No, not at this time (and nothing planned soon, I asked; none of he Arturia synths are MPE so they probably need a framework changes as they have 23 instruments using a common form for browser, set up, scaling etc)
I feel attracted by Arturiaā¦ But I never found their Software section interesting. I tried Pigments but I feel itās lacking of dynamicsā¦ edgeā¦ lowsā¦ (too soft, lack of character, the sound is lost somewhere and it is the case for the majority of presets I donāt know.) Didnāt like the UIā¦
Better to wait Massive 2 to meā¦ Serum still is the king in wavetable, Sub OSC as a direct out, Filter with Mix knob (Dry/Wet) is so brilliantā¦ You can design a Serum Patch and thereās nothing in the spectrum you can add Serum take the whole spectrum itās kind of crazy.
Canāt wait to see whatās Massive 2 will bring on the wavetable
Love that SKIN :
Yep good call
I would definitely recommend holding out for Massive X also
I would recommend having Pigments for free at least until it comes- its fully working and free for a month, so why not have it!
Cool. Worth downloading and trying it out then
Waiting to see what Massive X is like too, but at current state Massive is become stale to me and Pig seems like a good try.
So for those that might for whatever reason find some software synths difficult to see:
Pigments is nice because you can āResize Windowā, from 50% all the way up to 200%.
The implementation of this, at least on the PC isnāt a conventional one, there is no response to Windows Maximize Button. When you make the size larger than your monitor display, you drag the whole window to display different sections of the screen horizontally, but can us the mouse scroll wheel to move vertically, scrolling everything except the top menu bar.
But with an extra large display the larger size selections with Pigments makes it visually easy. The layout of this synth is nice, and āon the surfaceā which also helps.
Its a beautiful interface but my computer cant handle the pretty colors and animations. Tried it this whole weekend but its too cpu heavy for me, not sure if anyone else here having the same problem.
Iāll try in the next few days to bog my computer down ā i have a fast PC and lots of memory, but so far havenāt seen any serious amount of load.
This seems a really appropriate sort of thing to be asking Arturia about. This has got to be something high on their list of things to get right.
Arturiaās requirements spec isnāt particularly rigorous:
Platform specifications
-
: Win 7+ (64bit) PC: 4 GB RAM; 2.5 GHz CPU.
1GB free hard disk space
OpenGL 2.0 compatible GPU -
: 10.10+: 4 GB RAM; 2.5 GHz CPU.
1GB free hard disk space
OpenGL 2.0 compatible GPU
Are you running it stand alone or as a plugin, amku?
WAIT: Open GL 2.0 Compatible GPU !
That could be it amku do you have that? The screen i/o could be a bear with this thing.
Yeah I run it in Ableton. Also have Arturia V and those are good on my cpu but Pig was getting pretty heavy with more polyphony.
Im not sure what Open GL2.0 is, but im using a 2015 macbook pro.
Ill try it standalone and see if its better. Im hoping Arturia can make it a bit lighter with a patch but the interface is nice.
That could be with a 2.3 GHz i5 CPU.
Iām very interested in what Arturia has to say. They might be able to suggests some set-up options, or something else to help.
Which brings a question up for me, iām wondering if Arturia takes advantage of multicore CPUs?
Report on Pigment CPU usage:
Summary ā Not a problem for me.
I tested CPU demand for Pigments. Definitely could push up CPU demand by making both engines wavetable, with plenty of effects and tons of notes. I got the meter on the front of Pigments all the way up to almost 25%. (Too bad thereās not a numeric percentage displayed there.) But this only shows a 9.3% usage for the Pigment application with the Windows System Manager. I doubt this is even enough to be pushing the CPU to speed up itās clock, itās barely above idle. And this is an extreme, in typical use, demand is at less than half this. (Iāve got a i7 3.4 GHz, with 4 cores and max memory. Good but not a top-line system.)
I do see a dramatic difference between making both engines analog versus making them both wavetable. From this iāve concluded that very little of the CPU usage on my system is due to display routines. Itās mainly in sound generation. I do have a fairly good GPU, with its OpenGL, which may be part of the explanation for this.
More blabbing:
Given that the CPU clock speed increases with demand means that the correspondence here will not be linear. (You can think of it like an audio compressor, which means you have further to go before you get to hard clipping.) The processor just works harder to compensate to the increased demand. My system has lots of performance headroom over top of what iāve seen already.
I suppose more tests could be to compare Pigment head to head with another software synth also running standalone, like UVI Falcon, or Steinberg Halion 6 ā comparing apples to apples.
Another possible test would be to run Pigments as a VST over top of a DAW like Live or something. But already knowing i have room there makes this less interesting to me at the moment. (Unless thereās a bug in Pigments that makes it run much more inefficiently as a Plugin. Highly doubt it.)
I donāt see much reason for me to do either test.
How to test for OpenGL on a PC:
I used OpenGL Extension Viewer. For the moment only iām a few versions back with my driver, but this doesnāt seem a problem with Pigments. The Viewer also shows the GPU you are using and other data. The viewer also can help with the update process.
ADDED:
Watching Nick Battās new preview video of Pigments, it showed CPU usage on Battās laptop, being slightly above the measurements i saw on my desktop system. They were still very much in a usable range. And in fact Batt said something to the effect that he saw the CPU usage on Pigments to being equivalent to most other software synths.
So i think this puts a wrap to the question of CPU usage of Pigments ā Itās average.
I really enjoyed the read, thanks for sharing
New Feature Added: Polyphonic Aftertouch
Plus some other stuff.
No MPE yet.
They mention new plug-ins done by Andrew Huang. He did a good video on tricks using Pigments.
Great tip on how to make your own wavetables with Pigments using wav files.
I had been digging away at this, but Flux nails it, though i still think there is more you can do with this. Actually i know there is.
So i worked out some detail on doing good wavetable files for Pigments and now am making them. Iāve attached five examples below. You can follow the directions in the Flux video above to get these into your Pigments environment. This works with the free Pigments software used in demo mode too.
Hard for me to be objective with these, but iād appreciate your comparison of these to the factory wavetables that come with Pigments.
Pigments Wavetable WAV files.
Thanks @Ryan for getting me started in this direction. I wrote the code to make these.
By the way the method Flux uses to just pull any old WAV file into Pigments really doesnāt work very well.
NOTE: Iāve only tested these on a PC but i think they should work with Macs as well ā let me know if not.
ADDED: Iāve not tested these with Serum but i have reason to believe the files i am generating will work with it as well. If anyone tests this, iād love to hear your results.
I think the reverse may be true too, you could use Serum Wavetable files with Pigments ā i am about to test this myself. ADDED: The wavetable WAV files that come with the free Serum download work really well with Pigments.
My wavetable WAV files may also work directly with Ableton Live 10.1 and above as āUser Wavetablesā, though they would be downsampled.
Free to demo until July 4 too. Arturia is French why not July 14? Haha. Also on sale 149 until July 4.
New features
Sound Store
Find new preset sound banks from within Pigments. New themed banks will be added regularly, giving users a whole new range of sounds to explore.
SUPER mode
A new unison detune voice mode lets you beef up your oscillator up with the style of the famous āJPā supersaw
Sequencer revamp
A new visual layout, with the added ability to set different clock divisions for each lane in the sequencer or arpeggiator.
NKS Compatible
Pigments is now fully compliant with Native Instruments NKS control format, instantly smart-mapping key parameters.
Extra Combinator
Now with a third combinator, giving you more sound-shaping potential. Also introduced is a new āRemapā type that lets you remap any incoming modulation source.
Updated envelope
Now reduced the minimum value for the attack times, letting you achieve even sharper envelope modulation for super-nasty sounds.
Microtuning
Now you can select alternative keyboard scales, as well as import your own .scl and .tun files.
50 new presets
Dozens more factory preset sounds that make use of the new capabilities of the Pigments audio engine updates in version 1.2.
The little things
On top of all the big new features, Arturia have made lots of small enhancements too. New Aftertouch curves, Mod source hovering displays, integrated Filter tutorials, and bug fixes.
Version 2 just released. Added a sampling engine, granular synth, MPE, etc. Also on sale for $99. This is a pretty major update and a cheap price. How are folks like the pigments so far?
Yup just recently heard the news also.
Iāve been keeping the Pigments in my purchase radar since itās release and I think with this update itās finally go time.
With Pigments having a sequencer and now with version 2, updating it with non-destructive ārandomnessā really makes it a worthy purchase for me.
(sort of like the āchanceā feature with model:samples but with the sequencer)
Not to mention all the other new updated features in v2.
And furthermore, itās only 50 usd for me.
(think itās because I own the V-Collection)
Pigments is like a better version of Serum in every way.
Special promotion pricing is running until Jan 7th btw.
Thanks for the update. Now I can import my adventure kidd waveforms in pigments. Itās my go to wavetable synth since it is so colorful. I also bought some Arturia soundpacks for pigments when they had the sale for sound packs.