Arturia V Collection 10. Predictions.

[pikey]

The click and drag resize support isn't what I was expecting, it's a little janky honestly.

When you drag a window it pretends like the window is freely resizable but when you let go it snaps to what I assume is one of the previous fixed resize amounts, it just feels a bit unsatisfying to use. I understand why with the way that Arturia handles UI design that freely resizable isn't possible, but would have been nice to have more feedback like a shadow box shown while dragging to know what the real size will be. Still it's nice that they work on these types of usability updates for their plugins so kudos there.

[SLiC]

They are definitely a different category but as good as Diva is, I don't find myself using it very often, there have been a lot of great synths since Diva came out and I find synths that can do more than basic VA/Subtractive more useful and more interesting sounding in VST form (Pigments, Phase Plant, Falcon, Avenger etc)

Totally fair. Diva with the ability to swap out oscillators for samples (hopefully NKI, EXS, or some other well supported format) would close a lot of those gaps.

Pigments also has a far superior modulation system with great visual feedback, a much better sequencer and a much better fx section…it’s just a different thing, maybe zebra 3 with Diva oscillators and filters will get closer, but Pigments along with a few others I mentioned really represents an evolution of the software synth. Diva was perhaps the peak of the wave before that, emulating older analogue hardware.

[VitaminD]

Why haven't we seen any drum machines, drum synths, and samplers oriented around percussion?

I'd like to see simmons, oberheim, and linn Arturia vsts.

And / or maybe a competitor to Battery4 (that actually gets updated).

[martiu]

Buchla best Arturia synth, prove me wrong

[zzz00m]

“Not in the same league” means different category or different quality?

Try loading a wavetable or a sample in Diva and let me know how that works out for ya! So yes, completely different categories.

I wouldn't try to emulate an analog synth with Pigments either. I'm a big fan of u-he, and the Repro 1/5 is probably my favorite synth!

[Tj Shredder]

Buchla best Arturia synth, prove me wrong

To prove you wrong is easy, it just needs someone with a bad taste…

[SLiC]

Analogue lab is seriously underrated, I love I can just open one VST and then switch between and even layer Arturia synths, great fx and preset management as well. This could still be taken to the next level in 1O if it also hosted the stand alone Arturia FX… rack style, use on synths or audio…

Throw in a sequencer, some modulators that could be used on synths or FX….you could have one heck of a workstation!

[noiseboyuk]

Why haven't we seen any drum machines, drum synths, and samplers oriented around percussion?

I'd like to see simmons, oberheim, and linn Arturia vsts.

And / or maybe a competitor to Battery4 (that actually gets updated).

Pet theory - whereas with synths people generally prefer hardware as a superior interface than software, with rhythm basic concepts like grid editors used with a mouse are general better than a row of hardware buttons that can only reflect one instrument at a time. To make a pure virtual Linn might seem underwhelming, you’d want it to be a Linn on steroids, not a simple hardware emulation which has been the Arturia method.

And somehow attempts to make a big unified mega drum machine always seem to not quite hit the mark. Spark was dropped after V4 IIRC, and nothing replaced it. Spectrasonics are now in their third frickin decade of no successor to Stylus. While we are drowning in synths that claim to be able to do it all (or at least an awful lot of it), I find that rhythm is the tougher nut to crack.

XO and Atlas show a way forward for computer-based rhythm, but both are relatively basic in many regards.

[a9k1tp]

Pigments consume more cpu than Diva. Not light when compared to the competition.

Diva is cool, and one of the best virtual analog synths, but it's not in the same league as Pigments.

Diva's also quite old now...

Old, that's why sounds analog..

But seriously, Pigments can do little bit of sampling, little bit of wavetable, little bit of additive, but not a single thing perfectly. And it consumes a huge amount of cpu when compared to any other modern synth. They really need to optimize this synth, and optimization is the most difficult thing.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

This is reason that Arturia will at some point get my hard earned for update to next V collection. I can count on them that old plugins continue to work until I am ready for next upgrade.

And that's a great thing for us as consumers. It's incredibly customer focused to keep updating the existing plugins at no cost with these maintenance/quality of life improvements, and it means they've really got to keep knocking it out of the park going forward to encourage upgrades as you point out. So they've got to make some killer additions with each release, or really step up the modeling with new versions of the old classics. And that's exactly what they've been doing so it's win-win.

I say it a lot recently, but Arturia has really established itself as a terrific plugin company. I didn't think highly of their plugins for a long time, but over the last few years the quality of their software has improved dramatically, they're doing innovative stuff in software (Pigments, Cold-Fire) while balancing that with modeled gear, and at the same time, doing killer stuff with hardware. And most importantly: they're doing this without alienating their customer base by implementing sh*t anti-consumer policies or letting their code stagnate like other major music software companies. My opinion of Arturia has done a complete 180 for the better. Great company these days!

[jdoo]

+1
I really like Analog Lab both as a standalone and as an AU Instrument into Logic Pro. What I really wish Arturia would do (yes.. Ive submitted the request ) - is to next-level Analog Lab and allow it to be a host for other manufacturer's instruments and effects. Would LOVE to layer and split the Arturia instruments with Logic's instruments, or u-he, or Korg, yadda yadda. There are lightweight au hosts.. but they are not nearly as robust as the Arturia Analog Lab.
/two cents
Joe

Analogue lab is seriously underrated, I love I can just open one VST and then switch between and even layer Arturia synths, great fx and preset management as well. This could still be taken to the next level in 1O if it also hosted the stand alone Arturia FX… rack style, use on synths or audio…

Throw in a sequencer, some modulators that could be used on synths or FX….you could have one heck of a workstation!

[zzz00m]

And it consumes a huge amount of cpu when compared to any other modern synth. They really need to optimize this synth, and optimization is the most difficult thing.

I see some folks complaining about this, but not seeing the issue with Pigments CPU usage here on my modest 4-year old i5 desktop PC.

A few years back my dual core i3 could barely run once instance of Diva. My current PC can run multiple instances of Diva without blinking... So yeah, no issues with Pigments.

Not against asking for optimizations where possible, but I think some folks unrealistically believe that any new code can, or should be "optimized" to run on any older hardware. There are actual limits to computationally intensive algorithms being made less demanding on resources. Sometimes it just takes newer hardware. Nothing new here, just a new generation of software/hardware balance. Something we've always had to deal with since the beginning of computing.

The irony here is that some of the more demanding new features in the latest soft synths were likely only made possible by hardware advances, that the developers are now leveraging... and as sad as it is to see our old computers getting older and less able to keep up with the times, it is what it is.

[martiu]

Buchla best Arturia synth, prove me wrong

To prove you wrong is easy, it just needs someone with a bad taste…

[Uncle E]

Analogue lab is seriously underrated, I love I can just open one VST and then switch between and even layer Arturia synths, great fx and preset management as well. This could still be taken to the next level in 1O if it also hosted the stand alone Arturia FX… rack style, use on synths or audio…

Throw in a sequencer, some modulators that could be used on synths or FX….you could have one heck of a workstation!

Plus, all with a unified physical control set when using Arturia controllers. NKS is great but programming sounds is definitely more intuitive when the controls are in the same place every time.

[VitaminD]

Why haven't we seen any drum machines, drum synths, and samplers oriented around percussion?

I'd like to see simmons, oberheim, and linn Arturia vsts.

And / or maybe a competitor to Battery4 (that actually gets updated).

Pet theory - whereas with synths people generally prefer hardware as a superior interface than software, with rhythm basic concepts like grid editors used with a mouse are general better than a row of hardware buttons that can only reflect one instrument at a time. To make a pure virtual Linn might seem underwhelming, you’d want it to be a Linn on steroids, not a simple hardware emulation which has been the Arturia method.

And somehow attempts to make a big unified mega drum machine always seem to not quite hit the mark. Spark was dropped after V4 IIRC, and nothing replaced it. Spectrasonics are now in their third frickin decade of no successor to Stylus. While we are drowning in synths that claim to be able to do it all (or at least an awful lot of it), I find that rhythm is the tougher nut to crack.

XO and Atlas show a way forward for computer-based rhythm, but both are relatively basic in many regards.

Either way, they don't really have any percussion VSTs today and I think they should.

Geist and Battery are pretty great to me, esp Geist with the built in pattern sequencing. It's just no one wants to keep maintaining what they started. That's the bigger issue. Same goes with Stylus. One and done isn't going to work.

Spark was kind of crummily implemented imo. They should have another go at it in VST form.