Arturia soft-synths... opinions & user feedback please

[esky]

My favourite Arturia is the Arp...but i never use it.... I'm totally in love with the Xils 3. I'd say it depends on what kind of music you are into.Need more "bread and butter" stuff ? Go for Arturia. Need more experimental sounds ? Check out Reaktor and it's "analog" user library synth and tons of other stuff. And if you are not afraid of a little learning curve check out Xils 3 or Xils 3LE (20 bugs @ audioMidi.com).

[marra]

dead on perfect man.. and with decapitator??? OOOOOOOOH SHIT!!!!!

[leedsquietman]

The OP already has Reaktor and (I think) XILS-3.

I recommend both of these too (and own XILS-3 LE), but I would hardly call Arturia's emulations of vintage hardware 'bread and butter' sounds.

To me, 'bread and butter' is Operator and Ableton's internal sound library, or Kontakt 4's library etc. Arturia's synths recreate those classic vintage synths better than anyone else at present and the physical modelling involved took them years to perfect, rather than just dropping some sample into Omnisphere or Kontakt. You can see from their graphical analysis how close they are to the original source in terms of waveform, and how their TAE modelling models other characteristics of that sound and does so with virtually no aliasing (unlike most softsynths).

Vintage sounds, with an edge and precision is how I would describe Arturia's synths. Yes, Reaktor and romplers can produce SOME of this vibe, but this is missing the point. The OP is looking at how realistic Arturia's synths are against the original vintage hardware product (at least this is my understanding) and isn't looking for people to say 'well Reaktor can get you similar sounds'. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[dum]

@3phase,
While you can run the demos off the dongle (which is what I'm doing) ..it seems that it's also possible to run them without the dongle. maybe the copy-protection isn't super straight forward... but that's better than using a dongle - right ?

if you're in the mood for demoing analogue simulating soft-synths, I'll echo the suggestions recommending http://www.xils-lab.com/ , who offer the 'PolyKB' and 'Xils3'. Both offer dongle free demos, although the Xils3 demo limitations are a bit more obnoxious than the PolyKB.
They offer an LE version of Xils3 for 30 euro, or something closer to $20 if you buy it from audiomidi.com
That's one $20 I never regretted spending, I upgraded to the full Xils3 from there.

@esky
cheers for the tip, but I'm already a fully fledged member of the Xils3/Reaktor secret societies

@marra
I believe you

@leeds
I was going to say at the beginning...but No, I'm not focused on how accurate these reproductions are. I already use a decent/modest collection of nice analogue gear; some vintage, some not-so vintage. All I expect out of digital stuff is that it sounds great. If I was aiming to replace my analogue X with a digital Y ... then yes, maybe that would be a concern..

That being said, when I'm interested in a analogue hardware unit I'll check out the software reproduction just to check out the signal path and get a feel for how it is to make patches with. Where I live this about the closest you can get to testing one out before buying.

Also I don't buy into the whole 'Virtual Analogue' idea. Analogue signal path, sure, but as far as sounds go digital is digital and analogue is analogue. But I guess that's a whole other thread.

IMO, the best goal a soft-synth developer should aim for regarding emulating the pleasing qualities of analogue gear is to eliminate aliasing/stepping. Which arturia/xils lab seem very good at.



OK enough ranting, back to testing.
Cheers

[dum]

oh ya, which reminds me, upgrading to 10.6 really improved ACE's performance on my machine.

I don't think it sounds all that 'analogue' - or perhaps I haven't tested it enough, but it does sound super smooth (didn't notice any aliasing) and HI-FI especially on the high quality settings. 3phase, if you're checking demos to see how soft-synths are performing these days I think you should have a look at that one too. Think digital and you're probably more likely to enjoy it.


laters.

[dazzer]

dum, how's Live 7 doing on 10.6?

[polyslax]

I'm not focused on how accurate these reproductions are... All I expect out of digital stuff is that it sounds great... Also I don't buy into the whole 'Virtual Analogue' idea. Analogue signal path, sure, but as far as sounds go digital is digital and analogue is analogue. But I guess that's a whole other thread.

This is about bang on with my thoughts. I like interesting sounds and don’t really give a damn about accurate emulations. It’s partly because I don’t for a moment believe that a pile of code is up to the task of replicating a piece of hardware. I’m willing to accept that this may be due to my age... I first played an analogue synth in the 70s.

That said, there are plenty of software noise makers that I really dig. Arturia’s synths just don’t happen to be among them. If they’re of value to others I’m totally ok with that. Enjoy!

[3phase]

@3phase,
While you can run the demos off the dongle (which is what I'm doing) ..it seems that it's also possible to run them without the dongle. maybe the copy-protection isn't super straight forward... but that's better than using a dongle - right ?

How? you mean hacks? as far i understood the webpage you need the dongle to insert there demo code to free the plug and allow it to run...

i am not intersted in VA in general.. just like to know how good emulations are in regard to synths i own or have owned..

actualy a synth like the pro 5 or VS you know inside out would be a nice in he box addition..
i just dont belive yet that theese so called exact emulations are not just another digi fraud...
as usual...

[glitchrock-buddha]

Arturia's synths recreate those classic vintage synths better than anyone else at present and the physical modelling involved took them years to perfect, rather than just dropping some sample into Omnisphere or Kontakt. You can see from their graphical analysis how close they are to the original source in terms of waveform, and how their TAE modelling models other characteristics of that sound and does so with virtually no aliasing (unlike most softsynths).

True. There is no audible aliasing and the oscillators, I think, sound very nice. Filters not too bad either (those seem to ahve improved gradually over time). I prefer the Arturia oscillators to most other analog type soft synths, including Xils 3 (which I have the LE version). I don't find they get as punchy though and that might be part of the trade off with their method of anti-aliasing. Sounds creamy and nice but when you compare to other things like Minimonsta or ACE, Arturia can't get that same thump. But conversely, I don't think they can get as creamy sounding. Closest oscillators to Arturia I think is in Audiorealism Bassline Pro, which I think does have a little oomph, and Poly-Ana which also has a good balance of those two elements.

[3phase]

i manged to get the demos running..

just testing the jupiter 8... ok.. i am not roling on the flroor laughing.. it defentky resembles a little bit of the jupiter sound.. but its actually not sexy... and the jupiter 8 is one of the most sexy sythns on the planet...

i could go in detail.. its miisng here and there.. the filter is defently not it.. the resolution of modulations and envelopes os far to rough to do waht you do onm a real jupiter.. it sounds stiff...

however ..can do some nice jupiterish sounds... as long you dont try to move some sliders while its running..because thats imideatly destroying any illusion that we might deal here with a jupiter...
And of cause the envelopes have no voice related individual balistics and are not very smooth shaped what leads to typical stiff plug in sound
and on short envelops it´s clicking and not twittering

so as usual.. on the static sound the digital emulation gets close.. but in the details as soon we start moving knobs.. pffff... gone

ok.no surprise.. if there would be a 100% emulation for 250 bucks the price of the real jupiter 8 wouldnt had gone another 1000 euro up in the last year... now they touch the 5000 euro border :-/


so now the prophets...

[dum]

dum, how's Live 7 doing on 10.6?

Great.
I've noticed modest but welcome performance gains in some sets/fx chains. Although I'm not sure if that's down to 3rd party VSTs working better with 10.6 or LIVE itself. Or just the general wonderfulness of 10.6

It crashes just as much as it did on 10.4 though. L7 has been crashing on me when I change sets, about 36% - 42% and occasionally as much as 50% of the time. I put this down to my dongle protected stuff. The dongles seem to be accessed between changing sets and it's at this point L7 can decide to go crashy-bye-byes. That's my theory at least. Of course this isn't a problem with any of the other hosts I use. Live is special!
No biggie, it doesn't lose me work, just a bit of a nuisance.

10.6.3 is great, snappier, seems less bloated, no issues. Very pleased. Glad I waited until *.3
And since I use some legacy software that wasn't even supported on 10.5, I'm being meticulous about backups and cautious about incremental upgrades.

oh, and I did a clean install of everything. From the OS up.
maybe that makes a difference ?


In short, I really recommend upgrading as you'll probably notice a wee performance boost. And L7 is just as stable on 10.6 as it was on 10.4
In.My.Experience

@3phase,
While you can run the demos off the dongle (which is what I'm doing) ..it seems that it's also possible to run them without the dongle. maybe the copy-protection isn't super straight forward... but that's better than using a dongle - right ?

How? you mean hacks? as far i understood the webpage you need the dongle to insert there demo code to free the plug and allow it to run...

i am not intersted in VA in general.. just like to know how good emulations are in regard to synths i own or have owned..

actualy a synth like the pro 5 or VS you know inside out would be a nice in he box addition..
i just dont belive yet that theese so called exact emulations are not just another digi fraud...
as usual...

No hacks. It says on the arturia web page that you can do it without a dongle.
You probably still need to use the core 'eLicense control centre' software, but it will tether the demo license to your machine as opposed to a dongle ? Just a guess as I haven't tried it.
http://www.elicenser.net/en/latest_downloads.html

Maybe you should give it a go if you're into the pro 5/VS, most of the feedback I've read suggests the Prophet V is the must accurate emulation.

That's the horse to beat

I like interesting sounds and don’t really give a damn about accurate emulations. It’s partly because I don’t for a moment believe that a pile of code is up to the task of replicating a piece of hardware.

Agreed.
If someone manages to accurately replicate a sherman filterbank in the VST realm I will happily give mine away free to the biggest wanker I can find on the internet, right after I eat a ball of my own shit.

[mholloway]

Whoa, I am so late to the party with this thread!

but hey Dum, I'm a big-time Arturia user, so let me chime in here:

1. my favs are easily the Prophet V and the ARP2600V -- I'd say go for those two, easy. The former is a to my ears/mind as good a recreation of the classic as we will ever see, and with the VS thrown in as well, is a great deal. The VS makes pad sounds that rival absynth. The 2600, as some have stated here, IS clunky to use. The cables don't animate smoothly, you sometimes have to scroll around the interface, and it just doesn't FEEL solid, but the sound? it's fabulous. it rips and roars.

2. I own and never use the Jupiter 8V. I think it sounds 'airy' and thin. I have no idea if that's true of the original (though I doubt it). I have occasionally felt that I'm just not a "Roland Guy" because the closest I come to Roland-esque classic sounds is the Junatik ensemble in Reaktor. Otherwise, they're just never my thing, Arturia's Jupiter 8V included.

3. CS-80v -- I really want to love this thing but I really find the interface to be a drag to program. The sliders are tiny, their labels even tinier, everything just feels cramped and smooshed together, which is strange for a visual representation of a synth that was freakin' huge to begin with.

4. I've occasionally had issues stability wise: I generally need to "close" a session containing the ProphetV emulation rather than exiting live without first closing, otherwise live ALWAYS crashes. Weird. Same if trying to switch to a different session from one with the PV inside; have to close first, then load new session. Annoying, but I can think of worse things.
So, that's where I chime in. The Prophet V is one of my most used soft-synths, and needless to say one of my favorites. Programming it is easy and fun and the best bet next to programming the real thing. And I think the sound really cuts through the mix well. It's my go-to softie for thick analog synth-bass. But also great for sync leads using that lovely poly-mod section. The added chorus and delay fx let you do smooth wide pads with no problem. I really love this synth.

-M

[dum]

1. my favs are easily the Prophet V and the ARP2600V -- I'd say go for those two, easy. The former is a to my ears/mind as good a recreation of the classic as we will ever see, and with the VS thrown in as well, is a great deal. The VS makes pad sounds that rival absynth. The 2600, as some have stated here, IS clunky to use. The cables don't animate smoothly, you sometimes have to scroll around the interface, and it just doesn't FEEL solid, but the sound? it's fabulous. it rips and roars.

ya, agreed. That's looking like the winning combo for me. As I said earlier though, I'm not focused on accurate emulations ...just good sounds =)
The cable animations are gay as christmas, thankfully you can turn those off...
I like the VS alot, I've been using it more than the pro 5... love the routing matrix too

3. CS-80v -- I really want to love this thing but I really find the interface to be a drag to program. The sliders are tiny, their labels even tinier, everything just feels cramped and smooshed together, which is strange for a visual representation of a synth that was freakin' huge to begin with.

4. I've occasionally had issues stability wise: I generally need to "close" a session containing the ProphetV emulation rather than exiting live without first closing, otherwise live ALWAYS crashes. Weird. Same if trying to switch to a different session from one with the PV inside; have to close first, then load new session. Annoying, but I can think of worse things.

agreed on the CS80... UI fail.

Regarding the stability issues, check my post above, I experience the same thing and I figure it's the dongle protection causing the problems. I go through a similar process when trying to avoid the crashes too.

Cheers for your input,
out of curiosity... you use mostly software right ?

[3phase]

i manged to get the demos running..

just testing the jupiter 8... ok.. i am not roling on the flroor laughing.. it defentky resembles a little bit of the jupiter sound.. but its actually not sexy... and the jupiter 8 is one of the most sexy sythns on the planet...

i could go in detail.. its miisng here and there.. the filter is defently not it.. the resolution of modulations and envelopes os far to rough to do waht you do onm a real jupiter.. it sounds stiff...

however ..can do some nice jupiterish sounds... as long you dont try to move some sliders while its running..because thats imideatly destroying any illusion that we might deal here with a jupiter...
And of cause the envelopes have no voice related individual balistics and are not very smooth shaped what leads to typical stiff plug in sound
and on short envelops it´s clicking and not twittering

so as usual.. on the static sound the digital emulation gets close.. but in the details as soon we start moving knobs.. pffff... gone

ok.no surprise.. if there would be a 100% emulation for 250 bucks the price of the real jupiter 8 wouldnt had gone another 1000 euro up in the last year... now they touch the 5000 euro border :-/


so now the prophets...

so... the prophet test.. had some fun with theese.. so its not all crap..
but regarding emulation of the real thing? no no..
also pretty sex free.. all this plug are monophon syths that can play polyphon.. so they isntantly sound rather dead on chords in comparison to the originals...


The pro 5´s knob reactions have a closer resamblence to the original.. the agressivness of the noise generator is pretty authentic but the general sonic signature
is astonishingly muffled...

as soon we do freq modulations on the resonant filter we enter digital bitcrusher land..has not much to do with that what the real one is doing on such settings...

With the VS mode i had the most fun.. but.. the sexy jazzy woody sound character that made the VS so famous is not there to the slightest.. also nothing from the sweet aliasing of the VS´s waveforms... it dont sounds even close...

when you have 4 sine waves on the real VS..just detune them and move the josytick..no filter involved.. it just sounds like having a real thin wineglas where you rub a wet finger along the border in circualating moves... a basic VS patch.. the plug in has nothing to do with a rubbed glass.. it has more the pro 5 sound with the VS architecture.. but this architecture is actually fun...


So.. regarding J8 and pro 5 and VS.. when you get them all in a bundle for the price of one,. ok..
you can do some nice sounds... but dont expect theese things to sound like the real stuff at all..

The j8 was actually closest to the soundsignature of a real j8.. but.. in the sexfree version?

however. nice plugs nevertheless.. with lots of nice little extra tricks that allow to get somethig out of them one can use..

its no shame to dont reach the goal to perfectly clone the most sexy analog synths on the planet..
at least they tried

that the advertizing is more optimistic about the result is business as usual


One edit.. in 96K the p5 gets rid uf the muffling and sounds closer to a real one.. however it gets to heavy for my machine than and its still lifeless in regrads to the real one..

Our actual computers are not fast enough to have a real analog synth emulation yet...

i would guess that to get the FM wright you must do it on 192k and having individual voicings on chords also doubles or tripples the load..

so.. in a few years maybe?

[mholloway]

out of curiosity... you use mostly software right ?

Pretty much exclusively, yeah. My hardware basically amounts to controllers in various forms (keys, apc40, maschine) and my guitar. I have a couple hardware synths but they've yet to show up on any of my released recordings. That may change -- and I've also been eyeing that Mopho keyboard for a while now -- but even if it does, software will still be the vast majority of what I'm rocking.

-M