Arturia V Collection 6

[waltercruz]

I give a quick run on DX7 V demo vs Dexed. The demo can't import sysex, but already has the ROM1 and ROM2 patches from DX7. But I found the CPU usage very high.

[Spencer Maddox]

I give a quick run on DX7 V demo vs Dexed. The demo can't import sysex, but already has the ROM1 and ROM2 patches from DX7. But I found the CPU usage very high.

Same here, Compared to Fm8 and Sytris (My other FM Synths) The CPU was significantly higher. Running up to 20-25% alone on some presets, and I have a pretty modern and capable Computer. Here's to hoping they iron that out...

[fmr]

I give a quick run on DX7 V demo vs Dexed. The demo can't import sysex, but already has the ROM1 and ROM2 patches from DX7. But I found the CPU usage very high.

Same here, Compared to Fm8 and Sytris (My other FM Synths) The CPU was significantly higher. Running up to 20-25% alone on some presets, and I have a pretty modern and capable Computer. Here's to hoping they iron that out...

You are probably talking about presets that take advantage of more modern features, which indeed can take some CPU. But presets that use just the FM synthesis as in the DX7 don't take that much (although they take more than DeXed and FM8, nevertheless). Anyway, I was able to comfortably use up to eight instances of DX7 V (to emulate the TX816), and have just around 50% on the CPU indicator (in Cubase Pro)

[SoundGoddess]

What I want to see eventually is Arturia coming out with some original VSTi synths, instead of only modeling vintage hardware. Maybe they don't want to make a good VSTi that competes with their Brute synths?

Their dev team seems to be more on the ball then it was a few years ago. In 2013/2014 there was plenty to complain about. I did like my minilab, but it was not ready for prime time when I bought it. I like my keylab a lot, but I have had to do some repairs on it. The USB connector broke so I had a friend who knew electrical engineering replace it. One of the keys in the keybed popped up weird and I had to open up the case and superglue the broken piece back into place. Nothing worth doing an RMA over really, pretty sure the USB plug was my fault anyway.

But I have stuck with Arturia, they seemed open to suggestion and willing to fix bugs. The big upgrade to me was the GUI redesign of the vc5. I originally bought keylab bundled with bitwig studio, and am still really in love with bitwig, I like it much better than all of my previous DAWs. I got that because I could see the vision they were going for with analog lab and while the minilab was still kind of clunky, them letting me issue bug reports and actually fixing things i reported gave me confidence that they had a commitment to quality. They recently updated the Keylab script in BW2 and I much like the better interface, the led screen is more descriptive so I don't have to look at the computer screen as much. I think I got SEM V and MiniV as part of some promo, then bought Prophet V standalone on sale. Then they offered VC4 for $169 and I did that. Then $99 for VC4 update to the new gui, and another $99 for VC5 when NI offered it with the NKI updates. Seeing as they let me update all of the VC5 stuff to VC6 (except the pianoV which i could update for $20 right now if i wasn't planning to get VC6 at some point) I don't really feel that upset about having paid that $99 like 6 month ago.

I have sparkle with a bunch of expansions, really liked it a lot. I have an original beatstep, wish I had the pro instead but I got it before the pro was announced. Got the older Spark controller on ebay since it is fun for live performance. I had a microbrute, which sounded quite nice, but i sold it off to get a korg minilogue since that is more modern and has a lot more sound design options. I do intend to eventually get a MatrixBrute and DrumBrute however, just invested a lot into the Maschine/Komplete stuff so I have to wait on that for another year or so.

So idk, Arturia has overall kept me a happy customer. They seem to be listening to their customer base and working to make their products bug-free, fast, and with resizable gui's. Prior to the updated GUIs I never had much interest in some of the vc4 synths because they were too small for me to work on, now they are usable and fun. Now that AL3 is so much faster for preset browsing I will be using that more often in my productions. With AL2 there still was a fairly noticeable pause when switching presets, but now everything seems to load up very quickly.

If you step back and look at this stuff holistically, having all of this vintage gear that sounds good enough to get the job done without spending huge money on vintage hardware is really a win IMO. Like really we as electronic musicians have so much more available to us on a laptop than anyone else in music history has really had access to, other than million-dollar studio builds or whatever. Arturia used to use the ridiculous crappy eLicenser DRM which I hated, but they ditched it for ASC which has never given me any problems.

Paying more in the past for stuff you can get much cheaper in the present is very much the new status quo, and Arturia is hardly alone in this. The entire industry has been going in that direction for a long while now. Obviously the trend is lower price with more features, I saw waves diamond on sale for $217 over BFCM and I know a good number of people have paid out $3k for that.

Honestly I feel quite spoiled, even compared to where I was at in the early 2000s barely starting out with electronic music, or even like 5 years ago. Music tends to be one of these areas where people get really set in their ways and don't like change. But the customer base for this kind of stuff is shifting from baby boomers to millennials and I think it is worth riding that wave into the future. With the Roli seaboard I can already shave off having to spend 5+ years learning a new instrument, and can expressively switch from trombone to violin to bass guitar without having much learning curve. And then you have stuff like Noiiz that is really changing up the way sample libraries are done, and they are going to be releasing sampler instruments that are easy to access over the cloud in 2018. This kind of stuff is going to open up a lot of doors for a lot of people.

Frankly, I would rather live in a society where more people are hanging out with friends and just jamming for the fun of it. Or listening to their friends' bands instead of only ever listening to top40 or whatever. When the Roland drum machines came out in the 90s it really created entirely new genres. This new music trend of having everything at your fingertips for cheap is likely to shift music around as much or more than the guitar did when it became ubiquitous.

[virtualpt]

I give a quick run on DX7 V demo vs Dexed. The demo can't import sysex, but already has the ROM1 and ROM2 patches from DX7. But I found the CPU usage very high.

Yes agreed. The CPU usage is high. It does sound marginally better than Dexed, to me, and the gui is much better, but the CPU hit makes me want to stay with Dexed.

[PietW.]

Am I blind, but where is the resynthesis in the Fairlight plugin?

First, you have to be in the screen editor (button SCR at the top right)
Then, you select a sample, go to the Edit tab, and you have there a button called ANALYSE!.
It automatically changes you to the Time Synth, where you have the resynthesized version of the sample
If you go to the edit tab in this window, you have there all the controls to edit the resynthesized sound (or synthesize one from scracth, using additive synthesis)
When you are done, you can click the button COMPUTE!, and you will have a new sample that's the result of the synthesis work (or you can simply use the synthesized version, letting the voice slot selected in Time Synth.

Thanks

[suthnear]

whole lotta blah from me

Negative feedback doesn't give you a square , it would give you a reversed saw .
What yamaha actually did is take the squared output (pow 2) of the operator and fed back to itself .
Rectify does also work but yields a slighlty different outcome .
For simplicity 's sake they just called it negative feedback , but it's not really just negative .

Ah, I did not know that. Thank you.

[simmo75]

 
@Arturia:

Why can't you explain why long-term customers can't get a better upgrade deal?

Seems you're dodging the issue.

v2 -> v4 -> v5

But I can't (morally) afford this 200 Euro upgrade so will wait 'till/if it goes on sale.

They’re totally avoiding our the question, seems like they don’t give a toss about us.

[foosnark]

I prefer working with aalto by a long shot even if it is not a 1:1 buchla clone, at the end you want weird noises from non substractive architechture and both deliver.

I wonder how it is I've missed out on Aalto all this time?

I vaguely recall installing a demo of Kaivo, going "what the hell?" and not trying it again. I think I was entirely unaware of Aalto; I got into West Coast synthesis through Eurorack last year, and thought all this time that there just wasn't any software option outside of some (personally unsatisfying) Reaktor stuff.

I'll have to give it a try too when I get off work. Seems promising from YouTube demos though.

[zadillo]

 
@Arturia:

Why can't you explain why long-term customers can't get a better upgrade deal?

Seems you're dodging the issue.

v2 -> v4 -> v5

But I can't (morally) afford this 200 Euro upgrade so will wait 'till/if it goes on sale.

It's the same reason that the upgrade cost for someone who bought Komplete 8, 9 and 10 to upgrade to 11 is the same for someone who only bought Komplete 10. Or Propellerhead Reason. Or any number of other software packages.

[ENV1]

I found the CPU usage very high.

It eats quite a bit of RAM too.

Observe:

DX7 V, circa 245MB per instance. A gig of RAM gives you ~ 4 instances.

DX7V-RAM.gif

To compare: FM7, circa 30MB per instance. A gig of RAM gives you ~ 34 instances.

FM7-RAM.gif

PS: This is on a 32bit system. On 64bit its probably a smidgen more.

[Harry_HH]

@Arturia:

Why can't you explain why long-term customers can't get a better upgrade deal?

Seems you're dodging the issue.

v2 -> v4 -> v5

But I can't (morally) afford this 200 Euro upgrade so will wait 'till/if it goes on sale.

They’re totally avoiding our the question, seems like they don’t give a toss about us.

 


I´m on the same boat. And most likely will wait the sale to upgrade, too. But I have to say, I understand why the Arturia has chosen this pricing policy - they need money, and to expand the clientele, the ver. 6 pricing is in favour of the new clients. They have calculated, that those who have purhased possibly more or less all the bundle versions, will upgrade anyway.
Arturia makes (some) great products, if this is the way they stay in the business, its OK for me.

[kiezum]

Aalto is brilliant. The sound is excellent. It has a waveguide module. And the 'patchbay' is really user friendly. Over the years it's been optimised.

Kaivo is just as good with granular and physical modelling modules.

[SHall1000]

Does anyone know yet if the Sysex export will talk to a Volca FM. Is there a way to limit the plugin functionality to compatible parameters?

[V0RT3X]

Had a go with the CMI V and I'm on the fence with it.