Arturia's V-Collection expanded with five more emulations

[mhschmieder]

This is a big enough upgrade that it deserves its own thread separate from the posting I added to the short-term sales topic as well as the separate mention in the Hammond B3 topic.

https://www.arturia.com/v-collection/details

Five new Virtual Instruments; several borrowed from well-known freebie and pay-what-you-like libraries (just as the Vox Continental came from Combo-V).

Now we have Farfisa, Hammond, Syncalvier, Rhodes, and, surprisingly, modeled Piano.

https://www.arturia.com/v-collection/details

Note that Jupiter has been re-branded Jup, just as Minimoog was rebranded earlier to Mini. I guess the endorsements in both cases have now run their course.

Hopefully I'll have time to do this upgrade today, but I won't likely have a chance to do any trial runs until late next week due to work, gigs, not being home.

[MartinBaird]

I'm most interested in the Syncalvier. By a factor of about 10:1.
The upgrade price seems a bit steep to me though. Although all the windows new now resizable - cool!
Martin

[mhschmieder]

The Synclavier was worth the $168 price of admission alone. It will get used heavily on my album of musical impressions of the significant moons and dwarf planets of the terran solar system.

All of the plug-ins have been renamed slightly in the new version, with most losing their brand identifiers but one (the Continental) gaining it. Very strange.

It took several hours to download and install, and the user manuals had to be grabbed independently of the installers (the latter being taken care of within Arturia's download and license manager).

Now that I can open them though, I see confirmation that the Farfisa is indeed Martinic's (aka Theo Niessink) Combo F taken to the next stage.

Contrary to rumours I had heard though, the B3 does not seem to essentially be Guido's VB3; nor does the Stage-73 appear to be his Ray73 repackaged (anyway, he modeled a Mk II and Arturia mostly modeled a Mk I -- though they do have a bass-augmented mode for post-74 or whatever).

Interestingly, Theo is given credit on the B3, so I wonder if he had started work on that (to augment his cheesy organs) at the time he folded in with Arturia (starting with them rebranding and expanding his Combo-V).

The Pianos are credited to known Arturia staff, so I don't think that was pulled in from a small vendor and expanded. Wonder how long they'd been working on it?

BTW I think the new interfaces are hideous, and they make me dizzy. Larger isn't always better.

Fonts looks rasterized and fuzzy vs. glyphed and/or scaled to the new size as vector fonts. Other aspects of the GUI are quite fuzzy/blurry as well, with large blank areas that are dark grey and reduce overall contrast and separation of the GUI elements.

Meanwhile, the patch browsers are humongous, with clear text but unnecessarily large.

It will be hard to make these GUI's usable in plug-in mode vs. standalone mode. But the new VI's are better than the revised old ones, so maybe they were in a rush and have updates coming soon that will improve the rendering of the old ones.

[nk_e]

When GUIs go large, I think it means impending tablet versions...or maybe they are redesigning for pic-based touch screens?

[musicman691]

The Synclavier was worth the $168 price of admission alone. It will get used heavily on my album of musical impressions of the significant moons and dwarf planets of the terran solar system.

All of the plug-ins have been renamed slightly in the new version, with most losing their brand identifiers but one (the Continental) gaining it. Very strange.

BTW I think the new interfaces are hideous, and they make me dizzy. Larger isn't always better.

Fonts looks rasterized and fuzzy vs. glyphed and/or scaled to the new size as vector fonts. Other aspects of the GUI are quite fuzzy/blurry as well, with large blank areas that are dark grey and reduce overall contrast and separation of the GUI elements.

Meanwhile, the patch browsers are humongous, with clear text but unnecessarily large.

It will be hard to make these GUI's usable in plug-in mode vs. standalone mode. But the new VI's are better than the revised old ones, so maybe they were in a rush and have updates coming soon that will improve the rendering of the old ones.

Where did you get it for $168? AD isn't giving a discount even when logged in from the $199 price that Arturia is charging direct for those that already have VC4.

As to the enlarged gui's most I don't have a problem with as they are in VC4 save for the CS80 and the Jupiter 8. Those sorely needed enlarging but every other one has been okay for me (I run standard screen resolution on my 27 inch iMac).

[waxman]

Meanwhile, the patch browsers are humongous, with clear text but unnecessarily large.

It will be hard to make these GUI's usable in plug-in mode vs. standalone mode. But the new VI's are better than the revised old ones, so maybe they were in a rush and have updates coming soon that will improve the rendering of the old ones.

Arturia like other companies are doing large gui's to get on the front side of using touch screens.

[Shooshie]

Synclavier...
$168...

The cognitive dissonance of the association of those two lines is making my brain rattle.
I mean... we all know what a Synclavier used to cost, in 1980 dollars. It's just strange, that's all.

[Prime Mover]

I'll be curious if they ever update the Oberheim SEM to include tuning and stereo panning of the different voices, this has always been one huge shortcoming in their model, as it prevents copying big wide sounds like the Tom Sawyer sweep. When I covered that song, I had to revert to the free, feature-filled, but cumbersome Oberheim OB-X VST.

Very curious about their B3! With the powerhouse that Arturia is becoming, it could become the next B4 if it's good. Interested to hear the reports.

[bayswater]

Where did you get it for $168? AD isn't giving a discount even when logged in from the $199 price that Arturia is charging direct for those that already have VC4.

Same question. Best I've been able to access is 299 Euros. Maybe because I got the previous version free with an Arturia keyboard.

[Michael Canavan]

Methinks audiodeluxe made a mistake and wasn't offering a discount on the discount on purpose.

Arturia offered me a huge discount on upgrading from a few almost free plug ins I had to V4, so I get no extra discount on their site.

[musicman691]

Methinks audiodeluxe made a mistake and wasn't offering a discount on the discount on purpose.

Arturia offered me a huge discount on upgrading from a few almost free plug ins I had to V4, so I get no extra discount on their site.

AD's 'discount' on the VC5 upgrade isn't really a discount. It's the same price as if going direct to Arturia's site. And there's no 'members only' price from AD either but I'm not surprised either. They rarely discount Arturia stuff.

Now I haven't priced it out to see if there's a discount for having owned previous Arturia synths (this is on Arturia's site) but I see the Synclavier V is available for $199 US while those of us who have VC4 get the whole upgrade for $199 US. Having played with the free Analog Laboratory 2 upgrade I've come to find the only things I really want are the Synclavier and Farfisa; the other three have no substance to their sound.

BTW - where's the bass pedalboard for the B3 I don't see one

[Michael Canavan]

Methinks audiodeluxe made a mistake and wasn't offering a discount on the discount on purpose.

Arturia offered me a huge discount on upgrading from a few almost free plug ins I had to V4, so I get no extra discount on their site.

AD's 'discount' on the VC5 upgrade isn't really a discount. It's the same price as if going direct to Arturia's site. And there's no 'members only' price from AD either but I'm not surprised either. They rarely discount Arturia stuff.(

The first day the upgrade price of $199 for V collection 5 a Audiodeluxe was discounted in your cart with a spring savings coupon to around $165. That changed to the regular "$199 discount" the very next day, this is what we were talking about.

[musicman691]

Methinks audiodeluxe made a mistake and wasn't offering a discount on the discount on purpose.

Arturia offered me a huge discount on upgrading from a few almost free plug ins I had to V4, so I get no extra discount on their site.

AD's 'discount' on the VC5 upgrade isn't really a discount. It's the same price as if going direct to Arturia's site. And there's no 'members only' price from AD either but I'm not surprised either. They rarely discount Arturia stuff.(

The first day the upgrade price of $199 for V collection 5 a Audiodeluxe was discounted in your cart with a spring savings coupon to around $165. That changed to the regular "$199 discount" the very next day, this is what we were talking about.

That's not really a discount (the $30 coupon). It's a shill to keep you spending more money at AD.

[Michael Canavan]

That's not really a discount (the $30 coupon). It's a shill to keep you spending more money at AD.

Every discount is a 'shill' to keep you spending money. What exactly is the difference between Arturia offering a discount and a store offering one to your wallet?
Kind sir, it's OK to be wrong, not the end of the world, but putting up a new argument about the topic at hand doesn't negate this post:

AD's 'discount' on the VC5 upgrade isn't really a discount. It's the same price as if going direct to Arturia's site. And there's no 'members only' price from AD either but I'm not surprised either. They rarely discount Arturia stuff.

It was not the same price at Audiodeluxe for the first day, that's where you corrected me incorrectly. Not a big deal.

[musicman691]

That's not really a discount (the $30 coupon). It's a shill to keep you spending more money at AD.

Every discount is a 'shill' to keep you spending money. What exactly is the difference between Arturia offering a discount and a store offering one to your wallet?
Kind sir, it's OK to be wrong, not the end of the world, but putting up a new argument about the topic at hand doesn't negate this post:

AD's 'discount' on the VC5 upgrade isn't really a discount. It's the same price as if going direct to Arturia's site. And there's no 'members only' price from AD either but I'm not surprised either. They rarely discount Arturia stuff.

It was not the same price at Audiodeluxe for the first day, that's where you corrected me incorrectly. Not a big deal.

Whatever. I stand by what I said and we'll just have to agree to disagree. You see it your way, I see it mine (and I ain't changing).