Yeah it’s mentioned in Loopop’s video, think he said he asked them about it but nothing confirmed yet.
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The hydra explorer is great on paper and it’s even great once you understand what you want to do with it. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t slightly disappointed with how they shaved off front panel controls from the desktop version. The interface is clunkier than it needs to be.
The Minifreak seems to be an expansion of the previous version, in terms of front panel controls and the mod matrix. Patch creation and navigation looks to be pretty straight forward (which is what I was looking for with the Hydra Explorer). Also the analog filters in the demos really do sound fantastic. Not sure what the secret sauce is, but it’s pretty tasty.
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6-voice poly is the same as my (full-sized key) Alpha Juno, and two less than my Digitone Keys. maybe there will be an 8 or 12 voice full-sized in the pipeline but curious why not go to 8 with this one at the Mini price point
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There is a 12-voice paraphonic mode so that tails don’t get cut off from patches with long releases. That, combined with 6 analog filters is really interesting. Like would you even be able to tell the difference when compared with a 12 full voices?
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I think the Modal Cobalt 5s ist another one in this price range…offers a lot of unusual oscs Models, but seems to be quite often used…
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Based on my time with the Microfeak and demos I’m seeing around this thing seems amazing. But the one thing I always wanted (needed really) was a bigger screen. This does not have that so I’ll have to pass. I’m sure people with fresh eyeballs will get lots out of it.
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Is the vst locked to the hardware or can it be used stand alone? Can it be bought separately? Will it be included in the next release of V collection?
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I definitely noticed this, also because it doesn’t seem (at face value) compatible with their vocoder mic because the VC mic is 3.5mm trs and this only has 1/4" jacks for audio.
seems like they’d want to make it compatible with an existing product or distance from it entirely, my bet it they’re distancing from it entirely. WHICH is a bit of a bummer, but not a big deal.
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Hmm. While I really like the synthesis engine and filter available on the MicroFreak (and thereby the MiniFreak) IMO the Hydra engine blows it away. The Hydra can go much deeper, and at least to my ears sounds better. That’s of course completely personal taste. I only mention this, because I think you might regret that swap. (based on my own experience) I get your point on the interface a bit though. I haven’t used the Explorer specifically, but have owned all of the other sizes and shapes of Hydra. (Deluxe being my favorite.) I might also be disappointed with stripped down controls. Still, even sound vs sound, while the Arturias sound quite good, they aren’t on par with the Hydra in my opinion.
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it can be used stan alone, but it comes with minifreak only
For now…I suspect it will end up in V Collection 10
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the Minifreak does have a metal enclosure, but it does look nearly identical to the plastic microfreak one. loopop mentioned it in his review
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all those vent holes on the enclosure look a bit poorly designed. Of course you should keep your synths away from fluids, but accidents do happen, and those vent holes look like they ensure that any fluid related accidents would kill the synth. I think it’d be a bit better if they were oriented higher on the enclosure.
And why wouldn’t they?
It’s a good incentive… ‘do I pay £150 for the VST or pay the extra and get the synth plus the VST?’… a really smart move would be to offer a rebate to people who want to buy the synth afterwards.
why tho? it’s not really that special of a VST program when they already have the rest of the collection + Pigments available.
- Noise - pigments
- Superwave - pigments
- Harmo - ? additive? pigments?
- Karplus Str. - seems unique
- BasicWaves - pigments
- Audio In - pigments, or Vocoder V or a whole mess of things.
- Multi Filter - pigments
- Surgeon Filter - pigments
- Comb Filter - pigments
- Phaser Filter - pigments
- Destroy - idk but if you’re buying it for this, you’re wrong
- FM/RM - pigments
- V.Analog - pigments
- Waveshaper - pigments
- Two Op. FM - pigments
- Formant - pigments
- Chords - useful as a workaround to polyphony limitations
- Speech - Vocoder V does this better i’m sure.
- Modal - ? not sure, i’ll call it unique.
- SawX, Harm, Bass - I think these are just rehashed basic oscillators with a different set of three control parameters.
I digress. the core of this machine and it’s available sound sources aren’t anything special in a software-only context. The software is special when accompanying the hardware to aid with programming, visualization etc. and the hardware is special b/c hands on control, analog components, etc.
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I don’t know, it’s in the official Arturia Teaser 
Fully agree there’ll be nothing in the Minifreak that Pigments couldn’t do.
But, being able to sound design in the softsynth to later transfer to the hardware is pretty cool.
So is being able to design on the hardware and take that into your DAW for use/tweaking/automating, etc.
I’ve said for a while, I would put money down right now for a hardware version of Pigments for the reasons I’ve just said the Minifreak is cool.:. but the Minifreak isn’t going to be it for me.
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oh I get that, but he said the software will be in V collection. so you’re really just echoing the point i’m making, the purpose of this software is connection with the hardware, nothing special about this as a standalone software if you don’t have the hardware, just get pigments.
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Yeah I suppose… I have a PolyBrute that comes with PolyBrute Connect, which is similar, but you obviously can’t run it standalone without the synth connected… so I like this concept from that perspective.
Makes you wonder why they don’t make the Microfreak available as a VST too then?
That would be great to have.
Interesting that it has analog filters AND a plug-in version, but I suppose Arturia has always buttered their bread with virtual emulations of analog filters.
Will be a good opportunity to directly a/b that filter vs the emulation.
And I am all for it. Opsix plug-in gets more use than my opsix hardware because I spend more time on the computer than in my studio. Nice to have it in multiple places.
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