iZotope Iris 2 Synthesizer Review

In this video, Mark Barkan (Higher HZ) takes an in-depth look at iZotope Iris 2.

iZotope Iris 2 is a sample-based synthesizer that they say combines ‘the power of a sampler, the flexibility of a modular synth, and the fun of spectral filtering’.

Topics covered include:

00:00:00 Intro & Overview
00:02:24 Demo
00:04:31 Iris2
00:08:09 iZotope & Price
00:11:30 Good & Bad
00:14:06 Walkthrough
00:14:12 Presets
00:16:38 OSC
00:17:21 Architecture
00:20:40 Modulation
00:21:52 Samples
00:25:42 Play Modes
00:28:27 Draw Tools
00:32:30 More Samples
00:34:21 Building A Sound
00:36:28 Second Layer
00:37:05 Third Layer
00:43:02 More Modulation
00:47:31 Extras & Effects
00:53:06 Conclusion

If you’ve used Iris 2, share your thoughts on it in the comments!

9 thoughts on “iZotope Iris 2 Synthesizer Review

  1. I got a nice price on Iris 2 at some point. It is a fascinating synth with lots of very unusual and other-worldly kinds of tones.

    My only gripe is that the quality of the sample libraries isn’t very good. IIRC, I clicked on a cat sound, it was was some dude imitating a cat. They were all kind of like that, so I just deleted the sample libraries. I have better sound fx libraries and will use those instead.

    1. I definitely got the same impression. fascinating idea, genuinely good implementation,, overall good UX, but just very mediocre sound profile and stock usability because of such an unimaginative and shoddy stock library. I think that really hurt this device in the long-run, and the creative potential was so overshadowed by an underwhelming bunch of presets that made it sounds worse that most sample libraries

    1. You mean like every vintage hardware synth that is ever mentioned? Can’t a software synth be “vintage”? (The answer is yes.)

      1. Agree with this sentiment, 7 year old doesn’t mean outdated. Sometimes we forget about soft synths too quickly and move to the next. This review shows how capable Iris 2 is still and has some great possibilities sound design wise.

      2. Zebra’s pretty old and Virsyn’s Cube’s coming back (I mean besides being on the Apple store). There seem to be others that didn’t make it because there may have been an overfocus on emulating vintage/analog synths. This might have even taken us backward a few steps in some ways.

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