Arturia Black Friday 2020

[SLiC]

I am waiting for V8 but was a little bit tempted by 15 FX for 99USD....It is a bargain if you don't already have those fx covered, but I do! (Soundtoys, Komplete, Valhalla etc) so even at the price I will (probably) pass.

[HTT]

I absolutely do not need another VST/AU. But, Pigments 2 appears to venture into some different sonic pathways. At $99? Purchased

[Spring Goose]

I am waiting for V8 but was a little bit tempted by 15 FX for 99USD....It is a bargain if you don't already have those fx covered, but I do! (Soundtoys, Komplete, Valhalla etc) so even at the price I will (probably) pass.

Is it dollars? I bought something from Softube which was advertised in price dollars but then when i had to pay the price was the same number but EUROS. I emailed them and they sent me a reply which basically said "we treat dollars and euros the same, it just depends where you live which you get dollars or euros" (i was hoping they gave me a goodwill voucher).
My price what Arturia are offering me is 99 euros, but then underneath it says "euros/dollars". It's the difference of £20 i don't mean to split hairs, maybe Arturia offer you the choice which currency you want to pay 99 of. I'll wait and see when i buy it next week.
I bought a load of presets for Pigments and V collection/analog lab a while back and i don't remember having to think anything about euros or dollars then.

[SLiC]

I am waiting for V8 but was a little bit tempted by 15 FX for 99USD....It is a bargain if you don't already have those fx covered, but I do! (Soundtoys, Komplete, Valhalla etc) so even at the price I will (probably) pass.

Is it dollars? I bought something from Softube which was advertised in price dollars but then when i had to pay the price was the same number but EUROS. I emailed them and they sent me a reply which basically said "we treat dollars and euros the same, it just depends where you live which you get dollars or euros" (i was hoping they gave me a goodwill voucher).
My price what Arturia are offering me is 99 euros, but then underneath it says "euros/dollars". It's the difference of £20 i don't mean to split hairs, maybe Arturia offer you the choice which currency you want to pay 99 of. I'll wait and see when i buy it next week.
I bought a load of presets for Pigments and V collection/analog lab a while back and i don't remember having to think anything about euros or dollars then.

Select USA in country in billing address, pay with PayPal, that's it.

[Spring Goose]

I am waiting for V8 but was a little bit tempted by 15 FX for 99USD....It is a bargain if you don't already have those fx covered, but I do! (Soundtoys, Komplete, Valhalla etc) so even at the price I will (probably) pass.

Is it dollars? I bought something from Softube which was advertised in price dollars but then when i had to pay the price was the same number but EUROS. I emailed them and they sent me a reply which basically said "we treat dollars and euros the same, it just depends where you live which you get dollars or euros" (i was hoping they gave me a goodwill voucher).
My price what Arturia are offering me is 99 euros, but then underneath it says "euros/dollars". It's the difference of £20 i don't mean to split hairs, maybe Arturia offer you the choice which currency you want to pay 99 of. I'll wait and see when i buy it next week.
I bought a load of presets for Pigments and V collection/analog lab a while back and i don't remember having to think anything about euros or dollars then.

Select USA in country in billing address, pay with PayPal, that's it.

I'm not in USA, should i be doing that? i mean is it fraud? How's things in sunny Wales?

[SLiC]

I am waiting for V8 but was a little bit tempted by 15 FX for 99USD....It is a bargain if you don't already have those fx covered, but I do! (Soundtoys, Komplete, Valhalla etc) so even at the price I will (probably) pass.

Is it dollars? I bought something from Softube which was advertised in price dollars but then when i had to pay the price was the same number but EUROS. I emailed them and they sent me a reply which basically said "we treat dollars and euros the same, it just depends where you live which you get dollars or euros" (i was hoping they gave me a goodwill voucher).
My price what Arturia are offering me is 99 euros, but then underneath it says "euros/dollars". It's the difference of £20 i don't mean to split hairs, maybe Arturia offer you the choice which currency you want to pay 99 of. I'll wait and see when i buy it next week.
I bought a load of presets for Pigments and V collection/analog lab a while back and i don't remember having to think anything about euros or dollars then.

Select USA in country in billing address, pay with PayPal, that's it.

I'm not in USA, should i be doing that? i mean is it fraud? How's things in sunny Wales?

UK doesn't use EUROs either!

[Spring Goose]

OK i'll take your word for it pal.

[HTT]

I spent some time with Pigments 2 today. It will definitely have a (second tier) place in my arsenal. I think it lends itself to the more quirky and esoteric end of wavetable synths. It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum nor the ballsy VA of ANA 2. Pigment 2’s effects aren’t up there with Falcon’s or Massive X’s effects. Pigment 2 is no slouch in those particular areas, but that is what I hear when I A/B between syths. I purchased a couple expansion packs, taking a chance by listening to demo songs. I find the Rusty keys quite a good purchase. The White Dragon expansion was underwhelming. The free Marc Houle expansion has some real gems. The synth is easy to navigate and be creative with developing new sounds. At $99, it is a strong buy even if you have other wavetable synths.

[databroth]

what pigments lack in wavetable quality it makes up for in granular, I honestly think pigments is actually a granular synth now, with a wavetable engine on the side

[tactile_coast]

It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum nor the ballsy VA of ANA 2. Pigment 2’s effects aren’t up there with Falcon’s or Massive X’s effects. Pigment 2 is no slouch in those particular areas, but that is what I hear when I A/B between syths.

Its important to remember when doing a quick side by side test that the presets on Pigments are strictly quality controlled and that their default loudness is consistently limited to around I think -6db. Where the highly competitive preset market around Serum means that presets are often wound up as loudly as possible to gain attention over other presets. The old musicians trick of 'louder is better'.

For the preset packs I wouldn't bother with the demo songs. If you click on the store icon in the presets browser you can download and actually play the preset packs within Pigments which gives you a much better idea of how they might fit in with your productions.

[JO512]

I finally picked up Pigments. It is such a nice synth! I mainly wanted it for the great granular engine, but as I get to know it better, I am becoming more and more impressed with everything else. It is packed with features! So many modulation possibilities! I don't care about the FX section, as I have all the external effects that I like. The oscillators are great and there is a nice selection of useful filters.

One thing I wish is that the pitch bend wheel would be available as a modulation source so that you could modulate something else along with it. Pitch bends on a synth often sound rather odd, unlike with a string bend on a guitar or something like that. To be able to modulate something like a formant filter to improve the character of the pitch bend might help.

[gExpectations]

Big fan of Pigments 2. Bought it on release for the crossgrade price. I like the presentation and the granular engine in it. Most VSTs are still too focused on reproductoin of classic synth interfaces and I think more modern approaches like Pigments or Vital are better more fun to use on a computer.

[JO512]

It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum ...

I did an A/B comparison of Pigments and Serum just now with the same wavetables, no filters, and no FX, and with normalized volume, just to see if I could tell any difference in the oscillators. I could not at first hear an obvious difference. But I looked at them on a spectrum analyzer and did find a visible difference. The signal from Pigments is dirtier, with a noisier floor. And as I really listened closely while watching the spectrum analyzer, I began to hear a difference. I wonder if the Pigments oscillators are aliasing and if that "dirt" is the foldover coming back down from the Nyquist limit. It looks like it. With a pure saw, I noticed that Pigments sounds a little darker and a tiny bit muddier, but perhaps a bit warmer. The difference is slight! You'd likely never notice it without very close, isolated listening. The difference is more obvious on an analyzer with a square or triangle wave than a saw, since the gaps between the odd harmonics are bigger.

I am not worried about it though, as I tend to dirty up my signals on purpose anyway!

[Gone soft]

Demoed Pigments as I got a fairly nice upgrade deal owning just simple synth I'd forgotten about and haven't even bothered to instal and the excellent plate reverb.
It took me a little while in the middle of the night to make sense of various stuff in the granular mode, but once it clicked I was sold. Picking each grain either randomly or in systematic order from up to 6 samples was fun, though it took a little more thought into choosing the right samples than I initially thought... There's altso possibilities for sequencing or automating which sample the coming grains will be chosen from, offcourse any grains allready set of will still ring out playing fragment(s) from the same sample they should. The other modes so far seem less interesting to me compared to other options I've got available in my plugin folder.

[telecode]

It does not have the hifi sound quality of serum ...

I did an A/B comparison of Pigments and Serum just now with the same wavetables, no filters, and no FX, and with normalized volume, just to see if I could tell any difference in the oscillators. I could not at first hear an obvious difference. But I looked at them on a spectrum analyzer and did find a visible difference. The signal from Pigments is dirtier, with a noisier floor. And as I really listened closely while watching the spectrum analyzer, I began to hear a difference. I wonder if the Pigments oscillators are aliasing and if that "dirt" is the foldover coming back down from the Nyquist limit. It looks like it. With a pure saw, I noticed that Pigments sounds a little darker and a tiny bit muddier, but perhaps a bit warmer. The difference is slight! You'd likely never notice it without very close, isolated listening. The difference is more obvious on an analyzer with a square or triangle wave than a saw, since the gaps between the odd harmonics are bigger.

I am not worried about it though, as I tend to dirty up my signals on purpose anyway!

interesting that pigments has a dirtier noise floor. but really, all that matters is does it sound good and does it feel good to use.