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

[Ficciones]

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?

Found the Arturia library guy.

[c_voltage]

I'm convinced that Pigments is hard to overestimate for making complex digital textures (incl rhythmical), powerful atonal canvases and stuff like that. Because the variability is limitless. And would not assign him the role of an analog punchy body, he feels good even without it i think.

[BONES]

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?

Professional producers who don't want to wade through dozens of presets no-one will ever be able to use in a song.

Sounds like an other conspiracy theory.

Easily disproved by spending an hour or so with the demo, then? So what's stopping you?

If your sounds are much better, why don't you sell them, or give for free?

Because they are mine. Because I have much better things to do with my time than make presets. Because I have no interest in making presets for its own sake. I'm sure there are other reasons, too.

I kind of love posts like this, the inherent hypocrisy is palatable.

I think you meant "palpable". But its even better than that because his own post is strewn with inaccuracies so while he is trying to sound like the cool voice of reason, he comes across as a clueless idiot. e.g. He refers to Pigments as a "wavetable synth", completely ignoring it's V/A and Granular engines. He also suggests that someone is defending Pigments' preset library. Maybe that's the case in the old part of the thread but I haven't seen anyone suggest anything remotely like that since the thread was resurrected a few days ago. He also ignores the fact that I have posted a demo to demonstrate what I mean and to give some context to adjectives I've used like "huge".

All in all he has missed the mark by a long way.

It's pretty cool how different they all sound.
Did you painstakingly attempt to set all settings filters etc. to the same places?

No, I grabbed a sound we use in one of our songs and spent 10 minutes making something similar in Pigments, then another 10 minutes making something again in another synth. I wasn't trying to make them sound the same, just make them sound equally "huge" by using as many oscillators as I could. The filters are pretty much wide open on all of them to make it as huge as possible and there is little or no resonance involved. Filters, by their very nature, remove hugeness.

Wavetable synth's sound vs analog synth's sound. This subject pops up now and then. We need a separate topic for this. Please, don't start this rant here.

What are you talking about? Wavetables are just one of three sound engines in Pigments. It is at least as much a V/A or Granular synth as it is a wavetable synth. In the demo I put up I have not used the wavetable engine at all, it's pure V/A. It just sounds a bit wavetablish because I snuck a bit of FM into it. (Let's see if that little tidbit helps anyone.)

[machinesworking]

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?

Professional producers who don't want to wade through dozens of presets no-one will ever be able to use in a song.

I would love it if synth makers did this 100% like a library of starting points. U-He did that a bit with Diva, various synth engine starting points, pretty cool idea.

I kind of love posts like this, the inherent hypocrisy is palatable.

I think you meant "palpable". But its even better than that because his own post is strewn with inaccuracies so while he is trying to sound like the cool voice of reason, he comes across as a clueless idiot. e.g. He refers to Pigments as a "wavetable synth", completely ignoring it's V/A and Granular engines.

I actually meant palatable, like you could taste the delicious hypocrisy of it.

No, I grabbed a sound we use in one of our songs and spent 10 minutes making something similar in Pigments, then another 10 minutes making something again in another synth. I wasn't trying to make them sound the same, just make them sound equally "huge" by using as many oscillators as I could. The filters are pretty much wide open on all of them to make it as huge as possible and there is little or no resonance involved. Filters, by their very nature, remove hugeness.

That's why it's so impossible usually to describe sounds with words like huge. I think of huge sounds as mostly being full, but maybe scooped in the midrange and cavernous. I do now know why you mean by huge though.
I only own Pigments of the three synths, demoed Thorn.
Wild guess would be Dune 3, Pigments, Thorn.

[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?

Found the Arturia library guy.

?
What the f*ck does this mean?

All in all, for those who referred me above, none of you have given the answer to my original question, why would Arturia, on the purpose, as Ficciones hinted a couple of pages back, made bad presets.

Its natural, that you tweak the preset fitting to your purpose.
But I don't have time or will to make all my sounds from scratch.
Those who will spend most of the time jacking off with their synths, please be my guest.

BTW, I appreciate all the artisans.

For me most of the time goes writing motifs, arranging and blending hundreds of different sounds of tens of different siurces. Usually one synth sound is only tiny bit in the big picture, if any.

What comes to the Pigments presets, I own all the Arturias expansions.
Some of them are very good, some less good. But Arturia Analog Lab has pretty good browser, where you can locate sounds each of your purpose.

And, of course, I have all the other options, the rest of my appr. 80 synths and 60.000+ presets, where to choose, if I need a synth.
In many of my arrange I don't.

I know people, who spend days by carefully making their own, tailor-made, personal reed for their oboe.
Some oboists despise players, who use ready-made factory reeds.
On my behalf, I judge the end result (what comes out).
But of course, if the main interest is not music, but carving the reeds, which may be as fruitful for some people, you need to use other criteria.

Finally, I think, that the approach to this matter (whatever it is), depends on your relation to the music, the genre, and your interests. There are place for diversity.

[Ah_Dziz]

I’m enjoying this thing immensely. I honestly wasn’t expecting too much as a v collection owner, but this thing is capable of some serious weirdness (in a good way). Glad I grabbed it for cheap. I haven’t played with the presets but it’s super fun to program. I wish that it would automatically switch to a modulation source’s page down at the bottom when you select it for assigning to parameters. I keep expecting that to happen..... but it doesn’t.

[anomandaris1]

Presets in Pigments are quite good, I think.
Preset programmers cannot please everyone.

[Mushy Mushy]

@Bones: Pigments first, Thorn second, Dune third.

?

[BONES]

All in all, for those who referred me above, none of you have given the answer to my original question, why would Arturia, on the purpose, as Ficciones hinted a couple of pages back, made bad presets.

I answered the original question, what you have asked here is not the same thing, in that Pigments presets aren't bad, they are just different to what others do.

Its natural, that you tweak the preset fitting to your purpose.

Yes, so what then is the purpose of the first preset in DUNE? You'd have to tweak it beyond all recognition before you could make use of it. It's only purpose is to show off the capabilities of the synth. Which is not to say that is not a valid thing for a preset to do, it's just that what Arturia have done with Pigments' library is perhaps a little more useful to customers, rather than a good marketing tool for the company.

But I don't have time or will to make all my sounds from scratch.

Whereas I don't have time or will to go through mountains of presets to find a sound. Honestly, it is hours and hours of time you could spend learning how to actually use the thing. Ultimately, though, I try to find the right balance between the two things. I make my own patches from scratch when I know exactly what I want and I tend to go through presets when I don't know what might work.

[Teksonik]

what then is the purpose of the first preset in DUNE? You'd have to tweak it beyond all recognition before you could make use of it.

You could simply turn off the Arps. It leaves you with a nice Pluck sound that could easily be used in a composition....with a little imagination.

[anomandaris1]

what then is the purpose of the first preset in DUNE? You'd have to tweak it beyond all recognition before you could make use of it.

You could simply turn off the Arps. It leaves you with a nice Pluck sound that could easily be used in a composition....with a little imagination.

Aren't there similar sounds in the factory library that aren't self playing? It is totally made to showcase the synth, not to be usable sound (because it is duplicating something else in the library that doesn't require several clicks to become playable sound).
Btw, I find all the "edm" synths/presets to totally reuse the same old basic sounds. The last innovation was probably in Harmor/Razor additive sound effects. Even dubstep noises were possible in 00s with Massive (and probably other wavetable engines).

I like that most Pigments factory programs doesn't sound like the n-th Nexus/Avenger/Dune/Spire etc dance music preset pack (Avenger, Dune and Spire should be capable of synthesizing way more interesting sounds than typical trancey leads etc, but I guess people want more of the same...)

[Teksonik]

Aren't there similar sounds in the factory library that aren't self playing? It is totally made to showcase the synth, not to be usable sound (because it is duplicating something else in the library that doesn't require several clicks to become playable sound).

Sure they are showcase patches designed to show what the synth can do in the hands of a talented sound designer. In the case of the patch mentioned above it simply requires a single mouse click to turn it from a sequenced patch into a Pluck that could be used in any number of genres....with a little imagination.

But my point is that "usable" is a subjective thing. Kevin who created those patches once said that someone took one of his sequence patches unchanged in any way and used it on a YouTube video which at the time had over 1 million views and no telling how many now.

Some people don't have the patch snobbery bug like so many here do. They just need to put some music to something, they're not trying to be the next Deadmau5 or Skrillex.

Point being there are many ways to look at things and what's unusable to someone is perfectly usable to someone else.

Shakespeare once said "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Anyway I don't own Pigments but may some day. I'm just killing time waiting for the football games to come on....so to that end have a nice day all, I'm off to partay.........

[anomandaris1]

But my point is that "usable" is a subjective thing. Kevin who created those patches once said that someone took one of his sequence patches unchanged in any way and used it on a YouTube video which at the time had over 1 million views and no telling how many now.
Point being there are many ways to look at things and what's unusable to someone is perfectly usable to someone else.

Well, there is nothing subjective; the preset designer owns the compositional credit for self playing preset, not the guy with over 1 million views.

[Cinebient]

I just realized that i could buy Pigments 2 for just €69 since i registered the free plate reverb gift (and it is my first and only Arturia registered thing for mac/win, i just used some of their iOS apps)
Nice path for a cheap entree. I really do not wanted to buy any synth really but for 69? Still some days to decide and mangle the demo a bit.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Really enjoying playing with the granular engines on this. Works great with the modulation. Can't say I like the sound of the wavetable engine at all though. Coming from things like Icarus and ANA2 (and what I've heard of Rapid), or even Massive and older ones, Pigments wavetable just doesn't have the sharpness I like in wavetable oscs usually. And the audio rate mods are rather unpleasant to me. As far the VA, well it's the Arturia blandness to my ears. I really wish I liked it better because the workflow is nice in this synth. I'm really debating getting it just for the granular. And even having some basic oscs to add to granular for simple tonality can be useful.