Arturia Pigments 5 out now

[teilo]

Demoing it with the Seaboard Rise 2, I love the fact that it's now assigned to M1 (which is already mapped to parameters in the presets I've tested) by default.

That was already true in Pigments 4. I really wish they hadn't done this. They should support slide (and release velocity!) as separate modulation sources.

[BobDog]

I'm aware that most people would not care about this problem, but I have serious troubles really using Pigments in MPE Mode with LinnStrument. The issue is that if you enable MPE, it will assign the Timbre/Slide axis to the first macro knob.

In most presets the change of the first macro knob is quite drastic. With the LinnStrument there's not a lot of space on the Y axis so it's basically impossible to play it completely controlled. It would be so much nicer, if Timbre/Slide were a proper modulation source (like ATouch) and I could assign it myself the way I need it for my instrument and playing style. Or maybe choose how strongly it would affect the Macro knobs.

If you don't want to edit the ranges in the Pigments patch you can set minimum and maximum levels for the Y axis on the linnstrument, set it up as you want for Pigments and then save it as a preset and use that preset when playing Pigments.

p.s. If you just want to get rid of the Macro 1 modulations, there is a little pull-down "v" next to the name, that brings up a menu where you can delete them, mute them or reassign them.

[machinesworking]

I'm aware that most people would not care about this problem, but I have serious troubles really using Pigments in MPE Mode with LinnStrument. The issue is that if you enable MPE, it will assign the Timbre/Slide axis to the first macro knob.

In most presets the change of the first macro knob is quite drastic. With the LinnStrument there's not a lot of space on the Y axis so it's basically impossible to play it completely controlled. It would be so much nicer, if Timbre/Slide were a proper modulation source (like ATouch) and I could assign it myself the way I need it for my instrument and playing style. Or maybe choose how strongly it would affect the Macro knobs.

I've got a cat on my lap, but once I get the strength to break its little heart I can look into this. I seem to recall that there's a setting for slide on the Linnstrument to always have it start at a certain state no matter where you hit? if true then it's just a matter of adjusting the amount the macro in Pigments controls.

[bob is on this too]

[sacer]

i also hoped for new Mini Filter and OSC

[DarkS474]

Now that they optimized for multithreading what they should change is having the Step Sequencer and Arpeggiator as modules. With the ability to add a minimum of 4 maybe up to 16. And upgrade the Sequencer to up to 32 or 64 steps. And add more modes to the Arpeggiator. It would allow for more complex sounds.

[swilow11]

I really hope that they improve the wavetable handling at some point. Even if you have nothing but the factory content and some of their expansions it's just a mess of one-level-deep folders, some with hardly anything in them. Add in user content and it just gets worse, especially if you have any sort of hierarchical file structure. Like, there's a folder view for the samples. Why not do the exact same thing for wavetables? And don't even think about sending a project or preset using your own content to somebody else unless you make your own bank since there's no file embedding and it's very particular about folder naming when it comes to loading things.

Apart from that, great synth. Definitely one of my favorites to program. The CPU improvements are much appreciated and the new sequencer and audio in stuff seems pretty cool.

Also, it appears they added a starting phase offset for the Wavetable oscillator and didn't even bother to mention it??? That's huge, at least to me.

Totally agreed with wavetable handling issue. I've got wavetables in multiple nested categories/folders and the only way Pigments can see them all is to actively remove each sub folder and place it in the user section. So my imported/user wavetables folder in Pigments is seemingly metres tall and hard to navigate. Not sure why they don't implement the ability to go deeper than one folder in.

Also wish I could just point Pigments to a master folder- Serum has a similar issue, but many synths don't, so I use the Serum Tables folder as a global storage site, and point other wavetable synths to it. I want to tell Pigments to look there, but instead I have to duplicate wavetables and manually copy them to the user folders. This is annoying because I make my own wavetables a lot in Serum, and can use them much more easily in synths like Phase Plant. I also really dislike having multiple copies of things in different locations.

That said, I could very well be misunderstanding something here as I've avoided using Pigments for a while, so if anyone can correct me, that would be much appreciated.

[QuietSheep]

I will now stop complaining about CPU issues as they are gone for me at this time.

[Fannon]

If you don't want to edit the ranges in the Pigments patch you can set minimum and maximum levels for the Y axis on the linnstrument, set it up as you want for Pigments and then save it as a preset and use that preset when playing Pigments.

p.s. If you just want to get rid of the Macro 1 modulations, there is a little pull-down "v" next to the name, that brings up a menu where you can delete them, mute them or reassign them.

Oh, I totally didn't know that. I've now looked into the manual and found that you can set the default / middle value via hidden setting. But how would you set minimum / maximum?

4) RELATIVE

If off, CC messages reflect absolute finger position within note cell.
If on, a CC value of 64 is sent at first regardless of the position of touch, and subsequent Y-axis movements increase or decrease that value.

Hidden setting: Y-axis Relative Initial value
Hold to set the starting relative value from its default of 64 to any value from 0 to 127. For example, if using Y-axis to add a modulation amount, the Y-axis value at first touch will be zero, then moving your finger forward will increase the value.

[Fannon]

I've got a cat on my lap, but once I get the strength to break its little heart I can look into this. I seem to recall that there's a setting for slide on the Linnstrument to always have it start at a certain state no matter where you hit? if true then it's just a matter of adjusting the amount the macro in Pigments controls.

[bob is on this too]

Thanks for looking into it! Yes, this setting is there "Relative". I think this already makes the situation much better. If you set relative on and choose Slide mode "Relative Unipolar", its already much more controllable. This also unlocks the Macro 1 knob to be moved manually (is this new with Pigments 5?).

[Fannon]

Demoing it with the Seaboard Rise 2, I love the fact that it's now assigned to M1 (which is already mapped to parameters in the presets I've tested) by default.

That was already true in Pigments 4. I really wish they hadn't done this. They should support slide (and release velocity!) as separate modulation sources.

Interesting how differently this is seen. But I'm with Ou_Tis on this. I really wished they didn't do such a hard assignment and instead had it as a mod source. If you could now assign a mod source to a Macro knob as target, that would be really nice!

[Lbdunequest]

I will now stop complaining about CPU issues as they are gone for me at this time.

They should do that to all of their plugins, im surprised how efficient now Pigments 5 is, more then Serum and PhasePlant.

[jules99]

It's an ok..ish update, compared to earlier ones, a minor one. I still don't see Play modes' target audience, but maybe they're gearing up for a Pigments hardware version at some point?

Sidechaining audio makes the most sense to me if we also had an envelope follower. Using some drumloop or vocal to modulate stuff, like you can kind of do in Current, would be amazing.

I would have loved to hear the new Mini filter in Pigments, probably saving that one for P6.

And to have the sequencer also as a modulator would be amazing.

One interesting feature would be layers, but given how CPU-intensive Pigments can be, that's probably not coming for a while.

[davidka]

I wonder if the explorations bundle and V-Collection X affect each other's prices?
I mean, if I buy the preset pack now, would it count into a future V-Collection X purchase in any percentage?

[chk071]

Also, it appears they added a starting phase offset for the Wavetable oscillator and didn't even bother to mention it??? That's huge, at least to me.

They did mention it.

V 5.0.1
New Features - Audio Engine:

• New multicore CPU optimization

• New generative sequencer featuring one-click sequence generation

• New Sequencer sequence browser & saveable presets

• New Sequencer playback modes

• Various Sequencer UX improvements

• New Utility Engine Audio Input mode

• New auxiliary effect bus routing

• New Wavetable Engine phase parameter

I just wonder why they only added it for the wavetable engine, and not for anything else as well.

[glokraw]

I also really dislike having multiple copies of things in different locations.

You should be able to create symbolic links from the wavetables in your Serum folder
to what is expected by Pigments. In a pair of filemanagers, open one to the (empty) Pigments folder, and from the second manager, select and drag all the wavetable content, and select the link option, instead of copy or move. Your OS may have a different term for 'link'. I do this so Hive, Vital, Surge and Synthmaster One all can access the same content without duplicates.
Might have to un-nest folder collections if Pigments file browsing is extremely lame.
Cheers