When I started this I got a Microfreak from Amazon to try but ended up sening it back after a week.
I figured I could use it as a subtractive synth, as a sampler, as a granular synth, as a general purpose thing … but it just doesn’t work.
There was some stuff on it that I liked a lot, eg. the keyboard - Arturia needs to make a standalone keyboard like this one - and the matrix, but at the end of the day the sound engine is just too weak.
It sounds feeble. If I didn’t know better I’d swear they put a high-pass filter on the output or something (I forgot to test that theory on the oscilloscope when I had it - anybody?). Listen to the intro tune on Bad Gear’s “Microfreak” episode, it captures the overall timbre perfectly (it’s the lead synth in that mix - for people who don’t know Bad Gear he plays the same song on the featured synth at the start of each episode).
All the synth engines were vaguely defined and wishy-washy - you basically turn the orange knobs and cross your fingers hoping to find sounds. It uses the exact same three “test tube” icons for all synth engines? Just show me the ^%$% waveform on screen!
eg. I had to connect it to an oscilloscope just to figure out how to do things like PWM. There’s no way you’d figure it out by reading the manual or fiddling with the knobs and listening.
The sampler is very limited - only one sound at a time, no stereo.
Paraphonic didn’t really do it for me. It kinda works when there’s not much filter envelope but filter envelope is important.
It has no effects, and only monophonic output. You’ll need a whole bunch of effects pedals and/or post-processing to make it work, but why even bother?
Score: 2/10