UVI Vintage vault vs Arturia V4

[wagtunes]

@Jdoo and @fmr

Neither an Arturia lover or hater here. In fact, I'd say I'm pretty unbiased when it comes to their stuff. The truth is somewhere in between your two posts.

The sounds of their synths (I don't own the Matrix 12 as I just couldn't see spending the money) are fine. Not off the wall amazing, but fine. They're certainly usable.

Their GUIs are a disaster except for the SEM and Matrix 12. You can't see them. You read them and you can't program in them, which is the only reason I buy synths, to make my own sounds. If I want a rompler, I'll buy a rompler. And right now, that's all the Jupiter, 2600, Mini, Modular and CS 80 are good for, playing presets.

I've been waiting for these "bigger GUIs" for almost 2 years now. I am not holding my breath on them coming out any time soon. So no, their support and maintenance of their synths is not what I would call superb. So far, I have gotten better service from just about every other "big" synth company I've purchased synths from.

I would love to get into some Modular programming especially but that's like trying to eat rice with a pair of tweezers.

My 2 cents from a pretty neutral customer of Arturia Products.

[fmr]

Vintage Vault doesn't include the new Cameo as far as I can see?

Nope. I had to cough another $59,00

[Ingonator]

If synthesizers were types of mallets, Arturia synths would be ones made of pillows. They sound that soft.

I found that using certain external FXs (including a Bass enhancement plugin) i could make the Arturia synths sound the way i like. Anyway i disagree that they sound "crappy" without using external FXs.
I also found that since a while i do care less if they sound exactly like the rwla synths they model. I even like their Jupiter 8 emulation while i would not claim that it sounds exactly like the real thing (and i had a real one in the past...). Actually Jupiter-8V s far was the only plugin so far that i had bought again (with a big discount...) after having sold it already (fitrst time i got it when it was released and the boxed version even included a free USB dongle, same about the boxed version of Prophet V...)..

Also the newer additions like Solina, Wurlitzer, Vox Continental and Spark 2 seem to be quite useful.


PS:
I own and love UVI Falcon but i guess it will take long time before i will get more UVI libraries besides Mello that i got for the voucher included with the Falcon purchase (at the intro offer).
Paying 69 € for the upgrade to V-Collection 4 was also hard to resist, opposing to around 320 € for Vintage Vault which is a lot of money in comparison.

[wagtunes]

Oh and more thing. Comparing Arturia synths to Falcon makes about as much sense as comparing Bridget Bardot to a baseball bat.

I'll leave it at that.

[braj]

Disk space IMO is a prime consideration here. Today I got the $99 upgrade offer from Arturia, for that price I would much rather get the V collection, I never get along that well with sampled synths, I prefer samples for more acoustic instruments, synths can generally do a better job at all aspects of a synth than a sampler. But then, the possibility of using the sounds in Falcon if I ever get that is a big +.

[db3]

Arturia V4 v UVI Vintage/Falcon really is Apples v Pears.
Personally I think some of the older Arturia plugs do have their own sweets spots, but the more recent models of SEM, Matrix and Solina sound just great.

[Ingonator]

Just found that Modular V seems to be one of the plugin that could really benefit from a Bass enhancement plugin like e.g. Waves OneKnob Phatter. While the low end in Modular V is not really bad using OneKnob Phatter could lead to some really fat "speaker busting" sounds (and that alraedy at a value of 6 of 10 for the amount in OneKnob Phatter). In that respect i could come close to what i could get from NI Monark in terms of low end.
Same is also true for Mini V and some other Arturia synths in combination with OneKnob Phatter.

Modular V also offers features not available with any of teh oter Arturia synths, including a dedicated formant filter with multiple bands and others and up to 9 oscillators.

[murnau]

Then why would you keep buying their synths if you think they are poor? You could have just tried the demo versions first.

Still no answer from jdoo.. ..no wonder.

[Numanoid]

Arturia testify that:

V Collection is the gold standard of virtual instruments! It offers incredibly realistic and responsive models of the most revered electronic instruments in the world

Now, would they lie to you, the customer?

[jdoo]

Then why would you keep buying their synths if you think they are poor? You could have just tried the demo versions first.

Still no answer from jdoo.. ..no wonder.

I didn't realize that anyone cared? I picked up Matrix 12 because of reviews I had read. I've owned nearly all of Arturias synths at one point or another. I've got a lot of mileage out of them too. I still miss their Prophet synths - which is why I'm considering upgrading to the V Collection 4 ($69 for me to upgrade right now). It's cheaper than just buying the Prophets for $99 for me. Does that mean I won't have an opinion on the couple of other synths I would pick up? Nope. If you care so deeply about what I buy and use, drop me a PM.

[Ingonator]

For those Arturia synths i currently do not see a better dedicated native plugin (not DSP hardware based) replacement from other developers:

- Prophet V (includes 3 synths: Prophet 5 + VS + hybrid synth)
- Oberheim SEM V
- Oberheim Matrix-12V
- Modular V

There are some other nice Oberheim emulations including OP-X Pro II, OBXD and the Uhbie filter in Diva but none of those is a direct replacement for those Arturia synths mentioned above. I also prefer the filter in Matrix-12V over the Xpander filter in Falcon (while that filter in Falcon works nicely for many different tasks).

For Minimoog, Jupiter 8, ARP 2600 and CS-80 there seem to be other good emulations like e.g. Monark, Diva, TimewARP 2600 and ME80. Feature wise and also in tems of parameter ranges Arturia Jupiter 8 seems to be closer to the real thing than the Jupiter 8 included with Diva.

Sound wise Monark and Diva seem to be better as a Minimoog emulation while Mini V is great for poylphonic sounds due to a lower CPU use. Based on the fact that the first version of Mini V is older than 10 years it actually could sound quite good (especially in combination wit ha bass enhancement/boosting FX plugin).

For ARRP 2600 i prefer TimewARP 2600 while the Arturia plugin has some additional features (e.g. sequencer, multimode filter).

I have never checked ME80 so no idea how it compares to CS-80V.


Besides those synths V-Collection 4 includes Solina, Vox continental, Wurlitzer and Spark 2 that are very nice IMO. Spark 2 is a very nice Drim synth with features not included in other plugins and since Martinic Combo V is discontinued (while i still go ta copy of the plugin...) there does not seem to be a dedicated emulation taht replaces Arturia Vox V (and this also has some additional features not included with e.g. Martinic Combo V).
Soiina V has additional features that make it usable beyond emulations of the sound in preset version of the real thing. The Resonator in the advanced features of Solina V did not seem to be included with the rare Solina String synthesizer (with more features compared to teh String Ensemble version) so Solina V seems to add something new and useful.

Have not compared the Arturia Wurlitzer to others yet (e.g. to Ableton Electric or my Yamaha Motif ES 7) but it seems to sound nice on ot's own and has some additional features.

All Arturia plugins besides the feature set of the real synths also seem to i9nclude additional features. MY facourite additional fetaure is the hybrid synth in Prophet V that combines modules of the Prophet 5 and VS into a single synth taht offers up to 4 Oscs from both synths and a dual filter (and both the VS and the hybrid one also contain a multimode filter opposing to a simple Lowpass filter)..

[Numanoid]

I have never checked ME80 so no idea how it compares to CS-80V.

I think ME80 is the best plug I have ever encountered

Check the demo (also 64 bit), it is has got sound dropouts but otherwise rather restriction free

[trimph1]

Oh and more thing. Comparing Arturia synths to Falcon makes about as much sense as comparing Bridget Bardot to a baseball bat.

I'll leave it at that.

[Ingonator]

I have never checked ME80 so no idea how it compares to CS-80V.

I think ME80 is the best plug I have ever encountered

Check the demo (also 64 bit), it is has got sound dropouts but otherwise rather restriction free

Just installed the demo of ME80 and started to compare to CS-80 V2.

Concerning which really sounds "better" i am not sure yet but concerning low end i found that this almost does not seem to exist in ME80. I do not say the low end in CS-80V is great but it seems to be much better than in ME80. Even with adding a Bass enhancement plugin like Waves OneKonb Phatter it is not really much better in ME-80 while adding this to CS-80V could lead to some really fat sounds with big low end (and a medium amount of the bass enhancement is enough there).

I got a Korg DW-8000 here at the moment so i know how a good low end without "tricks" could sound like and also what "analog warmth" could mean. Also got an Ensoniq ESQ-1 (hybrid with analog filter) and a Waldorf Pulse 2 (full analog signal path) here.

UPDATE:
Just found that some ME80 patches (including Bas sounds) used the HPF. With removing the HPF the low end is slightly better with those patches but still not really good IMO, also when compared to CS-80V.
Also with some tweaking i could not really get what i would call a good low end, at least one that is good enough to sound great with an external bass enhancement plugin.
I am not even sure if ME80 sounds like what i would call "typical analog". Also used my Korg DW-8000 for a short comparison (which IMO has one of the best sounding real analog filters) and sound wise ME80 does not even seem to be in the same universe. Of course the feature set of both synths is quite different.
Actually i was able to get some Synth Brass sounds from the DW-8000 that somehow reminded me of a real CS-80 or Jupiter 8.

So far independent of which emulation is closer to a real CS-80 i seem to prefer Arturia CS-80 V2 when compared to ME80,even when programming similar patches with both.

[whyterabbyt]

Oh and more thing. Comparing Arturia synths to Falcon makes about as much sense as comparing Bridget Bardot to a baseball bat.

I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, you wouldnt want to take Bardot to some of the people round here.