Arturia Pigments 2 (Free Update): Now it's Granular

[highkoo]

Ive always thought everything about it sounded very rounded and buttery. Wav, osc, mods...
Love it.

[EnGee]

You missed the main point of my post which is that the thought that Pigments can't be as huge as anything else is wrong. Dead wrong. It will run rings around the RePros and you'd have to work really, really hard to make Hive sound bigger. If you just go by the presets, then you may not see it but if you make the effort to create your own sounds, it doesn't take long to realise how huge it can be.

I'd also suggest that the sounds you want in the background aren't the thin sounds but the fat ones.The last thing you want is for your lead to drown out the rest of the mix. I think a lot of the Pigments' patches are designed to sit into a mix, rather than to sound as huge as possible. I think it is aimed more at professional users than bedroom producers. It just has an air of "you'll know what to do with it, we don't need to knock your socks off".

BTW, what on earth is a "detailed sound"? I'd have thought that was something Pigments excels at, it being so crisp and clean, so maybe we have different definitions.

Oh I misunderstood you then! I completely disagree with you.

If you listen carefully, you will hear the difference. The detailed sound means clearer more defined details, what's difficult about it to understand?!

There is nothing huge about the sound in Pigments! You don't need to be a "Professional" to realize that. It is a nice synth with excellent workflow, but not on the sound level of Massive X and Reaktor synths (let's alone RePro and Bazille), but maybe you have golden ears I don't have

[exponent1]

There is nothing huge about the sound in Pigments! You don't need to be a "Professional" to realize that. It is a nice synth with excellent workflow, but not on the sound level of Massive X and Reaktor synths (let's alone RePro and Bazille), but maybe you have golden ears I don't have

I humbly disagree with that comment. As a regular participant in the One Synth Challenge, I've come to realize that most synths these days can be made to sound as huge or as detailed as you'd like them to be. I bought Pigments 2 after comparing it to a lot of the other synths and it's perfectly capable of really huge, wide, crisp sounds, especially with its excellent workflow and modulation capabilities. The filters and oscillators are very crisp and detailed enough I'd say.

I think most of these inferences are from the presets, which aren't the best showcase of the hugeness of Pigments per se. However that said, is there an example of a sound you think is huge and something that Pigments is not capable of producing? Would you mind sharing that?

[EnGee]

No particular sound, but I compared (not only presets! come on!) with several synths by listening carefully to the filters, changing the unison, the different parameters ... etc.
I found that Form (and Reaktor in general) has more presence. While Massive X has a clearer sound when comparing wavetable engine with it. Analogue is fine but not on par with RePro or Super 8.

This is my taste and opinion. I don't see why people are bothered with it! I don't have the will to do SAW and filter sweeps comparisons and recorded them and showing them here! If you don't find it lacking after comparing with what I mentioned, then good for you, enjoy it. For me, if I don't find a use for it, I might try to trade it with something else. I was blown away by its workflow really, but never by its sound, although as I said it has a good to a very good sound, but not excellent. IMO of course!

[murnau]

EnGee needs a new pair of speakers or ears or maybe both.

[Stefken]

With $69, Arturia told me "Everyone has a "discounted" price"!
I failed "no more synth" I'm still synthoholic!

Yeah, I can even get it for 49 euro.

A good meal or a synth? I usually go for a synth.
The pleasure of a good meal doesn't last long while a synth can give you pleasure for many years to come. Yet, they are piling up in this manner.

[Tj Shredder]

The same with good meals can happen, if you eat too much the “good” part vanishes...
A synths diet might help...

I should start programming a synth and call it “Diet”, then you have an instant excuse to get more, and I could buy more real synths which pile up.
Still better than piling up real synths...

[EnGee]

EnGee needs a new pair of speakers or ears or maybe both.

Really? Do you mean it sounds better than Massive X and other synths I mentioned? I'm just curious to find do people hear it with a better sound details and clearer than other synths? Because if most people here do, then you are right I need to go to the doctor to examine my ears

[Stan Navi]

How Pigments 2 compares to Avenger?

[anomandaris1]

Analogue is fine but not on par with RePro or Super 8.

Well, it is not fair to compare it to synths that supposedly emulate very closely specific hardware units (and these old hardware synths are not exactly the pinnacles of engineering and sound quality, but that's another topic; just because analogue synthesis and retro machines have become a some kind of cult, doesn't mean that we all should like them).

As long as there are no audible digital artifacts, it probably does the job. (I don't have any illusions that other Arturia's synths are very close to the originals soundwise, but... in the mix it doesn't matter + noone cares! - except probably few nerds)

[BONES]

The presets in Pigments do not do it justice though, especially the bass, you can get much much thicker base tones than anything in it's library. The thin argument IMO is because people aren't good at using Pigments really.
It mostly suffers from a weak preset library, which arturia is kinda guilty of in general, good places to start from usually without being that great on their own.

That's what I mean about it being more suited to professionals, as opposed to something like the first preset in DUNE, which is amazing but who the hell is ever going to use it? All the Pigments presets I've heard so far sound like I could just drop them into any mix and they'd work almost straight away. It certainly has more useful out-of-the-box granular presets than anything else I've ever heard.

If you listen carefully, you will hear the difference. The detailed sound means clearer more defined details, what's difficult about it to understand?!

What's difficult to understand is that you would describe Pigments that way because detailed sound is something at which it excels. Because it's not trying to sound "warm" or analogue, it's free to be as crisp and modern as it can possibly be (and it is).

There is nothing huge about the sound in Pigments! You don't need to be a "Professional" to realize that.

Perhaps you do. Here's a simple test - 3 fat synths playing 3 fat patches. It's not much but I only allowed myself 20 minutes to make it from scratch, so they sound a bit similar but are really quite different. They have only internal effects and the only post-processing was a normalise. Which one is Pigments? Bonus points if you can identify all three.

http://www.novakill.com/stuff/FAT_Test.mp3

As for detail, tell me what you hear in each of them. I tried to make them all as clear as I could.

It is a nice synth with excellent workflow, but not on the sound level of Massive X and Reaktor synths (let's alone RePro and Bazille), but maybe you have golden ears I don't have

Or maybe I'm capable of objective assessment. You're clearly not or you wouldn't spout such rubbish. I'd put Pigments up against the RePros any day and the best any of the Reaktor ensembles I've tried can do is no better than what I'm hearing in Pigments. I have no idea where MassiveX stands in comparison, I have less than no interest in it, but it seems to divide opinion.

[killmaster]

Is Pigments kinda like a software version of Microfreak? Probably not remotely related but some things seem similar....

[Ficciones]

The presets in Pigments do not do it justice though, especially the bass, you can get much much thicker base tones than anything in it's library. The thin argument IMO is because people aren't good at using Pigments really.

It mostly suffers from a weak preset library, which arturia is kinda guilty of in general, good places to start from usually without being that great on their own.

Yes, the presets are extremely conservative compared to what the synth can do, as if they were trying to create a "standard library", to show off how generic it can sound. Mostly drowned in delay and reverb too.

But it's when you begin with a blank patch and experiment that Pigments blossoms and shows its own strong character. It's weird because lots of synths have their own "low hanging fruit", and this one's are so good you'd expect there'd be more of them in the presets.

[Harry_HH]

Why would the developer keep the presets as a"generic, standard preset library", and not to take out the best of the synth?
In who's interest is that?
Sounds like an other conspiracy theory.
If your sounds are much better, why don't you sell them, or give for free?

[c_voltage]

If your sounds are much better, why don't you sell them

This reason may possibly be exotic, but in some countries simply not works receiving funds for Paypal, only for sending .