Get with the programmers
Tone 2 founder, developer and programmer Markus Krause drops a bombshell
“Icarus2 is one of the most versatile and mighty synths ever”
Tell us about the history of Tone2.
“Back in the 90s, me and some friends were part of the demo scene. At 13, I started programming Trackers for SoundBlastercards and DOS and developing simple synths. Computers in those days were too slow to generate anything useful in real time, so the output was rendered to a WAV file and used as samples for a tracker.
“At the end of the 90s, I was part of the team that developed All Sound Tracker – a sample-based sequencer made for the SoundBlaster AWE 32. And in the early 00s, I played with some friends in a band called Wellental. That’s the point when I started programming my own VST plugins. Later, I programmed the audio engine for several plugins by reFX – Vanguard, JunoX, PlastiCZ and Slayer.
“Tone2 was founded in 2004 to put some of my ideas – FilterBank and the HCM synthesis – into action. It was very difficult to survive in an overcrowded market. Luckily, Gladiator and Electra were a big success, and many artists bought our products.”
Your latest synth is Icarus 2. What sets it apart?
“Icarus2 is one of the most versatile and mighty synths ever, allowing you to combine 54 different synthesis methods and providing a gigantic sonic range. The audio engine is not only able to create all classic synth sounds, but also a vast range of fresh sounds, which are impossible with other products. Icarus comes with the largest collection of filters available in a synth. The audio engine offers many powerful features like a drum sequencer, a built-in vocoder, resynthesis, a glitch sequencer, the most advanced wavetable editor available, an extremely mighty osc section, MSEGs… The audio engine offers highend sound quality and extreme flexibility with low demands on CPU.”
How would you differentiate the various Tone2 synths?
“Icarus2 is a huge synth with a very modern sound. It has a massive amount of features and is targeted at pros. Electra2 is a popular multilayer workstation that’s powerful but easy to use. Gladiator3’s innovative HCM-synthesis offers a different approach to sound design. RayBlaster’s Impulse Modeling Synthesis is a radically new approach to synthetic sound generation that creates its sound by combining many short bursts of energy. Nemesis can do classic FM as well as a new approach called NeoFM, which is more powerful and easier to program. A signature sound is generated by its engine, which is capable of providing warm, silky and creamy tones. And Saurus2 is an analogue synth emulation.”
What’s your favourite synthesis method?
“My favourites are FM, wavetables, phase-distortion and additive. The most difficult one to develop was the Impulse Modeling Synthesis of RayBlaster. Since it’s a radically new approach, it wasn’t clear what features it needed, what sample content worked best with it and how sounds would be designed. I had to do lots of experiments.”
What’s next for Tone2?
“Icarus2 was our final synth release. In future, there will be only free updates for the existing products and soundsets.” tone2.com