Arturia Pigments 2 (Free Update): Now it's Granular

[Harry_HH]

Does your wife know that?

(I guess she does...)

No, in fact my wife craves for the granular mode and then modulated sample position, but unfortunately I can’t deliver that. No pills of any color has helped.

[Stefken]

Like Cypher said: you should have picked the blue pill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNiBdtU-Ayc

(Just kidding...)

[Mushy Mushy]

Is the Tape Delay ripped from their Tape-201?

[fdco]

Sorry if this has been asked before…
Somebody knows where is the pigments User presets location on OSX ?
I tried the usual suspects to no avail.

[LoveEnigma18]

Is the Tape Delay ripped from their Tape-201?

I think yes. I read somewhere that the delay is from their new effects.

[Lazarus451]

I bought the 49€ crossgrade and received the key. After activating it, it still says that free to use 15 days and "Valid Until: 2020-01-01". Is this still the demo version and will it stop working after 15 days?

[c_voltage]

Does pigment really have a good analog simulation? Should it sound like real hardware, with which hardware are the filters comparable? Is pitch drift emulated, how high is the upsampling? Are Juno and Moog sounds possible? Modular i'm fully served. But i'm still looking for a good hardware emulation with many possibilities. I have DIVA in sight, but maybe other VA can convince as well. But I'm looking for an all in one synth, not 50 different emulations.

After some quick compares, i think that Pigments far from analog emulations yet, it seems clean digital beast.

For example, i did compare sound of init saw waveform in Pigments VA module, and in Strobe (first version, that always seemed to me quite near to "analog sound").
And so what - i can't say that i heard palpable difference in saw sound itself, but it seemed to me that there is certain difference in attack phase (yes, i did not forget decrease attack in Pigments envelope, by default as i notice it often with increased attack in templates).

In general, it seemed to me that in order to achieve similar result, Pigment lacked "punch" in the attack. And I guess that the point is the specifics of his VCA envelope. Maybe this can somehow be achieved through modulation, I don’t know yet. But such feelings.

But I do not want to say that it greatly upset me. I’m happy with its digital nature (it’sperhaps impossible to cover all the concepts at once, in one tool)

[Razzia]

Does pigment really have a good analog simulation? Should it sound like real hardware, with which hardware are the filters comparable? Is pitch drift emulated, how high is the upsampling? Are Juno and Moog sounds possible? Modular i'm fully served. But i'm still looking for a good hardware emulation with many possibilities. I have DIVA in sight, but maybe other VA can convince as well. But I'm looking for an all in one synth, not 50 different emulations.

After some quick compares, i think that Pigments far from analog emulations yet, it seems clean digital beast.

For example, i did compare sound of init saw waveform in Pigments VA module, and in Strobe (first version, that always seemed to me quite near to "analog sound").
And so what - i can't say that i heard palpable difference in saw sound itself, but it seemed to me that there is certain difference in attack phase (yes, i did not forget decrease attack in Pigments envelope, by default as i notice it often with increased attack in templates).

In general, it seemed to me that in order to achieve similar result, Pigment lacked "punch" in the attack. And I guess that the point is the specifics of his VCA envelope. Maybe this can somehow be achieved through modulation, I don’t know yet. But such feelings.

But I do not want to say that it greatly upset me. I’m happy with its digital nature (it’sperhaps impossible to cover all the concepts at once, in one tool)

Despite the frequent criticisms of being too pristine, I always thought pigments VA osc engine sounded pretty good. The filters and distortion models less so, but I think it’s a very good synth. I’m not looking for it to be a perfect analog emulation. I’ve got analog synths for that, and third party plugins like brainworx, UAD, etc to add that kind of flavor when I want it. I’d be happier if arturia continued putting their efforts into making it a more viable workhorse synth by freeing up some of the baked in routings of the filters, oscillators, and fx busses.

[Mushy Mushy]

This thing is a psy monster:

https://soundcloud.com/mushy-mushy/pig-munted/s-VR1A9

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Is the Tape Delay ripped from their Tape-201?

I'm 95% sure it's not. The delays in Pigment's Tape Delay effect distorts very easily with higher frequency content. Their RE-201 isn't this ugly (IMO). I noticed this distortion as soon as I added a Tape Delay to a patch.

Maybe it's just me, but try this out if you have both:

1. Go to the Default Template in Pigments2
2. Change the engine to analog - don't change anything else
3. Add a Tape Delay effect - 50% wet, 50% intensity, no spread, or ping-pong, mono
4. Play some 3 and 4 note chords
5. Listen to the delays - Result: they get crunchy

Now...

6. Turn off the Tape Delay effect
7. Replace it with their RE-201 clone - Mode 1, Intensity 50%, mix 50%, no spread, mono
8. Play some 3 and 4 note chords
9. Listen to the delays - Result: nowhere near as distorted - sounds good

[CausticPuppy]

Sorry if this has been asked before…
Somebody knows where is the pigments User presets location on OSX ?
I tried the usual suspects to no avail.

I don't know WHY arturia doesn't put presets in the same "presets" folder as my other plugins, but Pigments is here:

/Library/Arturia/Presets/Pigments/User/User/

Yes, "user" is in there twice.

[oleg1978]

Some questions concerning the sample playing of the Pigments 2:
...
3. Is there Time machine -type of mode available, like in Kontakt, where you play different sample pitches without affecting the sample playing speed?

Unfortunately not. I really wish there was a feature like this.

Not exactly the same, but you can achieve something similar with granular mode and then modulating sample position. This way you can have different pitches at the same rate as slow or fast as you want, forward, backwards or any direction you can think of.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll give it a try, even though - as you said - it's not exactly the same.

[machinesworking]

Hello, can anybody elaborate more on the CPU usage of Pigments 2

I don't have have Pig1 just demoing Pig2 and I think that CPU hit is quite high for my taste. For example: just two sources monopohonic sample playback with no filter and no FX is about 3%. In opposite of Rapid which take only 0,4% of CPU. I have very old Lynnfiled i7 so CPU matters for me.

Which daw do you use? Because, if i bridge the plugin, the cpu usage in the daw is going down by a couple %

I am working in Digital Performer 9.5.

I'm on DP10, and Pigments works just fine, it's not the highest CPU hit or the lowest. I would assume you can get pretty crazy CPU wise with the granular engine for sure.

[machinesworking]

I give U-He mass credit for not doing specific emulations, saves them the scrutiny and failed expectations.

Huh?

RePro-1? RePro-5? Not only are those specific emulations there were no failed expectations around the accuracy. In fact, when I'd see comparison videos to the originals I was MORE impressed.

U-He don't brand RePro-1 and 5 as absolute emulations the way that Arturia do though. I agree that U-He get closer to an analog sound for sure, but they always qualify it by saying they're trying to get the sound or vibe etc., not the exact sound etc. Look at Repro-1, the FX like Jaws didn't exist when the Pro-1 came out. It's much smarter than Arturia's marketing. To Arturias credit they did a pretty good job with the Matrix 12, SEM, Synclavier etc. their later stuff for the most part is better, but they fall flat by claiming exact emulation, when I can turn on the Xpander here and clearly hear that the oscillators on the Matrix 12 are much more flat and in tune etc. I still have used the Matrix 12 in songs though, it's a good soft synth. and the Factory presets are dead on.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I give U-He mass credit for not doing specific emulations, saves them the scrutiny and failed expectations.

Huh?

RePro-1? RePro-5? Not only are those specific emulations there were no failed expectations around the accuracy. In fact, when I'd see comparison videos to the originals I was MORE impressed.

U-He don't brand RePro-1 and 5 as absolute emulations the way that Arturia do though. I agree that U-He get closer to an analog sound for sure, but they always qualify it by saying they're trying to get the sound or vibe etc., not the exact sound etc. Look at Repro-1, the FX like Jaws didn't exist when the Pro-1 came out. It's much smarter than Arturia's marketing. To Arturias credit they did a pretty good job with the Matrix 12, SEM, Synclavier etc. their later stuff for the most part is better, but they fall flat by claiming exact emulation, when I can turn on the Xpander here and clearly hear that the oscillators on the Matrix 12 are much more flat and in tune etc. I still have used the Matrix 12 in songs though, it's a good soft synth. and the Factory presets are dead on.

https://u-he.com/products/repro/

"Two classics, recreated."

"The plug-in is a component-level model of perhaps the most powerful-sounding monophonic keyboard ever built."

I can go through the manuals and pull out even more quotes, or pull up posts were Urs talks about how close theirs is to the original, or points out errors other people have made in comparisons.

I'm sorry, but there's really no difference between what U-he did with RePro-1/5 and what Arturia does. Other than U-he's actually sounding like an exacting copy of the hardware and Arturia not being quite as faithful. They both started with the OG synth, added some modern amenities like FX, more voices, and released the products as emulations of the original. U-he is my favorite plugin company, but you're basically saying "U-he doesn't do this" when they do, and they're way different in Arturia when they're not.