Arturia Black Friday 2020

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telecode wrote: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:41 am
JO512 wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:08 pm
HTT wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:38 am It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum ...
I did an A/B comparison of Pigments and Serum just now with the same wavetables, no filters, and no FX, and with normalized volume, just to see if I could tell any difference in the oscillators. I could not at first hear an obvious difference. But I looked at them on a spectrum analyzer and did find a visible difference. The signal from Pigments is dirtier, with a noisier floor. And as I really listened closely while watching the spectrum analyzer, I began to hear a difference. I wonder if the Pigments oscillators are aliasing and if that "dirt" is the foldover coming back down from the Nyquist limit. It looks like it. With a pure saw, I noticed that Pigments sounds a little darker and a tiny bit muddier, but perhaps a bit warmer. The difference is slight! You'd likely never notice it without very close, isolated listening. The difference is more obvious on an analyzer with a square or triangle wave than a saw, since the gaps between the odd harmonics are bigger.
I am not worried about it though, as I tend to dirty up my signals on purpose anyway!
interesting that pigments has a dirtier noise floor. but really, all that matters is does it sound good and does it feel good to use.
Serum was specifically designed to have low noise floor:
ULTRA-CLEAN OSCILLATORS
Playback of wavetables requires digital resampling to play different frequencies. Without considerable care and a whole lot of number crunching, this process will create audible artifacts. Artifacts mean that you are (perhaps unknowingly) crowding your mix with unwanted tones / frequencies. Many popular wavetable synthesizers are astonishingly bad at suppressing artifacts - even on a high-quality setting some create artifacts as high as -36 dB to -60 dB (level difference between fundamental on artifacts) which is well audible, and furthermore often dampening the highest wanted audible frequencies in the process, to try and suppress this unwanted sound. In Serum, the native-mode (default) playback of oscillators operates with an ultra high-precision resampling, yielding an astonishingly inaudible signal-to-noise (for instance, -150 dB on a sawtooth played at 1 Khz at 44100)! This requires a lot of calculations, so Serum’s oscillator playback has been aggressively optimized using SSE2 instructions to allow for this high-quality playback without taxing your CPU any more than the typical (decent quality) soft synth already does. Load up Serum and we think you’ll be able to notice both what you hear (solid high frequencies, extending flat all the way up to the limits of hearing) as well as what you don’t hear (no unwanted mud or aliasing gibberish- just good, clean sound).
Now, many people call it "sterile" :scared: Can't satisfy everyone, it seems.
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Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)

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OT. What type of product verification does Arturia use? Serial #, dongle, internet, etc...? Thanks in advance.

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Are there discounts for individual plugs?

Looks like the promo is for bundles but just want to be sure..

And would the discounts be visible on the website even before checkout?

Thanks

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I get the very generous upgrade offer to the fx collection for $99 !
Even though I own all the effects, including those not included in the collection.
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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mykvr wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:01 am OT. What type of product verification does Arturia use? Serial #, dongle, internet, etc...? Thanks in advance.
https://www.arturia.com/v-collection/asc

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VariKusBrainZ wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:05 am I get the very generous upgrade offer to the fx collection for $99 !
Even though I own all the effects, including those not included in the collection.
What do you think about Arturia's FX bundle? I don't believe the 3 mod fx are included, right?

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JO512 wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:08 pm
HTT wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:38 am It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum ...
I did an A/B comparison of Pigments and Serum just now with the same wavetables, no filters, and no FX, and with normalized volume, just to see if I could tell any difference in the oscillators. I could not at first hear an obvious difference. But I looked at them on a spectrum analyzer and did find a visible difference. The signal from Pigments is dirtier, with a noisier floor. And as I really listened closely while watching the spectrum analyzer, I began to hear a difference. I wonder if the Pigments oscillators are aliasing and if that "dirt" is the foldover coming back down from the Nyquist limit. It looks like it. With a pure saw, I noticed that Pigments sounds a little darker and a tiny bit muddier, but perhaps a bit warmer. The difference is slight! You'd likely never notice it without very close, isolated listening. The difference is more obvious on an analyzer with a square or triangle wave than a saw, since the gaps between the odd harmonics are bigger.

I am not worried about it though, as I tend to dirty up my signals on purpose anyway!
Wow! You went to great lengths in your analysis. Thank you for your efforts. The difference does not bother me and/or I do not discern a notable difference on most patches, but for bell-tones the difference between Serum and a number of other synths is notable. I compared the bell tones of Serum, using only my ears, to bell tone patches on Zebra2, Hive, Massive X, Anima, Falcon, and Rapid. I turned off all filters and effects. This test is casual and not objective measurements like you performed. For clear overtones (no auditory smearing) and treble extension, Serum and Zebra2 were quite similar. The next tier was Anima and Falcon. The next tier was Massive X, Pigments, and Rapid. Last was Hive2, but still respectable. When it comes to the speed of envelopes, something notable with bell tones, Serum was the fastest with Zebra, Anima, and Falcon close behind. Pigments comes next. Massive X close after that. Hive2 and Rapid sounded the slowest. For most patches these details are not relevant, but for percussive patches with extended high frequencies, then I think these details matter if you will use that patch in a featured solo instance.
Last edited by HTT on Tue Nov 17, 2020 2:06 am, edited 3 times in total.

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tactile_coast wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:30 am
HTT wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:38 am It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum nor the ballsy VA of ANA 2. Pigment 2’s effects aren’t up there with Falcon’s or Massive X’s effects. Pigment 2 is no slouch in those particular areas, but that is what I hear when I A/B between syths.
Its important to remember when doing a quick side by side test that the presets on Pigments are strictly quality controlled and that their default loudness is consistently limited to around I think -6db. Where the highly competitive preset market around Serum means that presets are often wound up as loudly as possible to gain attention over other presets. The old musicians trick of 'louder is better'.

For the preset packs I wouldn't bother with the demo songs. If you click on the store icon in the presets browser you can download and actually play the preset packs within Pigments which gives you a much better idea of how they might fit in with your productions.
I did try to equalize the volume. My approach isn't totally scientific.

Thanks for the preset tip. I spent more time with White Dragon. I got my money's worth. I needed to dig into the macros more than my initial trial.

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felis wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:45 pm 50% off V7, FX Collection, and Pigments2 until Dec.3, 2020.
If you have an account, you can sign in to see your deals.
https://www.arturia.com/black-friday-20

I guess this means it won't be long until V8 comes out?
But my guessing is Pigments 3 is coming soon according to its release history...

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Alchemedia wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:23 am
VariKusBrainZ wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:05 am I get the very generous upgrade offer to the fx collection for $99 !
Even though I own all the effects, including those not included in the collection.
What do you think about Arturia's FX bundle? I don't believe the 3 mod fx are included, right?
the reverb and the compressor are very good.the
i think EQ are the next 3 coming...
time for me to leave KVR.Bye bye ! 03/2022 :phones:

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Pigments 3...
They need to fix the v2 bugs first.

I found a weird issue with two controls Wavetable Fold amount/Wavetable phase distortion. When there is no Unison involved, dialing these controls at various positions gives a stable tone. However, once the Unison is involved we get a random jumps in harmonics. Like if they were modulated all the time. Phase retrigg is set to zero.

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Alchemedia wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:23 am
VariKusBrainZ wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:05 am I get the very generous upgrade offer to the fx collection for $99 !
Even though I own all the effects, including those not included in the collection.
What do you think about Arturia's FX bundle? I don't believe the 3 mod fx are included, right?
Correct, the 3 mod fx are not included. No doubt will be a paid upgrade when they are added.
They are all excellent but whether you need them and represent value to you is another thing. Another softener is you can pay in installments.
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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DJ Warmonger wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:21 am I am very tempted to grab Pigments 2, though I really don't need it for any purpose. It's just pretty and sounds cool ;)
I feel the same way.

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I would describe Pigments 2 as an artistic Rapid or a Falcon 2 Lite. If that interests you, for $99 is that worth the risk?

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HTT wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:57 am
JO512 wrote: Sun Nov 15, 2020 10:08 pm
HTT wrote: Sat Nov 14, 2020 2:38 am It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum ...
I did an A/B comparison of Pigments and Serum .. The signal from Pigments is dirtier, with a noisier floor. And as I really listened closely while watching the spectrum analyzer, I began to hear a difference. I wonder if the Pigments oscillators are aliasing and if that "dirt" is the foldover coming back down from the Nyquist limit. It looks like it. With a pure saw, I noticed that Pigments sounds a little darker and a tiny bit muddier, but perhaps a bit warmer. The difference is slight! You'd likely never notice it without very close, isolated listening. The difference is more obvious on an analyzer with a square or triangle wave than a saw, since the gaps between the odd harmonics are bigger.

I am not worried about it though, as I tend to dirty up my signals on purpose anyway!
For clear overtones (no auditory smearing) and treble extension, Serum and Zebra2 were quite similar. The next tier was Anima and Falcon. The next tier was Massive X, Pigments, and Rapid. Last was Hive2, but still respectable. When it comes to the speed of envelopes, something notable with bell tones, Serum was the fastest with Zebra, Anima, and Falcon close behind. Pigments comes next. Massive X close after that. Hive2 and Rapid sounded the slowest. For most patches these details are not relevant, but for percussive patches with extended high frequencies, then I think these details matter if you will use that patch in a featured solo instance.
Interesting comparisons! Have one of you per chance compared it to the new Vital wavetable synth? Certainly appears a bit like a Serum clone, but the question is if they have been able to match the sound quality..

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