Arturia V-Collection 4
With Oberheim Matrix 12, Solina String synth, Vox Continental and Spark 2 added, the V-Collection is bigger than ever. Stuart Bruce investigates
The V-Collection has been around for a while and it has a huge user group of musicians from every era of electronic music. At FM every new incarnation has been lauded for its incredible realism and attention to detail. With version 4 Arturia have pushed the envelope even further by adding Spark 2.0, their multi synthesis and sample based drum machine, the classic sound of the Vox Continental and the two synths we are going to pay most of our attention to here – the Oberheim Matrix-12 and the ARP Solina string synth.
First up is the Matrix-12. The Matrix first appeared in the ’80s and was a two oscillator analogue synth with digital control which allowed for an enormous amount of flexibility in patching and routing with its huge complement of modulation sources and destinations. At the heart of its sound were its 15 filter modes, all of which are faithfully re-created here. I own the Expander, its six voice brother, so I have been able to compare many features to the original and Arturia have got it spot on. This is a complex instrument so you do need time to get to grips with it but it’s worth the effort.
Matrix modulations
Starting with the oscillators, they both have triangle, sawtooth and variable width pulse wave with PWM. Oscillator 1 also has FM function and Oscillator 2 has a white noise generator. The filter has 15 modes including various Lo Pass, High Pass, Band Pass, Notch and Phase Shift plus some Combi modes. The tonal variations are radical and there are endless hours of tweaking to do just here, but it’s when you get to the modulation possibilities that the fun really starts.
There are five LFOs, five envelopes, four ramps, three tracking generators plus velocity, pressure and key follow. Along the bottom of the synth you can call up a view of the mod sources arranged as two banks of 20. Here you can select the source (say LFO 2) and then apply it to a destination (envelope 3 amplitude) and the knob between them sets the amount. All the mod sources are laid out on the front panel so, once you have routed, its very simple to adjust parameters. You can modulate all points on an envelope and even get down to applying an LFO to an LFO which is in turn modulating another or multiple destinations.
Building up complex patches with endlessly changing modulations creates monster sounds that have a very organic feel to them. If you need to automate then all the obvious controls are there such as pitch and mod wheels, aftertouch etc but, by pressing the MIDI button in the top right corner, you can then assign any parameter to a CC number or just tell it to learn. Once you have assigned a set of controllers you
The new additions are the icing on the cake for the best sounding set of vintage emulations out there
can save them as a preset and apply that to another patch. Considering the complexity of the original synth, the way Arturia have laid out the front panel makes programming a whole lot simpler than it was on the original, plus you have plenty of extra possibilities.
Finally Arturia have added six additional effects – delay, chorus, phaser, flanger, analogue delay and reverb – and you can have any two in your patch. These are a welcome addition, especially if you are using it as part of your live set-up, as it’s one less thing to have to set up externally.
Solina strings
The original Solina featured exactly what you get when you look at the front panel of this on launch. A very simple set of sound choices, bass through to violin plus trumpet and horn and, aside from volume controls, just settings for sustain length and crescendo. Beyond that, there is the magic button called ensemble which, as the name suggests, is the chorus control and is what really gave the Solina its string like quality, but it’s the extra features that really make this stand out. Opening up the extra control panel you get one extra sound, Vox Humana, gleaned from a Polymoog and beloved of the likes of Gary Numan, and a whole other set of sound manipulation tools. There is an LFO section with tremolo and vibrato control, a filter and arpeggiator for the bass section and a set of resonating filters for the upper section which take the sound well away from the original without ever being anything other than purely retro. Then there is an FX section including a phaser, delay and reverb. You’ll rarely hear a Solina without at least reverb on it, so these are the ideal effects and, as with the Matrix 12, give you all the tools you need to create a finished sound.
These new additions to the V-Collection simply are the icing on the cake for what has to be the best sounding set of vintage emulations on the market. The number of times I have been using them and clients have asked which of my real vintage synths I’m using is testament in itself to the quality of the sounds. So, if you want the originals without the hassle and the price tag, this is the place to look.