Prelude
The number of times I have seen this thing, and thought maybe/ no/ maybe/ no/ maybe/ NO DAMN YOU is appalling. Appalling! “It’s just Arturia’s software synthesisers in a box. That’s all. Forget it. Would you please stop looking at that listing.”
But on the other hand I love a folly, the ill considered lurch into the unknown that almost kills a company. It’s my version of goth music. The project started in 2004, it took four years to get the first version out and the keyboard was another three years, For every good review there’s a crowd of people tearing it down, hating on it. The Origin updates stop cold in 2013 because suddenly Arturia had success. Their next foray into hardware, the MiniBrute, was the exact opposite of the Origin. And unlike the Origin, it sold.
I was idly looking for pictures of Chihuahuas online when I thought I’d look at Gumtree, a purposefully irritating site owned by eBay for people to think they are avoiding eBay. The resulting cowboys and scammers are usually a cure for my avarice, but there sat an Origin. Cheap. maybe/ no/ maybe/ no/ maybe/ oh for godsake just try for it, you won’t get it. It was almost a relief when the seller didn’t get back to me for a week.
And then he did, and amazing to both me and my PayPal, an Origin popped out the other end of dodgy town.
Review
If the Origin is merely Arturia’s V Collection in a box, then the Blofeld is merely Waldorf’s Largo in a box. It’s true to a certain extent but not a useful description – they are related technically, but they are separate instruments in their design. That music hardware is often software-in-a-box is neither here nor there – the Ultranova is software-in-a-box I’m sure, but it is still The Best Instrument Of All Time.
There is no advantage to the hardware in raw sound quality. A “Jupiter 8” filter is no better here to the virtual one in Jupiter 8v. The advantage is instead that the Origin was at the time more powerful than many desktop computers, and can handle four instruments of nine oscillators each, with 32 voice polyphony in total. (The first time I tried the Jupiter 8v plugin on a PC of the same vintage I got 4 voices max before it died.) So in sheer bravado it compares more to the Supernova than the Boutique JP08. 32 voices each with 9 oscillators can only be summed up as goin’ hard guv. But the Origin is still a computer, it boots up when you turn it on (from what, we do not know).
If you use Arturia’s virtual instruments you’d surely enjoy a dedicated interface for them, and at very least the Origin represents an excellent design for that purpose. It’s a sturdy heavy panel. My machine is at least third hand, a little worn, and yet the data dials are still precise and dependable. Lesson here for Waldorf. It’s not the interface of a Jupiter 8 or a Prophet VS, but something that has a little of each. The Prophet’s joystick is there, as are dedicated knobs for the oscillators, filters, amplifiers and LFOs that will make up your semi modular instrument. As you don’t know just how many of each you will have, you need to use the same panels over, but it feels quite natural to move between them.
Down the bottom is something that will one day become the BeatStep. I am delighted to report there is no vocoder.
In saying that the Origin is only semi modular, I’m acknowledging that only ‘sensible’ connections are allowed from a limited menu. You can wibble the filter with oscillators (so we get Prophet like FM klanging) and they can cross modulate (nine at once!) but you can’t e.g. use a mixer for CV’s. You can’t put an extra amplifier before the filters to drive them – that kind of thinking is not represented. There is a limit to the stupid shit you can do, which is in keeping with the general theme of ‘build great big classical analogue keyboards”.
This signals a general criticism that can be made of the synthesiser, which I’ll call the “747 principle”. A Boeing 747 is designed to be able to do crazy shit. It can fly upside down. It can pull out of a stall and do a loop the loop. Put a jet fighter pilot in a 747 and they can do things outside the expected, but within the tolerance of the aircraft. No passenger craft is intended to do any of that, but if it has to, it can. The Origin is only engineered to do what is expected of it. Its tolerance is standard and no more – LFOs don’t go at audio rates, filters don’t oscillate at crazy pitches, and modules only connect in a sensible manner.
For a consistent reason – the analogue machines it apes are actually boring. The Jupiter 8 looks better than it sounds. The Moog is a leaden thing. But at least those things respond to abuse with agonised howling. The Origin emulates them only as they were intended – not in how they fly upside down.
If you like the JP8080 or an old Yamaha CS30 or something like that – then you’re sorted. If you find them a little dull and prefer a Blofeld or Novation, then this will not touch you where you are not normally touched.
I find it helpful to compare it to the Roland V-Synth. Leaving aside the sampling feature, the V-Synth is the same kind of limited modular with a menu of oscillators and filters and – oddly – guitar pedals. It too is limited in range – somewhere between a harmonica and a Jx8p – a metallic, shimmery noise. The Origin lacks the interesting V-Synth wave forms and COSM but has a stupidly brutal processing power that can put four different kinds of filters in a row, making the noise of Rick Wakeman’s keyboards all played at once. They are two stabs at something that each miss the heart of it.
Updates and Anecdotes
One night I discovered that if you stack up a bunch of filters in series, the volume level of your virtual signal seems to overload the amplifier – the Origin feels pain and emits overtones that it is ashamed to admit. This is good news.
More recently it felt as if it took up much too much panel space and had to go. I was surprised that I was able to sell it for about the price I paid. I was more surprised that the buyer was not in the USA as claimed but actually in South Korea, which at the time didn’t allow overseas mail. The buyer insisted in paying for some kind of emergency postage, it went into quarantine for weeks, the whole thing was a complete nightmare. Once it all seemed over he was upset that the power brick was 240V. Because … it came from Australia. I found a replacement for not much. All done.
Well, to be fair, Origin can do things with bits and pieces of the plugins that the plugins can’t do in a computer (a multi-use computer, as opposed to those synthesizers that are single-purpose computers, such as Neko, Hartmann Neuron, OASYS, Motif, Fantom, &c.) such as mixing and matching oscillators and filters, and using the Jupiter 8V Galaxy modulation space with everything. Plus, that Axel Hartmann interface. Hartmann’s toys are all special, what I call studio jewelry. If you are stupid about money, anything he designs is worth having in the studio just because it looks so otherworldly. I would kill for a (nother) Neuron. Literally, if I could get away with it and the person who had to be snuffed was particularly loathesome and despicable, I would do it. As for Origin, I just experimentally invested approximately Blofeld money for a keyboard from a first time seller. Yeah, what happens in Vegas… We’ll see what happens.
See my write up of the Alesis ION for what I think of Hartmann, greyness and tiny red lettering.
As for the Origin, well it does what it claims to do. There’s nothing extra on top. A Neuron would be fun but I bet I would say rude things about it.
I don’t doubt it. Getting music out of a Neuron is like getting milk out of a sick cow. It looks OK but you aren’t really that sure you should drink it. Let the cat have some and wait awhile. Meanwhile, I just find out that the Jupiter 8V (these days called the Jup-8V, probably for the same “don’t use our name anymore” reasons that the Mini V and Modular V are no long Moogy) no longer has the Galaxy LFO 3D space. Arturia wanting to get all natural and walk around with no clothes on, appears to be their explanation. So, one either has to have both V3 and V4 of Jup-8 installed because they are that different from each other. Or have an Origin. Yes, it’s been superseded by everything in the past ten years, but driving a Ford Model T down the road on a sunny day does not feel any less grand just because it is your great grandpa’s make-out wagon.
And they’ve just done it again: https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/astrolab-61/overview
Not really. The Astrolab is the Collection plus Pigments, but it does not provide the intense modular capability of the Origin. On that note, there is a new do it yourself Raspberry synth called TrebleSynth (details on GitHub) that attempts to be a modular in a chip. Again, not approaching the abilities of the Origin, which is clearly unique in synth history. As Marc Antony said, When will com such another?