Arturia V Collection 8 official thread

[SLiC]

Anyone know what the 6 to 8 upgrade price is?

$249

I’m also on 6 and the upgrade price is too high for me, I’ll see what 9 brings...the last must have synth for me was the Buchla, all the other synths since then are good, but I just don’t need them.

[menthol]

Where are you seeing 149. I am offered €199 for the upgrade. I was expecting 149.
Feels expensive when I could pick up the whole package for $499!

Here in the US, I'm seeing 199 as the upgrade price also. Maybe the 149 is for people who have Collection 7 plus an individual synth from Collection 8? In any case, I too am a little disappointed.

[planetearth]

Arturia explained the higher prices when upgrading from older versions last year. In the past, you could be two versions "behind" and still upgrade to the latest version for $99, if you caught the sale. They changed that late last year, because they felt they were offering a lot more than their competitors in the V Complete bundle, and people who upgraded with each version were bearing the brunt of the cost.

So while Arturia may have another sale this summer, there's no reason to expect V Collection 6 owners to be able to upgrade for less than $249 -- which is what they've been charging for the upgrade since VC8 came out (though I certainly hope we can). And when VC9 comes out, that $249 may rise to $299, if Arturia decides to revisit their upgrade pricing. With a year of "upgrade" data collected, they may see that enough people are still upgrading, and may decide to keep the price...or raise it $50. Then again, they (hopefully) will see some of us found it to be a bit too steep, and maybe they'll drop it by $50 (or $150!).

Steve

[Lint_Huffer7]

I know the original Eight Voice didn't even have a mod wheel, but it also didn't have a sequencer

or the effects that CVA has added.

Oberheim was doing effects boxes (also pictured above) before the SEM was even a thing.

CA's 8 voice is, on balance, a bit better than Arturia's, since Arturia doesn't really have eight individual SEMs - it offers the special "8 voice programmer" mode, but it's more like a step sequencer, a bit detached from the SEMs and without the voice-stealing of a hardware 8 voice.

(Also, the SEM V tuning steps in semitones. Pretty sterile unless you also manually adjust the fine tune, which is a bit cumbersome - and you're still SOL if you want a smooth sweep beyond one semitone)

[Arashi]

CA's 8 voice is, on balance, a bit better than Arturia's, since Arturia doesn't really have eight individual SEMs - it offers the special "8 voice programmer" mode, but it's more like a step sequencer, a bit detached from the SEMs and without the voice-stealing of a hardware 8 voice.

(Also, the SEM V tuning steps in semitones. Pretty sterile unless you also manually adjust the fine tune, which is a bit cumbersome - and you're still SOL if you want a smooth sweep beyond one semitone)

IMO Cherry Audio’s Eight Voice is a lot better than Arturia SEM V, which has never really clicked for me (I think it mostly comes down to the filter, which sounds a bit generic and doesn’t have that SEM flavor). Arturia’s multiple voice programmer only allows offsetting a small subset of the parameters for each voice (albeit in a pretty convenient way). Cherry’s Eight Voice unlocks the full power of tweaking all the features of each SEM.

bx_oberhausen destroys SEM V as a single SEM emulation, but lacks any ability to tweak individual voices. It does sound very good though.

OB-E is the best one, overall, but obviously a lot more expensive and (for now) Mac-only. But Cherry did come up with some unique features that OB-E doesn’t have, which allows Eight Voice to do a few things that OB-E can’t (like the drum kits, which rely on each SEM having its own note range).

Regarding the tuning in SEM V, Arturia has a convention where you can right-click and drag any knob or slider for fine adjustment, which might help here. The actual SEM has strange double decker frequency knobs where the top half is fine tune and the bottom half is coarse. I was looking into what Arturia had done about that when I found out about their right-click convention. I believe it actually works in all their plugins.

[planetearth]

I know the original Eight Voice didn't even have a mod wheel, but it also didn't have a sequencer

or the effects that CVA has added.

Oberheim was doing effects boxes (also pictured above) before the SEM was even a thing.

CA's 8 voice is, on balance, a bit better than Arturia's, since Arturia doesn't really have eight individual SEMs - it offers the special "8 voice programmer" mode, but it's more like a step sequencer, a bit detached from the SEMs and without the voice-stealing of a hardware 8 voice.

(Also, the SEM V tuning steps in semitones. Pretty sterile unless you also manually adjust the fine tune, which is a bit cumbersome - and you're still SOL if you want a smooth sweep beyond one semitone)

Yes, Oberheim offered effects boxes and a sequencer, but they didn't come with the Eight Voice.

Steve

[HM]

Arturia explained the higher prices when upgrading from older versions last year. In the past, you could be two versions "behind" and still upgrade to the latest version for $99, if you caught the sale. They changed that late last year, because they felt they were offering a lot more than their competitors in the V Complete bundle, and people who upgraded with each version were bearing the brunt of the cost.

So while Arturia may have another sale this summer, there's no reason to expect V Collection 6 owners to be able to upgrade for less than $249 -- which is what they've been charging for the upgrade since VC8 came out (though I certainly hope we can). And when VC9 comes out, that $249 may rise to $299, if Arturia decides to revisit their upgrade pricing. With a year of "upgrade" data collected, they may see that enough people are still upgrading, and may decide to keep the price...or raise it $50. Then again, they (hopefully) will see some of us found it to be a bit too steep, and maybe they'll drop it by $50 (or $150!).

Steve

Upgrade prices are very aggressive, compared to reduced full-version offers, not OK

Guess my example is typical ,..

I got into V7 and got no individual additional V8 instruments ,.. (but many effects)

So for me now the default V8 upgrade is 299 euro ,.. compared to new customers 499 euro deal

So hoped for at least the usual "half price" upgrade-offer, 149 euro, though still very expensive

But the offer right now is 199 euro unfortunately

Question is if this is just some half-way "deal", milking the market, before doing the half price ?

Anyway they are getting to greedy I guess ,.. I find it disrespctfull to old customers

Somehow I regret V7 and my trust in Arturia generally

You have to be able to trust a fair long-term pricing pattern

[SLiC]

Software companies want new customers, existing customers they seem less bothered about..Arturia and IK are amongst the worst candidates for new verses upgrade costs! If people don't upgrade in numbers, they will lower the cost I suspect (although Arturia never seem to do the bargain bucket 80% off thing like IK always seem to end up doing)

[Lint_Huffer7]

Regarding the tuning in SEM V, Arturia has a convention where you can right-click and drag any knob or slider for fine adjustment, which might help here. The actual SEM has strange double decker frequency knobs where the top half is fine tune and the bottom half is coarse. I was looking into what Arturia had done about that when I found out about their right-click convention. I believe it actually works in all their plugins.

This had me really excited for a bit, but unfortunately it's just the same as ctrl-clicking in most other VSTs - which means stepped tunings like 2600 V are still just as stepped, it just takes more mouse-miles to get to the next step. With SEM V, it switches over to the fine tune knob, which means you're still limited to 1 semitone of glide

Arturia's UI is top-notch (my personal V Collection One Weird Tip is that clicking higher and lower on the note keys affects velocity - definitely has its moments of utility when auditioning patches) and I find the overall package far more inspiring than not, but there's some real confusing laziness too - the stepped coarse tuning is my personal white whale, but there's also stuff like the "Mechanics" dial on Mellotron V which just plays one of three (only three!) "key-on noise" samples, round-robining in the exact same order until the end of time, with a whopping TWO velocity zones (I think they're 0-99 and 100-127).

[Tj Shredder]

They should model the key on noise, they have the modeling experts hired already...

[Aloysius]

I'm a model and I shake my little tush on the catwalk.

[c_voltage]

Nor 299 nor 199, 149 is max (for v7 > v8). Maybe better i will grab Emulator II V someday at sale.

[SHall1000]

I am starting to think upgrading is appealing to that completist/collector streak in me rather than a desire for new sounds.

[martinjuenke]

I am starting to think upgrading is appealing to that completist/collector streak in me rather than a desire for new sounds.

Have you tried Pokemon? Same thrill and cheaper...

[martinjuenke]

Am I the only one who thinks that Arturia sounds tend to be overprocessed and artificial? Some sounds are interesting but...