A journey through the ARTURIA V-COLLECTION - Introduction

Hello everybody and welcome to this new series of articles dedicated to the ecosystem named V-COLLECTION created by Arturia: a set of virtual synthesizers that recreates the feeling and the sounds of some of the most famous analog synthesizers of the past.

For those who don’t know this company, Arturia is a software house that started his career programming and selling software virtual analog synthesizers that are accurate emulations of some famous machines of the past that inspired a lot of musicians in their music and which timbres are widely used also today in modern compositions. We could consider these machines icons of the electronic music.

Nowadays Arturia is a renowned company also specialized in realizing hardware synthesizers that have rapidly found a significant diffusion on the market. The Minibrute and the Microbrute are perfect examples of the skill of Arturia.

Focusing a little bit on the “software” line of products made by this vendor, what I would like to do is to propose a small journey through the characteristics of each of the software synthesizers that composes the V-COLLECTION.

For each of them I will propose a dedicated issue where I’ll focus on:

1. The main features of the product;
2. The hardware machine emulated;
3. The synthesis path;
4. The controls and the programming interface;
5. The features offered by the software that are not on the original machine (if any)
6. Tips ‘n tricks in programming sounds.

In detail, we’ll discuss about: 

• The set of virtual modular synthesizers including the Moog Modular V

and the ARP 2600 V

• The set of polyphonic virtual synthesizers including the Jupiter 8V

the Prophet V/VS

the CS-80V

and the Matrix 12V

• The set of monophonic synthesizers including the glorious Minimoog V

and the SEM V

• the set of String machines including (for now) only the Solina V

• the set of electromechanical instruments including the Wurlitzer V

and the Vox Continental V

• and last but not least the flagship drum synthesizer Spark 2

The main feature common to all these products is the TAE technology (True Analog Emulation) that is dedicated to the digital reproduction of analog circuits used in classic analog synthesizers guaranteeing authentic emulation of hardware specifications.

As we know, the hardware analog oscillators are unstable: their waveform varies slightly from one period to another. Furthermore, the starting point for each period can vary with the temperature and other environmental conditions. These are the two main aspects that contributed to the typical sound of vintage synthesizers. TAE® is able to reproduce this instability of the oscillators, bringing a fatter and “bigger” sound.

If you like all this, all you have to do is... to stay tuned for the first issue in which we’ll start our journey discussing about the father of all Arturia’s virtual synthesizers: the Moog Modular V.

Ciao.