Arturia Minifreak

[uglymule]

Been watching loopop, true cuckoo and others, and got a Hydrasynth 49, which is likely to replace the MiniFreak and a Reface CP. I’m going to be traveling soon and want to be as compact as possible. I plan on doing everything audio around an OGDT, RC-505 and Hydra (if it works out, which I’m 99.999% sure it will), I also plan on using CV from the Hydra to glitch video from a Sleepy Circuits Hypno (which gets sequenced by the DT). Gimme a surface, any surface (and a house mixer to hook into).

Anyone recommend a good portable PA+sub? Bose?

[uglymule]

I just spent my first evening with the Hydra 49 key and the MiniFreak is officially off the team.

It took months of R’ingTFM and watching tutorials to get fully familiar with the MiniFreak. It only took one evening with the Hydra. All I did was read the first 30 or so pages of the manual and then skip around a little to dive deeper into specific functions. I can’t believe they use FB for support [Fk FB], but reddit to the rescue and I still remain zuckless. One night of fiddling around and holy fuck, I understand this synth!

The Hydra UI is extremely well thought out. Presets are way easier to navigate than on the MF, and the FAVS section is more than just an afterthought, unlike the MF favorites section. There’s also a crap-ton more user preset banks/slots on the Hydra. All the buttons are so well lit that I (a 62 yom who needs reading glasses for damn near everything) can see the controls perfectly, even in low light conditions. No sequencer on the Hydra but who cares, I’ve got a DT.

The MiniFreak is very capable and produces great sounds, but the UI is simply too convoluted & complicated for immediacy. The macro knobs on the Hydra kind of correspond to the orange encoders on the MiniFreak, but there’s 8 of them instead of just 4 and they’re way more flexible for user assigned mod(s) / macros, including the ability to name your macros which I find very helpful in remembering what each encoder does on a patch. Press HOME and the Hydra display shows what each knob does (and where they’re set), and allows you to tweak key elements in a significantly better fashion than the MF. The display is superior on the Hydra and you also get a separate display that shows what the waveform is doing.

A huge plus for me is that the Hydra has Rhodes and Wurly patches, which are eminently usable and come with pre-assigned macros (think orange encoders on the MiniFreak) for dialing in the sound how you like (tines, tremolo, chorus, reverb, etc). I play a lot of piano and at first didn’t like the Hydra keybed, but I got used to it fairly quick (49 keys forces you to rearrange some bass lines but they’re full sized keys ; ) and now I can get rid of my Reface CP. To top it all off, I can make an organ simply by hitting INIT twice and doing a little fiddling (that’s nice, init?) There’s also some very good factory organ patches. I favorited some EP’s, organs and basses and still have room to spare in the FAVS bank.

The Hydras cv ins and outs are great for glitching video with my Sleepy Circuits Hypno, and now I don’t need the Kenton Pro Solo MK3.

Even though the Hydra is heavy, it slims me down a lot [DT, Hydra, 505MKII, QuadraThru, Hypno, Eyesy, FeelWorld L2 video mixer, power supply and cables.] It all fits on a 3T heavy duty x-stand and ports well.

Finally, the Hydra manual is one of the best I’ve ever read.

So long MiniFreak. You served me well for a bit but I’ve found another.

[Amy]

I have the hydra desktop but I don’t play very much with it. Im very very interested in a synth with keys and was thinking on minifreak. I don’t plan to sell the hydra. Just buy the minifreak. Reading a lot about it I thought that making patches was way easier on MF than HS… And… how does the sound compare? Are different? Thanks

[uglymule]

The Hydra is solid in every respect (except the keybed, and it ain’t terrible).

It depends on what sound(s) you want and how hard you want to work to get it. I want to initialize a patch and whack something up quickly and intuitively, save it and be able to find it easily (in daylight or dark).

For sound quality and live performance abilities, I’ll take the Hydra hands down. The factory patches are great and are easily customized and morphed.

I would straight up order a Deluxe right now but I just don’t see the sense in a 73 key board with same synth action keybed as the 49. Splits and layers would be nice but nope to synth action, not on a 73 key. They should offer a choice of weighted action or a Fatar TP/8O waterfall.

The Hydra sounds endlessly wonderful!

YMMV

[HotdogLothario]

It’s pretty subjective. You’ll get votes both ways. Me, I like the more organic sounding analog filter on the MiniFreak. It punches above it’s weight in every category.

[OldmanChompski]

For me its harder to justify the Minifreak when the plugin literally sounds 100% the same. Like, I just sat here for about 30 minutes listening to the plugin and the hardware and set up a keybind on ableton to simple toggle between the two and there was no noticeable difference to me.

I do think the Minifreaks filter is possibly the least analog feeling analog filter I’ve heard on a synth. Its not like, say, the Peak where its digital oscillators but the analog distortion and filters really give that synth personality. Here, I don’t think the analog filter does much at all and I prefer the digital filters in oscillator 2 section. You can’t do anything like drive the filter and get some analog distortion or anything, it just kinda sits there and I’d be hard pressed to pick it out in a lineup of digital filters.

That said, yeah, its really subjective. I think Hydrasynth is ultimately easier to program on by far if we’re just talking about hardware (the VST makes programming the Minifreak much easier). One little screen vs two larger screens, one of them displaying up to 8 parameters. And connecting a mod source to a destination is just a breeze on the Hydra. But the Minifreak does have better effects. The multiband compression on the Minifreak is almost like a built in OTT / Sound goodizer that you can put at the end of a patch and honestly that makes the synth come more alive to me than the analog filter does. And the Super Unison effect is also just beautiful.

I think at face value the Minifreak is probably easier to get good sounds just because Macro Oscillators are essential presets in their own right, and you can lean on a better overall effects section as well. Hydrasynth is easier to work with as a synthesizer but takes a bit more effort to get as notably good sounds as the Minifreak does.

[uglymule]

I’m up to page 80 in the Hydra manual and am going to give the filters a whirl tonight. I guess what leaves a big impression on me is that I don’t need reading glasses to see what every button and knob is for. Dead simple patching and parameter changes.

I’ll probably have to do a side by side with the MiniFreak before I get rid of it.

Another serious problem I have with the MF is that the touch pads above the keys get inadvertently activated/de-activated if I barely graze them. I’ve tried adjusting the sensitivity to no avail. It’s not a chronic problem but it happens enough that I’m scared to use it live in arp or seq mode.

[Amy]

I appreciate a lot your review. I don’t mind that there is an VST version, sure I would use it a lot too, maybe mor than the hardware, but it’s a strange move from arturia. Anyways, although people say that hydra it’s an VST in a box like MF, they are real instruments, at least for me.

I’m a little tired of the HS desktop version, I would love to have the 49 key now that I can hear what polyaftertouch can do ( and I can’t do it with a keystep). I never sell nothing so I was planning to buy a synth with keys, the HS explorer, but there is a total overlap. I need something different and MF is the best alternative I think for this price range.

At the end, I will have both. And I love how the HS sounds, for sure. The problem is that I don’t like very much sound design, I want to make music and I find difficult to make good patches on my own with the HS. For now, I’m a preset person

[djst]

@OldmanChompski

For me its harder to justify the Minifreak when the plugin literally sounds 100% the same

Isn’t this the entire selling point of the Minifreak? You get a hybrid synth that you can also integrate into your DAW with a seamless hands-on workflow from developing and noodling sound presets, to embedding it into your production.

@uglymule didn’t mention that aspect in his comparison either, so I guess it’s not important to him. But to me, it would be the key reason for buying a Minifreak and accepting its less flexible sound design capabilities compared to the Hydrasynth.

@uglymule

It took months of R’ingTFM and watching tutorials to get fully familiar with the MiniFreak. It only took one evening with the Hydra. All I did was read the first 30 or so pages of the manual and then skip around a little to dive deeper into specific functions.

This is the first time I see someone describing the Minifreak as difficult to understand and the UI being convoluted and complicated rather than immediate. On the contrary, it’s often described as its strength that it has this concept similar to the “machines” of the Syntakt where you pick a category of sounds and quickly dial in some modifications using the macros to get where you want to go with it.

@uglymule

The Hydra UI is extremely well thought out.

This I definitely agree with as a previous owner of the Hydrasynth. It’s all very logically laid out and it’s easy to follow the signal chain.

@uglymule

The macro knobs on the Hydra kind of correspond to the orange encoders on the MiniFreak, but there’s 8 of them instead of just 4 and they’re way more flexible

Right, but this added level of flexibility definitely contributes to its added complexity. Taking a preset patch and trying to decipher it is time consuming in my experience. The depth definitely comes at a cost. It’s great when going from an init patch to something nice sounding, but it’s less great when it comes to picking a previous patch apart to change the parts you don’t like.

Anyway, I’m glad you like the Hydrasynth and it sounds like the perfect choice for you. I just was surprised to hear the Minifreak described as less immediate and more convoluted when all other comparisons I’ve read have suggested the opposite. (I only have experience with the Hydrasynth myself, not the Minifreak.)

[uglymule]

@djst

@uglymule didn’t mention that aspect in his comparison either, so I guess it’s not important to him. But to me, it would be the key reason for buying a Minifreak and accepting its less flexible sound design capabilities compared to the Hydrasynth.

I’m a DAWless hardware only guy

I got the MF when it first came out and have played it extensively. The factory presets are great and they’re easy to reverse engineer, but it’s not a good synth for quickly and easily patching things up from zero. and that’s what I need. I also need a good Rhodes, Wurly and organ(s) and the Hydra shines against the MF here again. Full size keys and no problems with accidentally grazing a capacitive touch button like on the MF.

I just made it to page 106 in the Hydra manual and it only took 2 nights. Whether playing factory patches or starting from nothing, I can get deep in this things guts and make some great sounds. I’ll definitely be flaring off gas by selling the MiniFreak.

It’s not a bad board, it’s just not the Hydra.

[Amy]

For sound design, hydra is the best.

[HotdogLothario]

@uglymule

but it’s not a good synth for quickly and easily patching things up from zero.

Different for everybody. In a MiniFreak thread I feel compelled to say that I have both the MiniFreak and the Hydrasynth and I can dial up complex patches on both quickly. The mod matrix on the Freak is way more visual and makes it easier to reverse engineer patches. The bonus for me of the MiniFreak is its arp and sequencer. So many fun ways to jam with it. And I love that you can get a good arp going and then copy it to the sequencer and save it. I also like that you can automate up to 3 parameters on a per-step basis.

And this is all for $300 bucks less than the cheapest Hydrasynth. That is not an insignificant amount of money. The MiniFreak is an unbelievable value. I also think the Hydrasynth is a great value too compared to other synths, but it’s crazy that the MF is so cheap.

[OldmanChompski]

@Amy

At the end, I will have both. And I love how the HS sounds, for sure. The problem is that I don’t like very much sound design, I want to make music and I find difficult to make good patches on my own with the HS. For now, I’m a preset person

Sounds like you’d be keeping both regardless, but it also sounds like you’d enjoy the Minifreak more than the Hydrasynth tbh. Like I said, I think its a little clunkier to navigate (not difficult by any means, just in comparison) but overall its easier to get nice sounds out of it.

@djst

Isn’t this the entire selling point of the Minifreak? You get a hybrid synth that you can also integrate into your DAW with a seamless hands-on workflow from developing and noodling sound presets, to embedding it into your production.

@uglymule didn’t mention that aspect in his comparison either, so I guess it’s not important to him. But to me, it would be the key reason for buying a Minifreak and accepting its less flexible sound design capabilities compared to the Hydrasynth.

It is. And it was for me when I bought the Minifreak (I got it before the VST came out and well before the VST was available for everyone).

But then I sit here with a $600 synth that sounds like a $100 plugin (but even cheaper in a bundle) and it feels better to design sounds from the computer interface to me and I’m wondering… whats the point?

Ableton Meld also has significantly impacted my opinion as well, as its basically the same concept and works on my Push 3 standalone.

But I acknowledge a lot of this is coming from a personal shift in interests when it comes to synthesizers as of late. And obviously if someone doesn’t use the VST at all none of that stuff matters.

One thing I forgot to mention thats actually a pretty big sound design thing is on the minifreak you have the option to have the effects be inserts or sends. Couple this with the sequencer or the LFO shaper and things can get weird quick, send a step to a reverb but not lose the reverb sound like what would happen on the hydra. Also, the complex oscillators are usually that… complex. And layering them almost seems like a little too much and having two seems like overkill. But its really nice that there are filters, modulation type “oscillators” that interact with the first oscillator.

@HotdogLothario

And this is all for $300 bucks less than the cheapest Hydrasynth.

Hydrasynth Explorer and the Minifreak are the same price.

[HotdogLothario]

@OldmanChompski

Hydrasynth Explorer and the Minifreak are the same price.

Forgot about that. Was thinking of the Desktop.

[HotdogLothario]

@OldmanChompski

But then I sit here with a $600 synth that sounds like a $100 plugin

By that logic a Prophet 6 sounds like a $150 plugin. Aren’t we past the “why use hardware when vsts sound just as good” argument?

[OldmanChompski]

The difference is this is literally the same exact sound. I have Moog synths and I have Moog VST a Moog modeled VSTs and the real Moogs sound better than the VSTs. In this case, they are 100% identical. Also, I’d say that the interface of the Moog synths is more fun to engage with, so even if they did sound identical the hardware is fun to use. To me the Minifreak has a very small display and lots of functionality hidden behind shift menus.

So its not that I’m comparing a Prophet VST clone to a real Prophet, I’m comparing the thing made by the same company that sounds the same offered for a fraction of the price with, what I believe, is a better user interface.

[HotdogLothario]

I think I need to take a break from Elektronauts.

[sezare56]

Keeping both ! Keybeds are close enough (no Polytouch for MF), compared to an Akai Mini Plus, Reface CP…

I found MF faster/easier to get confortable with, faster to set oscs, less parameters…but the screen is ridiculous ! No stereo parameters except for fx…
With HSE you can pan oscs and filters. With MF you can use Audio In as FM source ! FM feedback also possible with a cable between an out and audio in. HSE FM/Ring possibilities are much deeper too, Mutants can be 4 operators; 3 oscs, Noise, Ring as source, and 2 wavetable wavescan…

MF fx seems better, with less parameters.

For deeper matrix modulations I much prefer the HSE, better lfo possibilities, very precise envelopes…

Btw is there a way to get random glide lfos like on the HSE ? The SLEW SNH doesn’t make it for me. I’d want to be able to set slew.

[djst]

@OldmanChompski

it feels better to design sounds from the computer interface to me and I’m wondering… whats the point?

That would make it an instant sell to me. If sound designing feels better in the plugin, the whole reason for the hardware is moot.

@OldmanChompski

Ableton Meld also has significantly impacted my opinion as well, as its basically the same concept and works on my Push 3 Standalone.

Yeah they seem very similar and I can see why you don’t need the Minifreak anymore if you prefer to work on the Push.

[mprinsen]

I feel exactly the same