I just got a hammer weighted keyboard, so I wanted a nice piano.
I have analog labs, and it just got me a taste of the quality. But it seems limiting which is crazy.
So it was the perfect time at a great price.
Plus the sound banks that came out with it!
But that ms20 filter! Good lawd.
I cant wait to jump into the full synth!
Hope you enjoy! I’m finding it super inspiring. Just the right level of control to get interesting sounds while still being about to work quickly and not getting overwhelmed, and so much character to the sound. Really impressed!
100% an arturia fanboy . There’s a few in the collection that I find meh , but they’re severely outshined by the good ones . Juno, dx7 , prophet, op-xa , piano and the new cs-80 to name a few .
What have been some of your favs and why ?
I take it you mean these are the good ones? Because I love the versatility of these. And the sound.
I thought having an MC101 would be great for Juno sounds, and they are, but it’s just so hard to browse the engine. And to tweak parameters. I love the immediacy of Arturius GUI, and all the THOUSANDS of presets that come in the curated sound banks.
Yup ! They sounds so good to me . I was servicing a Juno a while back and did a side by side of it and the arturia, I was floored by how good it sounded .
The Jun-6 is one of the best examples of Arturia’s approach to UI design. There are other Juno emulations that add modern features like more modulation, but Arturia gets what is so inspiring about the limitations of the original and starts you off with only that, while still offering the additions in a convenient fold-out panel for when you need them.
Which ones are not so strong, in your opinion?
I only ask so I can approach them with more intention instead of struggling with the sound and getting frustrated.
I always felt that many of the Arturia emulations don’t measure up well with the competition e.g. U-He Repro/Diva, Synapse Audio Legend/Obsession etc but the value-for-money and variety with the discounted V-Collection (€149 for me right now) is always tempting. I’m also not a fan of hardware interfaces modelled in software - the world of software UI design has moved on - but I get that this is Arturia’s “thing” and in fairness they do it well. As @presteign says above, the additional modulations, FX etc turn these into something different.
Personally I’d pay for a separate multi-effect VST like the FX section in Pigments or some of their other synths. The FX are great for sound design. I’d also give a shout out to the Augmented strings/voices which are really nice for ambient and cinematic type sounds.
I think you just need to pick and choose, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. If you bought the V-Collection and only used 3 or 4 of your favourites and they cost you €50 each you’d probably still be getting decent value!
I’d highly recommend people keep an eye on KVR and/or Knobcloud if they want a bargain on individual Arturia instruments or FX second-hand. I recently picked up EFX Fragments second-hand for $25 and it’s great. You can also turn off the granular engine and just run the signal through the FX so that’s fun too. I also grabbed the (old) FX collection V1 recently for just $30 and it includes 3 great delays, a flexible reverb and a handful of other fun bits and bobs.
Yeah I felt likewise but the MS-20’s sound has seriously impressed me. There’s something to having the constrained workflow of these older synths UIs that can sometimes be inspiring too. Depends where you’re coming at it from, if you’re a good synth programmer and have something in mind you’ll get a better result from Diva etc probably, but the Arturia synths are fun for random inspiration.
I can say the SQ80 emu is dead on, even the filter. I compared a lot of my SQ80 custom patch to the VST and honestly its 99 % there, just like my hardware.
Its the reason i decided to try the V collection 9 demo (and i bought it later), i was so impressed.
Had a fun session with the Arturia Analog Collection V9 this morning, and ended up with this little vibe:
One of the V Collection’s less popular instruments is actually one of my favorites. Mini V is generally not considered to be among the most authentic Minimoog emulations (I think I’ve seen one shootout where the reviewer ranked it dead last against a hardware reissue)… but whatever nonexistent Minimoog it may sound like, I really like the sound.
It was one of the first instruments I really got into when I originally bought the V Collection, and I’ve always enjoyed how it made this song come together:
IMO , the SEM seems pretty bleh as well as things like the farsifa, the moog modular and the ARP . All are still worth flipping through the presets but I just found them especially lacklustre
Just curious, what are most people using to adjust settings in V Collection? Just mousing it??
I use this. For everything in the typical subtractive paradigm, I assign filters, envelopes, fx, etc. in the same general arrangement for each synth. I prefer it to mousing.
I do find though that the deeper a synth gets the less intuitive it is for me to set up controllers. Pigments, for example, I primarily use the mouse.
Trackball and notepad for journaling my synth journey
So expressive
Not all in on Arturia here, but I do like these new A-B instruments they released. Feels like they have borrowed a bit from the NI Play series here (no bad thing in itself) and I’ve gone for Pigments, and Augmented Voices/Strings as individual buys (mostly for around 40-60 each onsale). That alone is enough for a long time. Augmented voices is really interesting as there are some very nice “vocals as synth” Kontakt libraries, but very few outside of the Kontakt ecosystem. I’ve no doubt that strings & piano are close to home for Arturia, so that’s why this one specifically stands out.
Agree on the interface thing. Diva is a bit like this with its though old school look - but they go for that vibe hard, and I can live with it - but honestly it’s not necessary at all. A few key macros mapped in Ableton usually brings a more useful interaction with the software. It also looks like Arturia agree with you because of the addition to the new Pigments update; the “Play” mode takes their main sound design page and reduces it to the bare minimum. And the Augmented stuff has that 8 knob interface for easy mapping to macros etc. I’d love Diva to add a front panel that surfaces those key controls for sure.
In my head, this entices people who are not familiar with synthesis to play with the important controls, and it gives pages of layered options for folks who want to go deeper. Pretty much all the big guns now offer a version of controls with X-Y/A-B controls plus 8 key macros pre-mapped, and it just ticks loads of boxes for lots of audiences, so I think this will be the way for some time. (It also helps that these companies make MIDI controllers with 8-16 knobs/faders on them.) I notice on the hardware side, the new Minilab 3 marketing really pushes how accessible it makes Analog Lab with pre-mapped controls, so it looks like they are trying to offer gateways here and there for folks to start delving into this stuff.
how is the ensoniq in the collection?