Waldorf Iridium Mk.2 – New and Improved!
The Iridium Gets A Decent Update
4,5 / 5,0 | 
Well, we didn’t have to wait long for the Iridium Mk.2 to break cover after its leak a few days ago! It’s here, and it’s packing quite a punch! Let’s dig in…
Key Takeaways
- New Seeds Oscillator
- Multitimbrality Doubled from 2 to 4
- Aphex Twin Inspired Per-Note-Parameter Locks
- 4GB Internal RAM
- Upgraded CPU Board
- Import Capability for Nave, Quantum and Iridium Presets
- USB and SD Card Storage
Waldorf Iridium Mk.2
The Waldorf Iridium Mk.2 – What’s New?
Just like the Mk.1, the new Iridium is a fully digital, 16-voice synthesiser, but as you’d expect, there’s more going on here. First up, the multi-timbrality has doubled from two to four layers with three of the available digital oscillators per voice.
There’s been some core improvements too, in the shape of an upgraded CPU board with expanded RAM and flash storage, which yields larger sample capacity and extra synthesis capability. All the oscillator modes from the original are here: Wavetable, VA, Particle (Sampling and Granular Sampling), Resonator and Kernel, along with the new Seeds oscillator.
Get Planting Your Seeds
Seeds takes inspiration from wavetable synthesis, something Waldorf is very well known for. They describe this as a more detailed journey through waveforms by dynamically synthesizing each waypoint from sub-oscillators, called ‘Seeds’. These can then be controlled and recombined using methods like ring modulation, frequency modulation, wavetables and partials.
Furthermore, they can be enriched by noise and non-pitched material, so, similar to wavetable synthesis, you can take either a pre-defined timbral path through the Seeds, or edit and create your own. It sounds complicated, but in demos we’ve heard it’s definitely very interesting.
Iridium x Aphex Twin
Iridium Mk.2 also comes with Per-Note-Parameter-Locks, a feature designed in collaboration with Aphex Twin. This allows each of the 128 sequencer steps to have up to 16 individual parameter variations assigned to them, just by holding a note and turning knobs. PNP Locks can be stored on each patch and edited on a dedicated page.
It’s not often you see a feature from a lesser synth make an appearance on a more costly one, but Waldorf has added the Protein’s ‘Flavour’ control to the Iridium Mk.2. Flavour makes tiny variations to things like timing, timbre, pitch and more to give you subtle but noticeable organic variations on your patch.
Existing Iridium Owners Get New Stuff Too!
Along with the expanded multi-timbrality, new multitimbral modes are now available, such as Round Robin and Random Robin. Waldorf has certainly put that expanded memory to good use. Furthermore, a general OS update for the original Iridium and Quantum is coming soon, which will bring some of these new features to the existing synths, plus some new features like a polyphonic arpeggiator, microtonal features and a Mutator patch randomiser!
The Iridium was a big hit for Waldorf, and the Mk.2 certainly takes that legacy and runs with it, giving us more in terms of power and features. It’s a premium digital synth, with a premium price tag, but it also has a premium feature set that will satisfy existing Iridium fans and bring new people to the table, too.
More Information
The new Waldorf Iridium Mk.2 will retail for €2,369 and is available to order now*.
Iridium Mk.2 – the Leak
[March 1st, 2026] They’re cracking the whip over at Waldorf with a slew of new products seemingly every few weeks. Now we have a leak of their latest synthesizer, the Iridium Mk.2!
I don’t know what they’re feeding the developers at Waldorf right now, but whatever it is, it’s working as they continue to put new products out at an alarming rate. Hot on the heels of the Protein wavetable synth and the fantastic update to Attack, we now seemingly have a new version of the Iridium.
Waldrof Iridium Mk.2
Just yesterday, they released a teaser video, and if I’m completely honest, I was hoping it might be another product using the Protein platform, something that Waldorf has said is likely to happen. But over at Elektronauts, a new image appeared and it seem that we’re being treated to an Iridium Mk.2!
You may recall that the original Iridium was essentially a Quantum in desktop form, featuring all the synthesis engines of its forebear, but minus the analogue filters. It was a powerful alternative to the Quantum that allowed for desktop, rackmount and VESA-mounted use.
Flavour and Seeds
Information on the Iridium Mk.2 is, as you can imagine, virtually non-existent apart from the photo but from this, we can see that it’s borrowed the Flavour feature from the Protein, as well as adding something called ‘Seeds’.
Flavour allows you to mess with the sonic behaviour of the sounds being played by adding micro-variations. These variations happen to many parameters of the sound in what Waldorf describes as a ‘methodical way’. It’s actually a very cool function, so I’m excited to see how it is applied to the larger sound palette of the Iridium Mk.2.
Anything new from Waldorf is good reason to get excited and I hope we don’t have to wait too long to both see and hear this, as well as learn how much of our annual synth budget it is going to eat up! The original was a big success so we can be fairly sure that the Iridium Mk.2 will follow suit.
More Information
Make sure you come back soon to get all the latest updates!
Meanwhile, the Iridium keyboard, Iridium Core and the M Desktop are still available!
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3 responses to “Waldorf Iridium Mk.2 – New and Improved!”
if that keypad isn’t velocity sensitive I will LOL
Oh boy. I hope for a new Protein 8 voice VA synth. Would be my dream
Powerful and all. I’m still glad i don’t buy any hardware synths costing $2-6000 anymore. It’s a waste of money, then the MK2 version always drops 6 months after a purchase… F that race!