Arturia is bringing improvements to every conceivable area of their flagship soft synth. Pigments started off demonstrating Arturia could do more than emulate the past; now it’s starting to look like the polysynth to beat.
There’s just a ton of new stuff in this one:
- Updated UI with simplified Play Mode (the one with macros etc.), cleaned up interface, and a new high-contrast Light Mode … well, yeah, looks like it takes the best of the look of rival Massive X. Plus left-right controls for navigating multimode modules.
- FX and Seq bypass. Ah, don’t know why all workstation synths don’t have this.
- New sync modes
- Drag-and-drop modulation editing. Now you just drag source to destination, then hover over the parameter to adjust mod depth.
- LFO presets – six waveform shapes (sine, random, etc.)
- Custom tuning support with ODDSound MTS-ESP compatibility
- Wavetable engine ring mod plus Pulse Width mode for Phase Transformation
- Harmonic engine now has new phase options with Phase Modulation and the ability to randomize the phase of all partials at once
- Modulator Oscillator with ratio options, extended 0.1 Hz – 20Khz range
- Super Unison effect, plus Unison controls are streamlined (closer to what’s in the rest of the Arturia stable) – unison across all engines, Unison Phase for Wavetable and Sample.
- MS-20 filter with both HP6 and LP12 modes
- Shimmer Reverb with two octaves of pitch shift and built-in modulation
- Bitcrusher adds Jitter, Scale, and Downsampling options
- Jup-8 V filter has FM control
- Notch Filter mode added to Multi Filter and Distortion
Plus, part of what has always made Pigments fun to use is that it’s a big library of sound tools and resources. So of course, that’s expanded here. It’s new preset content, to be sure, but also new wavetables, samples, and noise types that you can build on – dozens of each, by Arturia’s count. So we’re not just talking libraries for preset lovers, but really an expanded toolkit for sound designers.
There are also three new optional add-on libraries, too – Lo-fi, Neuro Bass, and CInematic.
New Pigments users can get the latest version at an intro price of 99€/$. If you own other Arturia products, it could be even less than that – but you’ll have to log in to find out.
Existing users, you get the update free of charge. If you want the added sound banks, the intro is 9.90€/$ for each or 19.90€/$ for the bundle. (Full price on the sound banks is 89.97€/$.
Anyway, it’s 5:00 pm here in Europe so – hit that Arturia Software Center now, Pigments users. It’s waiting. Who needs sunlight? Shift into Light Mode for fake daylight and get designing sounds.
Videos inbound (though I guess here’s my call to do the How to Create Trippy AF / Weirdo Sounds video):