this could be lengthy, but i’ll try to make it short.
my iridium is in the shop, as the screen got dislodged a bit during shipping. being taken care of under warranty, so that’s good. strangely, the touch screen still worked and i was able to program patches with it.
so, the first thing is that the build quality is not as good as the hydra, which ime is rock-solid.
hydrasynth’s manual is great. full print. they supply pdf addenda for firmware updates. iridium’s manual is mostly online. not clear how they document their firmware updates. i did one firmware update for iridium that alleviated a clicking problem in the release of the amp envelope. the update process worked really well, as does hydra’s (hydra has had 3-4 updates, both for bug fixes and new features). i’m excited to see the iridium’s new firmware. btw, i really dislike online manuals.
okay, how does it sound, right?
imo, the iridium’s filters sound more lush—or maybe that was the mood i was in and how i was programming. i’ve programmed maybe 10-15 patches? i lost the first one due to what i consider a counterintuitive file management system (hydra has a bit of this as well). iridium has three filters, hydra has two. iirc, the iridium could stand to have more routing options. you can pan the filters in iridium, which is very cool.
the hydra is deep and has some really interesting possibilities with modulating parameters. right now it’s a little easier to do than the iridium (though i’ve seen reports that v 3.0 will make it easier). the iridium has more modulation slots and each slot has the possibility of having another source modulate the main source (!), which opens up a ton of possibilities. hydra can do that, but you need to designate another modulation slot to do that—or use a macro. the macros on the hydra are an advantage because you can have up to eight variations on a specific patch at the push of a button, or real-time control via the encoders.
hydra has a slight advantage in that the lfo menu has a random setting. iridium has one more lfo.
the iridium oscillator section is nuts. the possibilities are seemingly endless. so many. i’m a fan of the developer and wish he would add some of the waveforms that he used in his nlog app. all three oscillators share the same possibilities. i haven’t delved into sample import yet in particle (granular). kernel (fm) is very cool, as are the waveform and wavetable options. there’s a lot going on that you can mix and match.
osc 1 and 2 on hydra are the heavy hitters, while osc 3 doesn’t have quite the sonic possibilities. the hydra has the mutator sections on osc 1 and 2, which adds a lot of capabilities—some unpleasant.
i like the ring mod section on the hydra better, as iridium only has 1->3 or 2->3 (iirc). hydra can ring mod any osc by another one.
the effects… i wish each would add a non-linear reverb. i can’t recall if the iridium has reverse delay or not. having a ring mod slot (like a pedal) would be welcome for both. lo-fi/bit crush sounds in the hydra are in the effects section; they’re in the third filter (name of which i forget right now) in the iridium. i can’t recall if hydra has more possibilities for modulating effects parameters or not.
pads on the iridium are not touch sensitive; hydra desktop’s have poly aftertouch. right now the iridium doesn’t respond to pat, but i hear that’s in the next update (watch out!). @lordradish knows more about this than me.
iridium has 16 voices; hydra had eight. if you get the hydra key and desktop, it’s still cheaper than the iridium. you’d get 16 voices and six oscillators. whether you’d get more sonics than the iridium is debatable.
okay, that wasn’t short at all.
