Analog(ue) essentials

Pigments’ Analog engine bears a strong resemblance to a Minimoog, with three oscillators and a noise generator serving as the basis for its sound. As with the Mini, three oscillators with selectable waveforms (sine, triangle, saw, and square) can be tuned and mixed to create thick analogue textures. The global tuning section for this engine includes a drift knob that really helps to warm things up and add a touch of vintage chaos to the pitch of all three oscillators simultaneously. Also in this section is a modern feature – tuning quantisation – that’s available for the global coarse tuning. With this, you can define a scale/mode and sweep the coarse pitch with an envelope or LFO for arpeggio-like effects.

Pigments filter section offers further analogue emulation options. Let’s take a look…

> Each of the dual filters can operate in any of the following formats: MultiMode, Low Pass Gate, SEM, Mini, Matrix 12, Surgeon, Comb, Phase, Formant. Most of these types are recognisable to softsynth users, but Surgeon and Matrix 12 both deserve special attention. > Surgeon is an astonishing 64 dB/octave filter that is most dramatic in conjunction with bandpass, delivering tinny “telephone” effects when processing the Wavetable Engine or bright analogue waves.

> Matrix 12 offers uncanny recreations of the Oberheim Matrix 12 (and Xpander) synths. While the primary options are standard, the Notch+LP6 and Phase+LP6 types are remarkable, imparting a breathy ‘fizz’ to bright waveforms – especially in tandem with an LFO.