Dillon Bastan Iota II: if you miss iZotope Iris 2, you will love this visual multi-sampler workstation

Dillon Bastan Iota II is a new visual spectral multi-sampling workstation that could be the spiritual successor to the long-missing iZotope Iris 2.

Many years ago, iZotope released the sample-based spectral synthesizer, Iris. Later, they also released Iris 2. Both were multi-layer samplers that let you edit spectra by painting directly into the sound. No successor ever appeared; both fascinating plugins were discontinued. A big shame.

Now there’s a plugin that goes in the same direction. Dillon Bastan, known for its wonderful, experimental M4L device, has released Iota II, a multi-layer sample-manipulation tool with Iris-style spectral painting and more.

Dillon Bastan Iota II

Iota II is described as an advanced, in-depth experimental visual workshop of multi-sampling. It’s like an experimental Photoshop for audio. 

Why Iota II? A few years ago, Dillon Bastan released Iota for Ableton M4L; Iota II is its super-powered successor, available as both a plugin and a standalone application.

The core features six sample slots, where you can drop samples from the included factory library or your own collection. Once dropped, you instantly get the imported sample’s spectrogram, with a zoom option. You can adjust the gain and fine-tune each sample.

That’s where the fun begins in Iota II. The plugin’s core uses so-called “paths,” each with its own settings for playback, effects, and playback sequence, and you can create up to 12 different paths.

The path can have a distinct playback algorithm, including normal, spectral, and resynthesis. Each has various parameters; for example, spectral mode includes a built-in spectral filter. You can also set the playback mode to granular/classic or scrub, which moves from point to point along the playback path.

Inside a path, you can then draw as many free-form playback sequences (layers) as you want as 2D points. This goes super deep. It isn’t limited to left-to-right or right-to-left playback. Your sequence can also travel up and down, and vice versa, in the spectrogram.

You can also drop an image to get a sequence function. Each layer can have its own length and repeat rate.

Each point represents a playback and filtering position that matches the spectrogram (X = sample position, Y = filtering position). If you need every detail, you can also edit individual points.  You can play back the sequences individually or loop through them.

This lets you cycle through the six samples simultaneously using a large number of sequences, generating highly evolving textures.

Flexible Triggering, Effects & Modulation 

Drawing into the spectrogram is strongly reminiscent of iZotope Iris 2, but goes far beyond it. Dillon Bastan Iota II also lets you trigger these playbacks in two ways. You can play it from your MIDI keyboard with a MIDI note.

In this mode, you get classic repitch sample playback. Alternatively, you have the auto emit mode, which includes physics gravity attractors that are fully customizable with various controls: interval, delay, skip, variance, and more.

Sound refinements can be done with effects: filter with three modes: spectral (FFT-based), classic biquadratic, and latter, delay, overdrive, sample reduction, and ring modulation. Getting more modulation is no problem.

Iota II includes an advanced bipolar modulation system with two multi-wave LFOs with perlin noise option, two looping envelopes, two path-following sequences, two random spray values, two macros, MPE slide/pressure, and more. On top of that, it has an overall voice amp ADSR envelope.

Iota II is a sample-mangling workstation. Depending on how you use it, it can be many things. It can be a precise multi-sample chopper, an experimental granular synth, a spectral and resampling monster like Iris 2, and much more.

First Impression

Iris 2 is one of my favorite synthesizers, and it pained me when iZotope removed it from their portfolio without a replacement. With Iota II, you now have a plugin that brings back much of what Iris 2 makes so appealing—and goes even further. 

Dillon Bastan Iota II is available now for $60. It runs as a VST3, AU, and LV2 plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel), Linux, and Windows. A free trial is available on the official website.

More information here: Dillon Bastan 

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