Arturia V Collection 11 🧻🧻🧻🧻

“YES BUT THIS COLLECTION GOES UP TO ELEVEN”

This page covers the V Collection from version 9 onward. It is currently being refreshed.
For earlier versions please go to this page (to see the buff smurfs).

There is now no doubt that the V Collection has changed course over v9, 10 and 11. It once was a select history of synthesis leaning back across the 70’s to the 90’s, bringing the owner a living museum of electronic sounds. It was the One. But growing competition from smaller, more nimble foes like Cherry and the big manufacturers themselves – Roland and Korg getting busy in their vintage – has taken a toll. Arturia had the head start, but is unlikely to maintain it. So they have started into a different path based around their Pigments engine and a sample library – the Augmented series.

By the time the Arturia KORG MS20 appeared in V9 it seemed redundant – KORG had already supplied the software version years ago, while Cherry not only had a MS20 but went on to supply a working replica of an actual PS-3300. Hell, Full Bucket had an imperfect ‘simulation’ out for free ages ago. Arturia has fallen behind in delivering the clique antiques.

One solution might be to go full Godzilla – try patch up any differences with other makers – or buy them out. Get into some more unusual kit. But I appreciate that Arturia have looked at this situation more carefully and wisely and steered to something else.

Augmented Menus

Instead we have Augmented things which all seem quite pleasant and useful but first looked and sounded so Native Instruments that it took me a while to get over it. In version 11 we get the full range of augmented instruments from piano to Chinese instruments. We also get a revised interface – more detailed and less bloated. At first use they seem to be ‘solutions’ of the sort that NI supplies but there is much more depth – once you have decided on a family. That makes sense as most, not all users are happy with presets.

Clicking on the Advanced button opens up a subset of Pigments – Arturia’s complex synthesiser. The wavetables and samples are limited to the theme instrument of each plug in but still there’s a wide variety of sounds possible. The idea seems to be to confine each derivative to a single role and thus make for easier sound design choices. But you end up with seven different instruments this way, which forms barriers to cross breeding the sounds. Will that matter? We will see. I will add a toilet roll for the idea.

Quality

The Arturia smurfs have been very busy in quality control. Some of the older keyboards have been rewritten and improved in version 10, including the CS80 and the two Prophets, which have been disconnected – no more hybrid. The Prophet VS now has expandable single waveforms in the oscillators which is a little closer to the Wavestation. I can imagine that this was not a trivial task.

Additions

The newest antique is the Roland JP-8000, mother of the supersaw. I have a hardware JP-8080 and very much enjoy using the split layers to create sounds that occupy opposite ends of the spectrum – e.g. a very deep and rich bass and throaty high. Such a simple thing but it makes a huge difference – and Arturia misses out. Bwaaaargh! Merde! OK so that’s a feature of the 8080 not the 8000 but c’mon when there is a Super Jupiter available, don’t just go with the Jupiter! Probably no one else will care but I’ll keep using Cherry’s Mercury 6 for this very feature.

You might also want to know about the Feedback Oscillator – yes it can be polyphonic – the original was monophonic.

Pure LoFi is part of the shitty microphones, poor quality tape, electrical hum and engineer’s farts that obsesses the current generation. Do I need to tell you that we hated all that when we were stuck with it? Humph. Note that Pure LoFi is one of a Pure series, yet to be unleashed, so we should expect similar titles on a shared engine – probably different samples. The graphics make it very obvious they’re quoting a Liven keyboard.

I’ve already discussed MiniBrute V and will eventually get to SEM V and Elka-X V… even though Cherry has already swooped in for the kill on these two. That means a compare and contrast which lesser reviewers will relish… they love their X versus Y reviews. Me, I’m more for the pop culture.

OK Arturia – you’ve been the king for a long time. It’s good to be king. But there’s trouble on the borders. Pull out the stops. Run it up the flagpole. Hire a jester.