“We were able to fire up a bass sound that was indistinguishable from the flavour of New Order’s Blue Monday in seconds”: EastWest Sounds Iconic review

What is it?

The 1980s was the decade in which the synthesizer became fully integrated into the fabric of mainstream pop. It was a key fixture in the arty, rock-adjacent work of New Order as well as the more chart-friendly fare of Duran Duran all the way to the globe-dominating Thriller by Michael Jackson. The synthesizer ceased to be the purview of the quirky experimentalists and became a firm studio staple.

It’s these era-defining sounds that EastWest Sounds’ most recent sample library – the rightfully titled Iconic – draws from.

Captured at the equally hallowed EastWest Studio 1, this collection of authentic synth leads, basses, pads, arps and textures is designed to give the user immediate access to the types of bold, recognisable sounds that are hugely familiar to anyone who ever owned a radio between 1981 and 2000.

The wrangling of these sounds was overseen by Anthony Marinelli – the gifted producer and synth programmer behind the synth parts for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, as well as standout work Lionel Richie, Kenny Loggins, Supertramp and James Brown. Safe hands then.

Accessed via EastWest Sounds’ Opus engine, the 138GB-strong Iconic serves up this smorgasbord of sounds by way of a sprawling preset library – neatly and succinctly organised into two categories. Classic and Classic Elements.

Classic is where the prime meat of Iconic is located, featuring those tailored flagship sounds, organised into Arp, Bass, Lead, Pad, Poly, Keys and FX.

Elements presents many of the sampled sounds dry and fully editable.

The additional expansion pack ‘Beyond Iconic’ opens up some of the sounds to more modern-tinged flavours. It can be purchased in tandem with the main pack or as part of the ComposerCloud+ sub.

Pricing

• Full price: $119 (RRP: $299)
• Also available as part of an EastWest ComposerCloud+ subscription for $19.99 per month

Buying direct from EastWest will earn you a huge saving with $180 off the RRP. This introductory offer might not be around for much longer, so it could be worth getting in there quick.

If you don't want to pay the full amount upfront then you can also opt for flexible payments of three, six, or 12 months with Affirm (requires application of credit).

Performance

Installation of Iconic is – as always for EastWest’s software – a breeze via the company’s Opus Installer Platform. We were immediately struck by just how instantaneously we were able to fire up a bass sound that was indistinguishable from the flavour of New Order’s Blue Monday. It took seconds (the aptly-named ‘Bluish Monday’ preset).

Further random present selections gave astonishingly accurate recreations of sounds that evoked the classics. It’s not hard to decode what these tones are tailored for. Preset names include ‘Take on You’ to ‘Thrilling’ (we’ll let you work out what classics they’re referencing there). The accuracy across the board is top-notch. As expected.

But while the headline is these tailored-tones, Iconic’s main UI – accessed via Opus’s second tab (Play) – is where some really exciting variations of these sounds can be constructed.

With an X/Y pad at the centre of the sleek UI, Iconic’s options open up in ways you wouldn’t expect.

That X/Y pad in particular is an inviting route into personalising these immaculate source sounds, allowing you to navigate between four macro effects (Stutter, Dream, Space and Grit), and strike a personalised balance of the four to inform your developing sound. These can affect other parameters across the UI, so keep an eye on the surrounding knob-based sections.

Speaking of which, around that X/Y-pad nucleus is where you’ll be able to navigate a wealth of knob-based parameters, organised into specific areas. While this might appear daunting to those warming to the pack for its celebrity-headline sounds, what you have here is a route to crafting original synth tones straight from those hailed synths of yesteryear.

Using these glitzy starting points, it’s tantalising to trigger some movement via the Arp section, or start adjusting the modulation to concoct something unique (yet still retaining familiar echoes).

But it’s really the mouth-watering prospect of gaining access to a whole bundle of classic synths that is probably the broadest draw here. We’re talking the likes of the ARP 2600, a Jupiter-8, a Prophet 5, a Yamaha CS-80 and many more all under one roof.

Although you don’t quite have the range of parameters that a specific emulation of any individual synth would have, there’s still a lot of scope for manipulating these well-captured source tones. The effects section in particular can radically alter these source sounds via Drive, Chorus, Ring Modulation, Reverb, Phaser and Delay amongst others.

Verdict

While the appeal of Iconic will likely come down to your penchant for that classic era of ’80s mega-pop, this is still a deeper sound design tool than you might think from the aesthetics of its promotion. There’s a lot you can do here – and while you might crave deeper control of the individual synths that form the heart of this expansive tool, Iconic still deals out mix (and chart!)-ready synth colours with aplomb.

Hands-on demos

EastWest Sounds

EastWest ICONIC Walkthrough - YouTube

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Alternatives

Arturia V Collection X: $599 at arturia.com

A bundle of hyper-realistic versions of these same legacy synths (plus a lot more!) but with specific controls and tailored instruments-aping parameters per-item. A broader palette than Iconic’s specific era-focus, but incredibly realistic-sounding bang for your synth-buck.

Read the full Arturia V Collection X review

GForce Software Heritage Synth Bundle V1: £667 at gforcesoftware.com

Then there’s GForce Software’s amazing collection of precisely modelled classics. Pricier and broader ranging, but GForce typically brings a level of control (and sonic recreation) that is nearly impossible to tell is software-based.

Read more about the GForce Software Heritage Synth Bundle

Specifications