more specialist kind of thing - I've used it to create sounds that I will then put in a sampler and play - i've also used it to add shimmering atmospheres or glassy rhythms to prepared material. I find if I have a pad track that I want to sound more "organic" Kaleidoscope + some reverb is a pretty magic mix.
One is a VSTi - the other is an Effect. Spectral Synth VS Spectral Resonator. Which do you think sounds more useful to you?

[MaximumMovementTheatre]

NI have Form appearing soon as standalone or part of Komplete 11, looks to be very Iris at a quick glance

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/form/

[Ahornberg]

Comparing Iris 2 to Kaleidoscope is like comparing apples and oranges.

Iris 2 is a sampler with a very special graphical filter section and lots of modulation options.

Kaleidoscope is an effect that applies different types of resonant filters driven by one or two photos or drawings based on chooseable scales and tunings.

Personally I prefer Kaleidoscope but the best will come out by using both and additional using the Mangle ;)

[ian]

NI have Form appearing soon as standalone or part of Komplete 11, looks to be very Iris at a quick glance

https://www.native-instruments.com/e...e/synths/form/

i was optimistic about this based on the marketing but, after watching some demos, i realized there's barely anything it does that i couldn't do with a different sampler. pretty disappointing, i think.

i think i will get iris at some point but i will demo both first. i know the plugins are pretty different. i meant to ask pretty generally, like: "which of these is better for ambient music" but there's not really a right answer to that so..

does anyone here use kaleidoscope/iris for music outside of ambient stuff? might be asking that question in the wrong place.

[Guest]

I bought Iris1 secondhand on KVR - I think it was $30. For that sort of money it is well worth it. I have heard Iris2 is possibly not as useful as Iris1 (or at least not a huge leap forward) depending on what you want to do. Iris1 is ideal for ambient music. I have not used kaleidoscope but was not attracted to it from the various demo videos as it looked a bit fiddly to use / hard to predict. Iris1 is very simple to use and easy to predict the outcomes - but I've been using that sort of spectral editing for a long time in Adobe Audition

[aoVI]

If anyone has a completed piece using Iris, please post it. Curious to see how and where others found a place for it.

[Guest]

If anyone has a completed piece using Iris, please post it. Curious to see how and where others found a place for it.

here is a demo using a single short recording of a bird - the first third or so is a single instance of Iris1, then the same repeated with added Adaptiverb, then an unprocessed bit of the original recording that has just been used. Iris1 has been used in the simplest way possible, three instances of the same recording, choosing different bits of the spectrum and then looping slightly different lengths of each. Only used the natural pitch plus or minus a semitone, only one note at a time. Most of this I could have done in the past and probably did do similar using Adobe Audition. Using Iris1 is far quicker and better because of the interactivity of the interface. I bought mine for $30 on KVR - I have seen Iris2 for $50 - it is probably better but so marginally for what I want that whichever came up secondhand first was the one for me

https://soundcloud.com/greghooper/magpie-1-for-ao-01/s-a2D4A

[ian]

i demoed iris 2 a few days ago and unfortunately it left a huge dent in fl studio's cpu usage on my little laptop. it made it hard to even close plugins' windows without latency. unless i was using it wrong, i don't think it will be feasible for me to get until i get or build a computer better equipped to handle the strain of running a daw. that won't happen for a few years. i will demo kaleidoscope later but the price is a turn-off, especially now that i am getting more interested in photography and would rather start spending the little free cash i have on more gear for that. if any of you see kaleidoscope on sale, please let me know!

[synkrotron]

If I want to use a sample but don't want to mangle it much then I use Iris 2. But if I want to create something a bit different then I turn to Absynth 5.

I demo'd Kaleidoscope earlier this year and my laptop could not handle it at all. That, coupled with the price put me right off.

cheers

andy