Arturia’s latest refresh of their sprawling V Collection is here today. In addition to updates across the Augmented line and the inclusion of the latest instruments, there are two surprises: a layered “lo-fi” synth and an instrument of the Roland JP-8000. Yes, really, the JP-8000: sometimes you want the 90s and 2000s and not only, like, the 70s and 80s.
I’ve been testing a late build of all these instruments. Let’s go over the basics of what’s new:
There are two all-new instruments we haven’t seen before. And they’re both pleasant surprises – a lofi synth and a JP-8000 recreation. Plus you get a bunch of other updates – it’s hard to keep track of everything Arturia is cranking out, really!
- All-new: _Pure Lofi
- All new: Jup-8000 V
- Full range updated: Augmented Series V2
- Augmented Mallets
- Augmented Yangtze
- Synthx V
- MiniBrute V
- SEM V
_Pure LoFi is a gem – it feels like the love child of Arturia’s Augmented series and the Baby Audio BA-1. That’s not to say there’s too much overlap – more likely, if you’re the type that loves the one, you’ll love the other. This is actually 9 different vintage emulations in one, plus a bunch of layers (noise textures, etc.), filter, and effects. Maybe the other way to think of it is Pigments, but Lo-Fi. You could actually recreate a lot of this in Pigments, too, with some clever sample work – but it’s really fun having the built-in sound content and engines, and the whole interface is just joyous.
Here’s just a quick example of how it sounds, with a custom-baked preset:
There is a strategy here. Like I said, a lot of the fundamental approach here is borrowed from the Augmented Series – you’re combining an instrument model, synthesis, texture, and filter. (That in turn is a distillation of what makes Pigments tick.) You can really make an entire ambient/lo-fi album in a preset, more or less. You’ll want to dig into the advanced page to do that, though: for instance, if you don’t want that noise texture just always playing in the background, you can route modulation to its level (effectively adding a VCA).
You can also swap engines on the fly by clicking the disks, which gives you lots of interesting character. I can imagine this pairing really beautifully with the Augmented Series, too – and the Baby Audio BA-1, as I said! (Oh, and then you could run the BA-1 into Pigments as an effects processor – see my past tutorial.)
The Jup-8000 V is Arturia’s reimagining of the Roland JP-8000. The source material is the late 90s Roland virtual analog synth, which took off in the 2000s in a number of dance genres – see below. And it’s the instrument that popularized the supersaw, which has since become so ubiquitous it’s easy to forget that it was a JP-8000 innovation. I might have expected to see this crop up in Roland Cloud before V Collection, but here we are – and maybe that’s just as well, as Roland’s earlier entries are a bit lacking in the interface department. Even as an avowed Roland fan, I’m not quite sure I’d call the JP-8000 “iconic” as Arturia’s marketing materials do. But it is a contrast to the other stuff in V Collection, and it is the basis of a whole lot of music, especially if you’re into hard dance, trance, and whatnot.
Arturia’s treatment adds a ton of effects, modulation, a multi-arp and melodic sequencer, and 7 different engines to recreate the sounds.
And they’ve done a lot of work modeling the voice of the original, including envelopes, X-Mod and tone control, and filters. I mean, look, you’re either going to really love or really hate the JP. But if you are ready to trance out, wow this advanced screen is really perfect. And there’s enough in that architecture that you could stake out some different territory than what the JP is known for, too. It just sounds very late-90s VA, which makes sense, because that’s what it is.
Plus:
_Augmented Series V2 is a pretty significant refresh to the whole lineup – now with Yangtze and Mallets joinin Voices, Strings, Grand Piano, Brass, and Woodwinds. I’ve spoken before about why I love these – they’re focused, flexible playgrounds, open to a ton of customization, that cover a lot of the basics for scoring and sound design that otherwise would require a bunch of complicated Kontakt libraries. V2 refreshes the whole set:
- You can toggle engines! Finally … the big limitation of the Augmented Series was that you had to use each independently. You now get easy swapping, toggle, and can even randomize engine selection.
- Layout and wallpapers are updated. The other thing I really didn’t like much about the Augmented Series was its overly minimalistic layout choices and a bunch of washed-out backgrounds that you couldn’t see. There are new wallpapers that actually give you clear visual feedback on which engine you’re using, and the layouts are reorganized.
- Mod Wheel to Morph. Well, yes – that’s a no brainer!
- New morph curves. (Crossover, Additive, Custom)
- Drag-and-drop modulation and other streamlining, bringing this more in line with Arturia’s other offerings. (It was always very customizable, but the interface was confusingly different from the advanced pages in other Arturia products.)
- Per-part filter bypass, improved comb filter.
- Effects enhancements: more modulation, new effect selector, and a Send Routing Mode for Delay/Reverb (also, again, more in line with what you get elsewhere in the Arturia range).
They’ve also made improvements to the individual tools. There are more articulations in the strings and voices, a 22-piece choir, bigger factory banks.
And unlike the daunting process of editing a bank in something like Kontakt, it’s really easy to play around and make these sample libraries your own. For instance, you can dive into the Arpeggiator and set up Auto Gen for velocity, gate, and probability or adjust cycles. (Oddly enough, these were features we first observed in Arturia’s ACID V, which I wrote about at the time – but they take on some wonderful compositional life for these instruments, too.)
And then there are the other recent additions: MiniBrute V, a software version of Arturia’s superb little synth, the not-so-often modeled SynthX V, and the frankly fairly-often modeled but still-welcome SEM V.
All in all, synth lovers have some good choices here, and will likely be split based on how much they love/hate the JP-8000. Composers and folks wanting dreamy and lo-fi stuff, though – this is your year, between the updated Augmented Series and the gauzy goodness that is Pure LoFi.
Honestly, I’m happy to have Pure LoFi just to chill out with. It’s the best stress relieving instrument Arturia has made yet.