Pim

I strongly recommend to download the demo version. This scan is taken out of the original owners manual of the Oberheim OB-Xa. I did that because I got a little bit annoyed with the behavior of the pulse wave of the Arturia OB-Xa V. Same as in the Pigments 2 synthesizer, you can't make a sweep from 0 to 100% with the pulse wave. Result: when using an LFO sine/triangle as modulation source the PWM sounds incomplete. It's 'a kind' of lush but not in an amount I would expect. I have to confess that I can't remember how the PWM in the original OB-Xa sounded so I searched for a manual and voilà: the behaviour of the Arturia is similar to the original Oberheim... According to the content of the owners manual a full 50% pulse is reached when the knob is set fully counter-clockwise. As a consequence the PWM in both the Arturia and the original sweeps from 50% to 100%, and not from 0 to 100. (I will illustrate this in a later 'How to modulate sound in a synthesizer matrix' series with sound clips) The moral of the story: don't always believe your brains if memory says 'in the old days it sounded better!' From the moral part to pure sex: the Stereo & Pan Spread in the Voices section. As a sound designer I am searching for imperfection. Imperfection like the jangling of a Mellotron touches the hearts of both listeners and players. So first of all, the Detune in the Voices section leads to imperfection. The more you turn it up, the more oscillator-drift occurs. And set around 12 o'clock this results in a pleasant 'imperfectly' detune of the voices. Stereo - Pan. Arturia fixed it to make an even more appealing function than Unison: Load the first patch 'Jump', press the Stereo switch on and play...

Thank you Mike!! Bravo.

I recommend everybody to download the demo version. Part two The added goodies of the modern times The effect section. First of all, contrary to the Arturia Pigments, when running through the presets I didn't feel the urge to switch off the FX. Well done by the sound designers. The FX section itself is straight and to the point, aimed at creative use. Three blocks, you can choose between parallel and serial - nice! To my surprise Arturia added a compressor. When placing the compressor after a delay (FX in serial mode) you immediately get that 'bouncy' disco vibe when used on an octaves played 4th bass pattern. Check out the preset 'Eighties R Us'. Italo disco! The delay has a very effective HP filter and the 'Width' knob comes in handy when using the Stereo Pan Spread functionality of the voices. Will discuss this beautiful sounding section in another post. When looking for 8-bit C64/Amiga sounds, use the bitcrusher FX on a square wave. Fun. Furthermore, the reverb has a Mid/Side spread knob. Like the Width for the Delay this narrows the effect to the center. (And I love mono reverb. TMO: It makes a stereo mix sound wider...) The modulation section. Here starts the fun in creating your own signature sounds. Arturia put in a modulation matrix as we know from the Matrix 12/6 synthesizers. Five fixed sources: Velocity, Key range, Aftertouch, Mod Wheel and Filter Envelope. You can patch the sources with a +/- value to A LOT of destinations. You can create your own (syncable) LFO waveforms. Brings out the Rembrandt in me... As a user of the V7 package the price is not a limitation so I'll happily buy it later this month. My 20 minutes demo lockup kicks in... More to come in my next post.

I have to admit: I am a huge fan of Oberheim synthesizers. I became an adult while working in the perfect Oberheim environment: the distributor of Oberheim in the Netherlands. So in al modesty I can say: I know my way around with them and had the pleasure to fell in love with the sound. In that perspective my heart made a little jump when I saw the Arturia announcement about the release of the OB-Xa V. I downloaded a demo version, which annoyingly is installed on my C drive and can't be installed on any other drive. Those of us with a SSD C drive will recognize the problem of running out of space. So far the bad news. The good news: I LOVE THE OB-Xa V!! I love the sound and I love the innovations Arturia gave us. The sound: nothing new. And that's GOOD. It's all the innovation options that give me the hurray feeling 'I can make this baby sound very imperfectly.' Very un-digital, very unstable. So far my findings during the 20 minutes demo limitation. More impressions in the days to come, feel free to share your thoughts! (how to tell my lovely Tanja I need this synthesizer...) Link: https://www.arturia.com/products/analog-classics/ob-xa-v/overview

Love it! Keeps me active during work

This is such a great loss... Florian was the melodic part of Kraftwerk. His flute parts were mesmerising... I discovered Kraftwerk 47 years ago, at the age of twelve. ("a band without guitars..") No other band influenced my synthesizer music more than they did. No any other band had such a great influence on the influencers like David Bowie and Vince Clarke. What would hiphop be without the music of those four boys from Dusseldorf, Germany? EDM, the longest prospering popular music style was heavily influenced by Kraftwerk as well. Wat was the influence of Kraftwerk exactly? For example, EDM as we know it started in 1971. Take about 15 minutes to watch this video: If you have the courage to watch the video from the beginning you can see the audience going into confusion... I was lucky enough to see Kraftwerk playing live for several times. Great, warm parties these gigs were. Before the word 'interaction' was invented Kraftwerk let the audience interact on compact 'pocket calculators' during the performance of the song "Taschenrechner". They inspired me to open up my Casio calculator and soldered an Ibanez Auto-filter on the circuit board. It worked. (hardly) So... all good things come to an end and so did Florian.

PSP has this free plugin: http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/reverbs/psp_pianoverb/ http://www.pspaudioware.com/upload/obrazki/galeria/reverbs/psp_pianoverb/PSP_PianoVerb_1.9.0.png

I applaud for Doctor Mike! Thank you Mike!

This is such a great loss... Florian was the melodic part of Kraftwerk. His flute parts were mesmerising... I discovered Kraftwerk 47 years ago, at the age of twelve. ("a band without guitars..") No other band influenced my synthesizer music more than they did. No any other band had such a great influence on the influencers like David Bowie and Vince Clarke. What would hiphop be without the music of those four boys from Dusseldorf, Germany? EDM, the longest prospering popular music style was heavily influenced by Kraftwerk as well. Wat was the influence of Kraftwerk exactly? For example, EDM as we know it started in 1971. Take about 15 minutes to watch this video: If you have the courage to watch the video from the beginning you can see the audience going into confusion... I was lucky enough to see Kraftwerk playing live for several times. Great, warm parties these gigs were. Before the word 'interaction' was invented Kraftwerk let the audience interact on compact 'pocket calculators' during the performance of the song "Taschenrechner". They inspired me to open up my Casio calculator and soldered an Ibanez Auto-filter on the circuit board. It worked. (hardly) So... all good things come to an end and so did Florian.

MIDI is in good hands with you Craig! Have fun

Same here... I consider fader movements as a performance with a musical instrument. And just like I don"t like to copy audio and rather play original parts for all choruses, I record all fader movements. Will absolutely try Craig"s VCA 'trick" and will probably use it in a dynamic way in order to create more variations in character during the song.

Thanks for the tip Craig! Will try it next recording. I use the VCA as levels-guard. When I start a new song I keep all peak levels at -6dB, without any eq. Because the start of a new song is more about creativity than sound I don't always turn things down, I turn tracks up... There is where the VCA does its job.

Oasis Supersonic. It seems like the lads always carried a video camera with them. You can smell the dirt...

Girls Talk -Elvis Costello (and yes I knew this and didn't search for the answer) Correct answer! ðð»

Enjoy!!

Pigments 2 is in my V7 pack. V7 is the digital back bone of my today's electronic music. The Mini, Matrix and SEM are basically all I need. Arturia does a beautiful job in recreating the past. For this review I played around with Pigments 2 for two days. Sampled a coconut (horse-gallop) I split the day before (yummie!), recorded the Mini and created my own Moog wavetables, programmed some analogue pads, basses, grainy stuff... The fun: - Using a wavetable to modulate the filters is an interesting feature. - Workflow for creating wavetables is smoooooth. Just import a whole directory and you're done. - You can dive deep - a sound designers dream! - Moulding curves on the envelopes is always good. (Andromeda) - The sampler - ultra fast and simple: I found a new S612! - MPE - I'm thinking of purchasing a Roli. - The lipstick and powder - the looks. There are some things that you can't cover up with lipstick and powder: (Quizzz: what's the title and who wrote the song?) - Three LFO's - that's just one more than the SEM V2 has - which is considered a 'simple' synthesizer. - What's wrong with that pulse wave? You can't run a full pulse with modulation and somewhere there is some aliasing flying around. - Wavetables - I made my own wavetables twenty years ago on the Waldorf Microwave XT. That sounded great. My own wavetables in Pigments sound grainy like a broken Casio CZ. - The filters: Please Arturia don't go for great specs, choose SOUND. I would have been happy with just the Matrix filters - these are okay. - Way too many "interesting" sound results. "Interesting" does not inspire me to play, compose and record songs. - Where's the global FX switch? I want to hear the SOUND. - Some factory programs are too loud (LED bar indicator is a plus btw) and started to crackle. Almost everything seemed done right until I closed my eyes and started to listen. It's the sound of Pigments that made me long for the Mini, SEM, Matrix-12, Synclavier. Do I recommend it? For a first synth: no. Buy the Arturia Mini, SEM, the CS. As a second synth? Maybe a good choice if you want to explore sound design. Overall I would say that the Synclavier is a far better sounding rival. Would I buy a Roli for using on Pigments? No. I'll rather wait until Arturia delivers a next synth with MPE.

My suggestion is: one complete soundbank with sounds in it from all MPN sound designers. I have no intention to pay the preset designers, the money goes to MPN. We work with volunteers right?

You asked for it... Let's do my 1+1=11 trick. We have gathered: 1. thousands of friends, users, readers, lurkers 2. the most respected professionals from the industry 3. We have MPN Gearlab My proposal: Every time a software synthesizer is reviewed in MPN Gearlab we offer a soundbank made by the best sound designers of this planet. The soundbank will cost just 1 or 2 Dollars/Euros so it's affordable for a large group of MPN fans. As a sound designer I am willing to contribute at least 10 programs for every reviewed softsynth. Collateral benefit: the reviews will reach unknown levels because every contributor can refer to his/her programs in the soundbank.

I have some good news: you're in the right place. Welcome! Forget about the mastering software. The good news is, you have a microphone! Always nice to record an acoustic and some voices. You have a computer and an audio interface as well. I checked the specs of the Inspire 1394: don't be surprised if it works on your Windows 10 PC. Indeed. The one which comes to my mind is Easy Drummer from Toontrack. Easy to operate and contains beautiful rhythms for pop and rock music. Like the Ronan C Murphy says: choose what your friends use. Make sure the software you choose is capable of integrating a virtual instrument like Easy Drummer. Skip this step for the first year. There is no immediate need for plugins because most recording software has standard delays, reverb, EQ's and compression. Your budget is sufficient to start with. How to go further from here? Go to YouTube and search for the Recording Revolution. Start with the oldest video. Also, after you bought your recording software, you'll see that Youtube is your best friend. There are millions of tutorials - for almost every recording tool. Remember that playing music is FUN and you can't do things wrong when you're having FUN. You just started a new adventure and solving problems is very common during adventures.

Hi Markyboard, Take a look at the attachment in my first post. The Arturia SEM has 6 slots to address the parameters you wish to alter per voice.

Thank you all. It's really great to read your thoughts on sculpting sounds. Tusker's contributions to the Arturia Pigments review inspired me to add two SEM programs to this thread: one with the 8VP ON and the other is without. I suggest to start with 8VP ON, play around for a few minutes before switching to the second program without the 8VP. SEM 8VP Examples - Google Drive Keep sharing your thoughts and feelings!

Will try it out immediately! Thank you Tusker. Glad to see there are more of my kind...

Everyone I know who worked with the original hardware TX16W, wil ask the same question: "Why?!" Working with the original TX16W set a benchmark for me how NOT to design a sampler/synthesizer. Sound was good but the OS a disaster to work with. It had a memory for the samples and a working memory. So every time you sampled something and wanted to perform some basic editing, you had to transfer the sample to the working memory. And the transfer process was a b-i-t s-l--o---w. Once in the working memory things were ok, but... you wanted to audition the edits right? So... transfer the sample back to the sample memory (j-u-s-t- a-s s-l-o-w) and hit a key. Repeat that three or four times and you'll understand why I always grabbed my S612. The free software doesn't suffer from these 80's "characteristics".

Truth - Shift Infinity Mix Hi there musiclovers! My last electronic music track was a sound demo of the Alesis Andromeda for which I was a factory sound designer. Corona forced me to spend my time differently. Creating new sounds, discovering new vibes in my music. So I did and recorded this tune 'Truth'. A little light in an unfortunate disaster. Used toys: - Drums Aly James Lab VProm 2.0 - Arturia SEM (bass and rhythmic 'guitar') - Arturia Mini (main riff) - Arturia Solina (strings eh?) - Arturia Matrix-12 (pad) - Arturia Piano V2 (piano) - Arturia Synclavier V (sweeps and glides) - Xils 5000 Vocoder - Toontrack SD Latin Percussion - Eventide Instant Flanger Mk II - Acustica Audio Lemon Delay - PSP EMT 2445 Reverb - Gran Maestro Italiano (coffee) The main riff is played on the Arturia Mini. I performed a little trick on it and switched every 16th note to a different waveshape. Like in the Korg Wavestation. Wouldn't dare to do that on my real analogue Minimoog...

Hi midinut, nice to meet you! Please go watch the video I refer to > That video shows the (perfect) imperfections of the 8-Voice. If you like the imperfections, check out the 8VP in the Arturia SEM V2. The 8VP doesn't really divide your SEM into a multi timbral synth but is capable of giving the SEM the imperfect analogue 8-Voice character. Check out my example - 2 bars with 8VP switched on and 2 bars switched off. Can you spot the difference? Arturia SEM V2 example