Pigments vs Serum

[vertibration]

Serum is much more capable to edit wavetables. I find Pigments to be quite basic in comparison. I don't think comparing them, or saying one is better than the other holds much weight. Both have exclusive features. Serum just has the artists backing it, Pigments doesn't just yet

[5Lives]

As much as I love the UI, Pigments feels like it has a pretty thin sound all around. Even with max unison, doesn't really thicken up. No meat to it.

[yellowmix]

Pigments' wavetable interpolation is not as good as Serum's. If you want to compare, try Urs Heckman's example wavetable in the Hive wavetable post.

Does Serum interpolate between adjacent waves in the wavetable? AFAIK, it doesn't. It creates morph table of size 256 instead.

Serum doesn't do it live in order to save CPU, you need to create the morph in the editing mode, and undo it and choose a different mode to switch. But Pigments has two basic modes to Serum's four. Hive has four modes done live, freely switchable at any time, though it can incur greater CPU use.

Try Serum's spectral morph against Pigments' best mode. Then try both against Hive doing spectral.

[cron]

Pigments' wavetable interpolation is not as good as Serum's. If you want to compare, try Urs Heckman's example wavetable in the Hive wavetable post.

Does Serum interpolate between adjacent waves in the wavetable? AFAIK, it doesn't. It creates morph table of size 256 instead.

Serum doesn't do it live in order to save CPU, you need to create the morph in the editing mode, and undo it and choose a different mode to switch. But Pigments has two basic modes to Serum's four. Hive has four modes done live, freely switchable at any time, though it can incur greater CPU use.

Try Serum's spectral morph against Pigments' best mode. Then try both against Hive doing spectral.

Serum's approach leaves its quality hugely dependent on the complexity of the wavetable though. With 2 or 3 timbres, where there's plenty of room for the 'morph' in the wavetable editor to spread those transitions across the 256 frames available, it's generally fine. Things can get noisy/'steppy' very quickly with anything trickier. You can pretty much forget the 'ambient journey' end of wavetable synthesis with Serum, plus the rest of the flexibility that packing several timbres into an oscillator affords.

[CircuitEYE]

As much as I love the UI, Pigments feels like it has a pretty thin sound all around. Even with max unison, doesn't really thicken up. No meat to it.

I think that might be the factory presets.
There are some good ones, but I did notice that overall they dont sound nearly as full as the third party ones I got. Those definitely sound fuller and not as thin.

[yellowmix]

Pigments also has 256 frames according to its manual. Notice the wavetable position values increment by 0.004 from 0 to 1.000. 1/256 = 0.00390625 and they display significant digits only. What you see in the visualization window is the actual morph, which is clearly a crossfade.

Again, Serum has both no interpolation and crossfade modes just like Pigments, using 256 frames, with each frame having 2048 samples. However, Serum also has three Spectral morphing modes, where the additional two can zero phase the fundamental or zero phase all harmonics.

I suggested testing with Urs' wavetable since it's freely available. You need to import it with a fixed frame size in Serum; you can't drag and drop or it will chop it up at zero crossings. Pigments imports it correctly as 7 frames, assuming a frame length of 2048 samples. I set up a triangle LFO unidirectionally modulating the wavetable position over 2 bars at 120 BPM. Using no interpolation, there are 7 clicks per bar as it switches. Crossfade eliminates the clicks, but you can hear phasing using any synth's crossfade mode (Pigments, Serum, Hive). Pigments stops there. Serum and Hive have spectral morph and optional zeroing phases, which produces the cleanest morph in this case.

Here's a rendering where Pigments faces off with Hive: https://www83.zippyshare.com/v/DHU6IjRf/file.html

1: Pigments, no interpolation
2: Hive, no interpolation
3: Pigments, morph (crossfade)
4: Hive, crossfade
5: Hive, spectral
6: Hive, spectral, zero phase

You can try the same test with whatever complex wavetable you want. Report back with your findings.

[pdxindy]

Again, Serum has both no interpolation and crossfade modes just like Pigments, using 256 frames, with each frame having 2048 samples. However, Serum also has three Spectral morphing modes, where the additional two can zero phase the fundamental or zero phase all harmonics.

That only works for wavetables with smaller number of frames... if you import a 256 frame wavetable, the only way to get interpolation is to delete a bunch of the frames and then it is not the same wavetable. There are a number of situations where that does not work well...

[yellowmix]

Well, sure, if you leave no room for interpolation then you get switching. Then all else is equal, doesn't matter which synth we're talking about.

[pdxindy]

Well, sure, if you leave no room for interpolation then you get switching. Then all else is equal, doesn't matter which synth we're talking about.

No, you still get interpolation with synths like Hive and Icarus.

[yellowmix]

Yeah, I consider Hive superior to either Serum or Pigments. However, my original assertion is that Serum's interpolation is superior to Pigments. Then people say fill it up so it can't interpolate and it's no better than Pigments. Well, no kidding.

[pdxindy]

Yeah, I consider Hive superior to either Serum or Pigments. However, my original assertion is that Serum's interpolation is superior to Pigments. Then people say fill it up so it can't interpolate and it's no better than Pigments. Well, no kidding.

I briefly tried Pigments... but I did not look at the wavetable interpolation. So it is like Serum that with a wavetable it only steps between frames and has no interpolation?

I liked the Pigments GUI but I have Hive, Icarus and the PPG synths... so wavetables are fairly well covered. Same reason I don't have Serum. Though the new update with MPE support tempts me. I also have a Waldorf Quantum on order. I should be set...

[yellowmix]

Pigments has two wavetable position movement modes. One is no interpolation, simply switching between frames. Listen to the first section of the WAV file I posted a few posts back. The other is simply called "morph", which I think is a crossfade based on the intermediate waveforms it shows when you manually move the index/position and other clues as I previously described. Pigments' crossfade is third in the WAV file, which has phasing on that particular wavetable. Hive has it too, since crossfade will always have that phasing, but as you know, it will disappear when spectral interpolation is applied. Pigments creates 256 frames as well, it just does it automatically since there's only one choice while you have to manually choose one of several modes in Serum.

I passed on Pigments because it is weak in wavetable interpolation, and I have many other wavetable synths (including Hive and Serum). When it's primarily marketed and hailed as a wavetable synth, I can't take it seriously when it fails on its supposed core competency; it's literally a step back from Serum which was introduced half a decade ago. However, Arturia could add spectral morph in a future update and bring it up to par. If they calculate it beforehand like Serum then it'll be likely fine. If it does it in realtime like Hive I doubt it will use less CPU. A cynical part of me thinks they're intentionally holding it back so it can be a future feature update they can capitalize on.

[Q-Bass]

Hopefuly there will be some more in future free update. I am new in wavetables (Pigments is my first synth of this kind), so not sure about that interpolation quality difference between these two synths..
Other than that I have some other wishes for update. The first thing that cross my mind is about modulation targets - as you can modulate almost everything in Pigments, I was kinda dissapointed, I can't modulate parameters in chorus fx engine. So nice morphing of sound when moving the delay parameter of chorus for example - so crying for posability of some envelope or LFO assignment!

[greedy.mf]

With Pigments Arturia tries to capitalise on some of Serum's shortcoming offering two filters, extensive waveshaping, more oscillators.
However I find in less pleasant to work with - not so nimble, CPU consumption is higher, preset change is sluggish, all these analog emulated filters fall short comparing to Diva and even Synthmaster and hardly better than Serum's. Also no resampling, AFAIK. And generally no WT customisation.

Is it a good synth? Yes. Especially with loyalty crossgrade offer, my case for EUR99.

Would I buy it in near future? Unlikely, because I've already invested in Serum for WT/crazy_warping_stuff and several other synth for analog flavour. I'm trying to be more of a musician and less of collector and tweaker. Sounds are good, but songs are better. Serum sounds very good in the mix, and that what matters in the end. And if you're lazy or studying there are tons of 3rd party presets in packs and on Splice.

Pigments probably is a good option for first and only synth, but only if your CPU can handle it.

[Biome_Digital]

Pigments vs Serum is much closer than Pigments vs Dune.

Pigments gui is better but Serum is great for those hard metallic basses. Personally like working with Pigments for its ease of use. Serum has sub osc and better noise.

It is a tough one!