Exaltone®

Note Profile

Molecule

About

Exaltone is Firmenich's macrocyclic musk ketone and the plain parent of muscone. Perfumer's Apprentice gives its smell in four words: musk, sweet, animalic, powdery. The same listing calls it a powerful musky odour very similar to that of muscone, and superior in type and beauty. It is one of a small group of materials the trade calls the finest and most efficient fixatives known.

Scent Profile

Clean_musk leads, because the single source names Musk first and then calls the whole material a powerful musky odour. Sweet_vanillic is the second word in that four-term list. Animalic is the third, and it is set slightly above the sweetness for one reason: the source anchors the material to muscone, and the published muscone note carries animalic. Powdery closes the list. Below the naming line, dry_woody and mineral are near-zero placeholders with open spreads, not claims - no source names either facet, and they are kept off zero so the vector does not assert an absence nobody stated. Every facet here rests on one listing of four adjectives, which is why the spreads on the four named ones run 0.14 to 0.20.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~40h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Made synthetically. CAS 502-72-7, cyclopentadecanone, a 15-membered macrocyclic ketone. It is muscone without the ring methyl group, which is the whole structural difference between the two and the reason the trade compares them. Firmenich sells it, and it ships as a solid powder rather than a liquid.

Usage in Perfumery

A base fixative used at trace levels. The listing states the odour becomes more noticeable at concentrations below 1 per cent, so use is kept at or under 1 per cent of the finished oil. That is unusual and worth stating plainly: most musks need dosing up to register, and this one reads more clearly when it is dosed down. Attested on 5 Parfumo placements across 2 brands, and on no Fragrantica note listing.