Pigments 6

[kraster]

It's funny because so many people praise Pigments for being intuitive and easy to use. And it should be, but i just don't have that experience. Its not complicated and makes sense but I find myself having to constantly relearn it after stepping away for a few months. I've also never really been able to wrap my head around the combinate things. I get they are modulation remapping (I think) but it's never felt as easy to use as Vitals or Phase Plants remap functions.

Current otoh is just a breeze. Granted, I've spent more hours with Current but even when I was new to it, it just flowed. But still, both Serum and Vital are something of a gold standard for usability in my books...

That echoes my experience.

It’s very hard to quantify why but I just don’t particularly enjoy using Pigments. Something about the UI rubs me up the wrong way.

A small example would be something like how the wave table section is implemented in Pigments vs. Current. In Current the wave table position control is front and centre whereas in Pigments it’s in a cluster of controls in the top right.

This isn’t a crime in itself but wavetable position is the control you are most likely to use in a wavetable synth and having it in a slightly inconspicuous location just makes it slightly unintuitive.

I know that sounds like kind of a petty complaint but Pigments has a number of these small things that collectively make the experience sub optimal.

There’s also a degree of fiddliness in Pigments that isn’t in other synths.

I feel like in Current, Avenger and Serum I never have to even think about where a control is and controlling them just feels more robust.

In no way am I saying that Pigments is a bad synth, it’s not and absolute credit where it’s due to Arturia for keeping these substantial updates free.

[nanostream]

Amazing update, so much great stuff to explore.

Love the direction Arturia took. A new synth engine, new filters, and lots of housekeeping. But my favorite new feature might be the Voice Modulator, it opens up completely new avenues. Love it.

[vertibration]

It's funny because so many people praise Pigments for being intuitive and easy to use. And it should be, but i just don't have that experience. Its not complicated and makes sense but I find myself having to constantly relearn it after stepping away for a few months. I've also never really been able to wrap my head around the combinate things. I get they are modulation remapping (I think) but it's never felt as easy to use as Vitals or Phase Plants remap functions.

Current otoh is just a breeze. Granted, I've spent more hours with Current but even when I was new to it, it just flowed. But still, both Serum and Vital are something of a gold standard for usability in my books...

Pigments is an amazing synth, but yea.....Serum is just really, really fast. I can pop out presets on that synth like a madman

Current, pigments, serum... 3 great synths... Should add phase plant, Dune and Avenger, and you basically get the gold standards of synths.
Until zebra 3 arrives that is.

(I am not counting falcon, halion or Omnisphere, different category)

All of these synths are redundant. Nothing is absolutely impressive anymore. Each, somewhat a copy of the next.

At this point, I think it's who can put something out that does a couple of things extremely well, with a sleek effective UI. The "All in one" synths have become boring.

[Jac459]

It's funny because so many people praise Pigments for being intuitive and easy to use. And it should be, but i just don't have that experience. Its not complicated and makes sense but I find myself having to constantly relearn it after stepping away for a few months. I've also never really been able to wrap my head around the combinate things. I get they are modulation remapping (I think) but it's never felt as easy to use as Vitals or Phase Plants remap functions.

Current otoh is just a breeze. Granted, I've spent more hours with Current but even when I was new to it, it just flowed. But still, both Serum and Vital are something of a gold standard for usability in my books...

Pigments is an amazing synth, but yea.....Serum is just really, really fast. I can pop out presets on that synth like a madman

Current, pigments, serum... 3 great synths... Should add phase plant, Dune and Avenger, and you basically get the gold standards of synths.
Until zebra 3 arrives that is.

(I am not counting falcon, halion or Omnisphere, different category)

All of these synths are redundant. Nothing is absolutely impressive anymore. Each, somewhat a copy of the next.

At this point, I think it's who can put something out that does a couple of things extremely well, with a sleek effective UI. The "All in one" synths have become boring.

Well that's highly debatable and clearly a question of taste...
Luckily, if you are into "one feature" synths, you also have a lot of awesome choices (Spire, Diva, Legend HZ, Fabfilter Twin 3, DS Thorn...).

[bmanic]

It's funny because so many people praise Pigments for being intuitive and easy to use. And it should be, but i just don't have that experience. Its not complicated and makes sense but I find myself having to constantly relearn it after stepping away for a few months. I've also never really been able to wrap my head around the combinate things. I get they are modulation remapping (I think) but it's never felt as easy to use as Vitals or Phase Plants remap functions.

Current otoh is just a breeze. Granted, I've spent more hours with Current but even when I was new to it, it just flowed. But still, both Serum and Vital are something of a gold standard for usability in my books...

Agree wholeheartedly

The combinators are pretty much doing what it says in the name. Their main function is to combine modulation sources and process them accord to the function you've selected. Multiply, sum, divide, crossfade etc. You can see the exact order and operation of the function when you hover your mouse cursor over the 'Amount' knob (in all the ones that combine two signals).

Combinators can also do remapping but that's just one function of many. I do hope that in Pigments 7 remapping is done at the modulation level. It's such a useful function for pretty much all modulation sources when fine tuning things. This is one area where Vital, Avenger, Falcon etc is far more powerful.

[zvenx]

Well, I am not sure if Arturia put some special secret sauce in this update, or the sound design team have recently gotten in sync with my taste, but between this update and Exploration 3, Pigments will now be in my prime time vst instrument list..
One patch (Reverie by Konstantin Klem) even inspired me to write a short 2 minute piece last night.
First time ever not only for Pigments but for any Arturia Synth.
Thank you for keep improving Pigments, Arturia.

rsp

[Fannon]

Konstantin Klemms patches are really awesome, agreed

[HOTF]

Just took up the offer for Explorations Vol.3 bundle. Are they any good ?

[Dirtgrain]

Just took up the offer for Explorations Vol.3 bundle. Are they any good ?

I'm liking the lo-fi one.

[Synthman2000]

I could not get past the sound of pigments, v. hard, just did not work for me that seemed to be the over arching impression. Glad others are loving it though.

[HOTF]

I could not get past the sound of pigments, v. hard, just did not work for me that seemed to be the over arching impression. Glad others are loving it though.

The updated filters help a lot bringing anemic sounds to life.You can now put the multimode filters in Analog mode and drive them. I still don't see pigments being my go to for simple V.A sounds but with the Modal, grannular, additive and wavetable engines this synth as quite an impressive range of timbres. And also the sequencer is so damn good...

[Razzia]

A small example would be something like how the wave table section is implemented in Pigments vs. Current. In Current the wave table position control is front and centre whereas in Pigments it’s in a cluster of controls in the top right.

This isn’t a crime in itself but wavetable position is the control you are most likely to use in a wavetable synth and having it in a slightly inconspicuous location just makes it slightly unintuitive.

I know that sounds like kind of a petty complaint but Pigments has a number of these small things that collectively make the experience sub optimal.

To be fair, the WT position can be adjusted by grabbing the actual waveform like in Phase Plant. I'm not even sure if it's the positioning of the main parameters that puts some people off, but in general I think you're onto something here.

I've also felt the look and layout of the knobs and modules has something to do with why it feels a little less natural to me than other synths of its kind. It's not really a criticism - barely even a matter of personal preference. It's just sort of unconscious familiarity and facility.

Using your example of Current, a big "main" parameter on a module with smaller knobs clustered around it is visually helpful. it's not that I need the developer to say "HEY DUMMY THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE" but it does anchor my eye to a certain section of the UI as a distinct set of related parameters and helps with the sort of unconscious grouping of things that leads to that speedy, thoughtless competence we get with our favorite synths.

I really want to spend more time with Pigments and try to overcome whatever it is that makes me play with a bit for novelty then go back to other workhorse synths. It's become an extraordinarily cool synth.

[Biome_Digital]

The new cluster filter is a useful addition.

[Biome_Digital]

I could not get past the sound of pigments, v. hard, just did not work for me that seemed to be the over arching impression. Glad others are loving it though.

The updated filters help a lot bringing anemic sounds to life.You can now put the multimode filters in Analog mode and drive them. I still don't see pigments being my go to for simple V.A sounds but with the Modal, grannular, additive and wavetable engines this synth as quite an impressive range of timbres. And also the sequencer is so damn good...

Yeah, the wavetable, VA, granular, and sampler engines are the most useful.

[kraster]

Using your example of Current, a big "main" parameter on a module with smaller knobs clustered around it is visually helpful. it's not that I need the developer to say "HEY DUMMY THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE" but it does anchor my eye to a certain section of the UI as a distinct set of related parameters and helps with the sort of unconscious grouping of things that leads to that speedy, thoughtless competence we get with our favorite synths.

Yeah it's very much the UX part of the design. As you say it's not that Pigments is a difficult or particulary arcane synth to use but those little design touches in other synths add up to that overall experience.

To be honest, most of the big synths are extremely powerful and ridiculously capable so UX, UI and ergonomics are often tie breakers.

I'll definitely dig more into Pigments to check out the new functionality and features. As I said personal reservations aside it's worth lending support to Arturia for their consumer friendly approach to the synth.