Arturia new hardware Analogue Synth MiniBrute for 499 euro

[urosh]

but it lacks the 'juicy' filter character

Have you played one yet?

In average, 5 synth players will give 37 definitions/descriptions of "juicy" filter.
Most of examples of Minibrute I've heard are sort of like "hey electro house crowd, it can do that nonfiltered saw sound just like your favourite softsynth - and it can sound like Massive through DS-1 as well". OTOH,
this is quite nice.
It starts around 2:20. More than good enough for me.

BTW, in case someone didn't notice: while keyboard is velocity sensitive, velocitiy does nothing in synth it self. Envelope generator with (some degree of) voltage control of envelope level is actually not much more complicated/expensive compared to plain simple adsr, but I can live without velocity.

[toitoi]

A word from the creator(taken from matrixsynth):

And some comments via Yves Yusson the man himself:

"Thanks guys !

It's been a real pleasure designing this little beast. I hope it will meet its public."

"The enveloppes are analog (Yusynth ADSR based with some improvements) the LFO was analog in the first version but because it was necessary to synchronise it with the arpeggiator, the LFO now is digital. The vibrato is fll analo too."

"First, I want to thank you all for your enthusiasm about the MiniBrute.

Concerning the digital section yes it will be updatable, this is one of the reason why there is a USB plug in it. Note that the USB is also used to set some parameters of the keyboard section such as Velocity enable or disable and choosing the Velocity Curve, same for the Aftertouch. The default setting is Velocity disabled and Aftertouch active. Normally (I don't master the digital section of this machine) the MiniBrute can handle the Polychain mode.

Note that the Arpeggiator can also be used as a basic sequencer. In the Hold mode, you press and hold the first key of the sequence, then you just enter the other notes by pressing the corresponding keys while still holding the first note of the sequence, during this process you can change the octave range of the keyboard between entering the notes therefore you are not limited to two octaves for the sequence. You can sequence a maximum of 12 notes. Unfortunatly once playing the sequence it cannot be transposed by the keyboard because pressing a new key resets the sequence."

[damoog]

f**k mono....seriously why no poly?

[justin3am]

f**k mono....seriously why no poly?

Because it's anaolg. For polyphony, you need the circuitry for the entire synth duplicated for each voice. This would make it much more expensive. I think it was mentioned somewhere that the MiniBrute has a poly-chain feature, so if you buy 4 of them, you can have 4-voice polyphony.

[dune_rave]

Maybe its name is mUnibrute, they have sent me an email with this subject:
Arturia newsletter #116 - Munibrute Analog Synthesizer!

[goldenanalog]

I'm in heaven! I'm in heaven!

This explains why developement of the Origin stopped for a while!

To me, MB is a no-brainer.

I think that it's price is spot-on for an analog that has the potential to actually sell. Looks like it's got some build quality to it, too. Might last for a while.

Features are great.

Synth the old-fashioned way: I can almost guarantee that working with this for a while will greatly increase your synth programming skills if you don't already have an old analog. It's immediate, real-time, tactile. Addicting.

[kritikon]

f**k mono....seriously why no poly?

Because they're trying to make it affordable.

And since when did anyone need poly for lead lines and basslines?

[lillloyd]

Seems like Arturia's hit a nice sweet spot here. Analog signal path + keyboard at <$500 (as some have pointed out, $424 currently at MusiciansFriend with their 15offnow discount

If the sound is a bit edgier or more raw, so much the better, we have enough Moog-style analog synths to last several lifetimes. (Although I will say, the one vid demo someone posted earlier did seem to show it was capable of more "conventional" analog tones a couple of minutes in).

Personally this seems like a godsend as I'm trying to convert from "preset whore" to fully-fledged synth programmer. I have a mopho, which sounds great, but the controller + the limited knobs on the mopho make the programming process kind of clunky. I could buy the keyboard version of the Mopho with more knobs...but this is $300 more than the MiniBrute.

At less than $500, this seems like a perfect price point for a "learning" analog synth that has the immediacy of having all the keys and controls built-in, with potentially the added bonus of a different sound pallette to complement whatever Moogish emulations (hardware or software) that you already have.

[faun2500]

This looks really nice!

[urosh]

They've put bunch of examples of each function on details page (lower half of the page)
Here.
can't
wait

[ghettosynth]

Steiner-Parker multi-mode filter

I wonder if the it crackles and pops when you turn the resonance knob, like other clones of this filter do.

FYI so does the original.

I figured... I haven't used the original so I wasn't sure. I've had a Livewire Frequensteiner and I built one from a CGS board with some modifications that were supposed to mitigate the crackling... but it still had that annoying sound when I turned the resonance pot.

There's a lot of discussion about this somewhere on the web, and FYI, the CGS version is built directly from the original schematic which was published in some electronics magazine.

[urosh]

Crakling is consequence of design of output stage (adding that 10uF in CGS version helps but not much, here is original paper).
OTOH, I think Yves wrote somewhere that they've "upgraded" design, so I gues output stage was redesigned (it's nothing special, same concept as Korg35, so there are about 1000 ways to do different output amp while keeping filter core as it is).

[ghettosynth]

Crakling is consequence of design of output stage (adding that 10uF in CGS version helps but not much, here is original paper).
OTOH, I think Yves wrote somewhere that they've "upgraded" design, so I gues output stage was redesigned (it's nothing special, same concept as Korg35, so there are about 1000 ways to do different output amp while keeping filter core as it is).

That sounds right. Thanks for the link, it's in my personal archives somewhere but I was feeling lazy and didn't want to look for it.

[whet]

Wow, nice streetprice here in germany ^^

http://www.musikhaus-korn.de/de/Arturia ... html?pid=2

[concealed identity]

This looks AMAZING...my setup is currently almost 100% software, and I've wanted a hands-on synth for a really long time but never had the cash. If the actual price of this is closer to $400, I will definitely eat instant noodles for as long as I need to in order to get one...