Arturia V Collection 5

[Gemylon]

@musicman,
@ Seafoam_Green

Nice reports. Thanks !

I was curious about the pianos and the B3.
Now I think I'll skip the upgrade and buy the B5 from AS instead

Already got Pianoteq and some good sampled grands as well.


G

[musicman691]

For those contemplating buying the VC5 collection or upgrade you may want to hold off, especially if you already have the VC4 collection. Amongst other things custom presets made for synths in VC4 won't directly work in the upgraded VC5 synths. I'm not talking about the new ones but ones like the Sem; if you have custom presets made for the old version they can't directly be called up in the upgraded one. Also apparently the sound field is missing from many if not all synths.

Like I wrote earlier I'm in love with the Synclavier, having encountered them back in the 70's/80's. I just found out Arturia left out sampling from their emulation. That was a biggie back in the original hardware versions.

There's not a whole lot of action but there is some over on the Arturia forums for the new stuff. And a lot of it is not flattering, especially from those of us who have been in the Arturia game for some time.

And seafoam green don't feel bad about quoting me - I'm flattered.

For my part I'm going to hold off purchasing the VC5 upgrade for now and see if/when/how Arturia is going to fix the various errors that exist.

[Seafoam_Green]

Originally Posted by musicman691

For those contemplating buying the VC5 collection or upgrade you may want to hold off, especially if you already have the VC4 collection. Amongst other things custom presets made for synths in VC4 won't directly work in the upgraded VC5 synths. I'm not talking about the new ones but ones like the Sem; if you have custom presets made for the old version they can't directly be called up in the upgraded one. Also apparently the sound field is missing from many if not all synths.

This sounds scary .
I have many unfinished projects with custom presets, and I have also invested in 3rd party purchased 'preset packs' for these synths (shown below).

- Mini V
- CS80
- Jupiter
- Modular V
- Arp 2600
- Prophet

..., I am not sure about which ones of these synths are included as 'old versions' in your descriptions Musicman.

Do you know if these synths will still load up their old custom presets (ie; from V4) in the newer updated Version 5 'versions' ?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Seafoam_Green

This sounds scary .
I have many unfinished projects with custom presets, and I have also invested in 3rd party purchased 'preset packs' for these synths (shown below).

- Mini V
- CS80
- Jupiter
- Modular V
- Arp 2600
- Prophet

..., I am not sure about which ones of these synths are included as 'old versions' in your descriptions Musicman.

Do you know if these synths will still load up their old custom presets (ie; from V4) in the newer updated Version 5 'versions' ?

From what I've seen/experienced none of the custom patches done on any of the now 'legacy' VC4 synths will load up directly on the new VC5 synths. Supposedly Arturia rewrote the synth engines and didn't think about backwards compatibility patch-wise. And re-creating old patches on the new synths is something best left for when one has the time and patience to do the job.

To add to all this folly - I've wrote about how I like the Synclavier 2 emulation having experienced them back in the day. Well Arturia left out the sampling on their emulation. I posted about this on their forum about this and one of their sound testers came back and said sampling wasn't in the Syn2 but the later 9600. A quick Google search turned up at least two instances where it was shown sampling did exist in the Syn2, first as an option and then as standard and I've seen/heard it with the sampling way back when. Okay, if Arturia's emulation can't sample directly let us fly in our own samples done elsewheres.

Why do I keep going on and on about the Syn2? Simple - it's a monster machine that's finally getting it's due in software. Killer sounds that no other machine can match and it's been used on a ton of records and in movies. Moog wasn't Wendy Carlos's only synth brand you know

More and more I'm getting a queasy feeling about this 'upgrade'.

[nst7]

Jack, could it be they left out the sampling capability on the assumption that in the modern DAW, you can easily combine any sample based instrument with the sound of the Synclavier VI, thus getting you the layered sound you want?

Or was there specific things you could do with samples in the later Synclavier models, in terms of filtering and sound shaping, that was unique to it?

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

I'm only experiencing issues relative to running on PT 12.4, issues which are specifically Analog Lab based. Never have an issue with any of the individual Arturia V's. Even then, I can go back into the backups of those sessions, un-instantiate the Analog Lab instance and instantiate "Mini-V" or "CS-80-V" or other.

For recording, I don't see much of a purpose for Analog Lab under those circumstances, but I can totally see where it would be crucial for live performance in making your "multis" to consolidate multiple "V"s into live performance scenarios, i.e.; Moog Mini on the left zone for bass, i-Sem on the right for chords/Leads.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by nst7

Jack, could it be they left out the sampling capability on the assumption that in the modern DAW, you can easily combine any sample based instrument with the sound of the Synclavier VI, thus getting you the layered sound you want?

Or was there specific things you could do with samples in the later Synclavier models, in terms of filtering and sound shaping, that was unique to it?

It's not a simple layering of one sound with another; goes much deeper than that to the heart of the instrument itself. You could build entire patches off of samples and the partials and FM synthesis modes in the Syn2. Check out some early Suzanne Ciani stuff for her work with the Synclavier system.

[musicman691]

Update on a couple of fronts:
Per this link here on the Arturia site there is a patch converter coming but given Arturia's snail pace at doing things in the past I'd not hold my breath. They're in the Slate 'coming soon' ballpark. https://www.arturia.com/faq/utilizat...-compatibility

As to sampling and the Synclavier 2 I got an answer from one of Arturia's people saying it's not an oversight that they left out the sampling/resynthesis engine; they wanted to concentrate on the FM and additive synthesis modes. They also said that if enough people ask them they may put the sampling/resynthesis engine in a version 2 of the synth. Sadly I'll also put this one in the category of somewheres down the line and not this year. Given past performance by Arturia I'd say if it happens in 2017 we'll be lucky.

Said it before and I'll say it again - Arturia makes some great stuff but they muffed this one big time.

Other updates:
A number of patches on the Farfisa and B3 are noisy as apparently Arturia modeled the amp hum and acoustical noise of things like the rotors in a Leslie. I guess one solution is to dump the internal Arturia fx and use external plugins like PSP L'otary for the Leslie and Amplitube 4 for amplification and fx.

Comparing patches between the older synths and the new ones there are sound differences; some in volume and some in the sound itself.

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Do you know if older versions of the individual models can be opened up in the newer Analog Lab 2?

Might be a way of retaining some saved presets until the converter is up and running bug free.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by TonyFlyingSquirrel

Do you know if older versions of the individual models can be opened up in the newer Analog Lab 2?

Might be a way of retaining some saved presets until the converter is up and running bug free.

They cannot. Been there, tried that. Luckily you still have the older Analog Lab which does not get replaced by the newer one. But you won't see the newer versions in the original AL.

BTW Arturia DOES have a converter up and running as they used it to convert over the old patches to the new system; it just hasn't been released to us end users. This straight from Arturia.

Been spending more time on the Arturia forums and almost no one is 100% delighted with the VC5 experience. Several bugs, some of which have been acknowledged by Arturia already, and several more that haven't (yet). Several of the controls on the older synths don't work like they should, sequencer bugs in the Moog Modular, etc.

For anyone playing around with the Farfisa emulation open the top panel and turn down the analog noise knob; several of the patches have it turned up way high and this has to be done for each patch as it's not a global control.