Arturia Reveal Pigments 2 With New Granular Sampling Engines

Arturia have launched Pigments version 2, a free update for existing users, and a special intro price to celebrate the update.  

Get ready to add a whole new level of color and depth to your music. Pigments is a hugely versatile software synth that combines virtual analog, wavetable, sampling, and granular synthesis all in one instrument. It makes advanced modulations seem like child’s play, so you can bring your sounds to life with animations, sequences, macros, and bring it all together with incredible effects. Pigments hits the perfect balance of sounding incredible and having hugely powerful features, while at the same time being intuitive and easy to use.

Just one year on from releasing Pigments, a powerful twin engine, modulatable software synth, Arturia have given the instrument a major update. Pigments version 2 introduces impressive new features such as sample playback, granular synthesis, a revamped sequencer, a new filter, delay effect, and new presets to show off all these new abilities.

What’s new in version 2?

New Sample Engine
Explore hundreds of samples, import your own, load them into one of 6 different slots with 6 playback modes. Loop, edit, and bring them to life with Pigments’ modulation abilities.

New Granular Mode
Add another level to your sound design by transforming samples into granular synth patches at the touch of a button, adjust density, envelope, size, and exciting randomization parameters.

New Sequencer
The in-built sequencer now lets you apply randomness in a non-destructive way, letting you always return back to where you started, perfect for live performance and improvisation.

New Filter and Delay
We’ve added the iconic sound of the Buchla Easel low pass gate and a space-age tape echo to Pigments’ sonic arsenal, for some seriously nice warping, contorting analog flavor.

Refined Features
What would an update be without little improvements here and there? New interface, MPE capability, new undo/redo functionality and enhanced modulation bar await you.

New Presets
To show off the new features, our team of heroic sound designers have created hundreds of breathtaking new sounds for you to explore and use in your tracks.

Pigments version 2 is available as a free update to all Pigments owners. To update, they simply need to run the update in the Arturia Software Center.
Exclusive deals will be available for existing Arturia customers and V Collection owners.

Price

Usually $199 / 199€
Free update for existing users
50% Off intro offer: $99 / 99€
Exclusive price for Arturia customers until January 7, 2020

Hollin Jones was classically trained as a piano player but found the lure of blues and jazz too much to resist. Graduating from bands to composition then production, he relishes the chance to play anything with keys. A sometime lecturer in videographics, music production and photography post production, Hollin has been a freelance w... Read More

Discussion

Enkerli
MPE!!!
So funny that it should be a footnote, basically. It’s been a feature request and it really transforms that synth.
I’m pleased with the results. Not that I need more synths, but the discount price is decent enough.
Eivind Fivelsdal
It's a nice synth - no doubt. But it really doesn't have two engines.. I'd like it to have separate filters and envelopes for the two "engines". Or at least the option to choose that. That would make two engines. I also think that the sample-option is way too rudimentary. In 2019 - now 2020 one should expect no less than a multi-sample option.. at least three samples per third, with velocity switching etc.. I did the upgrade - but I also have the V-collection. It's nice to have all the different filters to choose from, but I cannot see me getting much use out of Pigment 2.0. I will most likely sort to my hw-synths.. and the V-collection when making my stuff..
Enkerli
To be quite honest (and with all due respect), I’m not quite sure what you were expecting. What’s the point of comparison, the reference?

[Maybe I shouldn’t engage with your comment. It’s just that comments are so rare here that it feels like it’s important to respond when there’s one.]

Your description of “engines” sounds like you expect separate signal paths or, otherwise, a way to make the synth multitimbral. Isn’t this possible in Analog Lab anyway? The fact that this synth has different engine types allows it to combine two synthesis methods (wavetable, subtractive, and granular/sample-based). They’re quite independent from one another, including in unison mode. You can indeed route those to filters separately and there are flexible modulation sources (from function generators to “combinate”) which can supersede the VCA envelope, and those can be assigned independently to the two sound sources.
From a software perspective, that sounds like a pretty appropriate use of the term “engine”.

While I’d agree that their use of “analog” is misleading, it’s become very common in this scene. Maybe this is the part of the framing which serves as your basis of reference. Unlike what they’ve done with other synths in the “Analog Classics” page, Arturia fully embraced digital in Pigments 2. If your point of reference is analog hardware (like Arturia’s *Brute series), Pigments 2 can indeed feel foreign. If your point of comparison is, say, the new Korg Wavestate or the ASM Hydrasynth, you’re in more familiar territory. Guess Arturia has been so steeped in analog hardware and software emulation that it has a hard time splitting their product lines. The MicroFreak is unapologetically hybrid. Arturia could have used a similar framing for Pigments 2.

It also sounds like you’re expecting a full Kontakt-like (or EXS24-like) “multisampler” because the synth happens to have a sample-based sound source. Not sure this is a realistic expectation in this context as it could make the synth unduly complex or at least make it deviate from its overall design. It’s true that the single-sample mode is rudimentary. However, the granular mode is quite decent and really fits in the overall synth. Maybe they could have just supported soundfonts. It sounds like they wanted to provide more modulation options, which are mostly available in the “Sample Pick”.
To my mind, the best way to think of the sample-based engine is as an extension of the wavetable. In a way, they could have done themselves a favour by only adding the granular engine and skip the “map six samples to keys and velocities”. In fact, they could have I quite like the way Bitwig handled this as their multisampler is also their granular engine and their wavetable engine.

Speaking of comparisons… With Pigments 2, Arturia has an alternative to Serum, Equator, Massive X, and SynthMaster 2.9. There, it fares rather well. Just before getting Pigments 2, I started paying for Serum through Splice’s rent-to-own program. I’ve mostly been using Pigments 2. Part of the reason is that, “out of the box”, it responds even better than Serum to my MPE and wind controllers. Another part is that factory/artist presets are closer to my tastes, so they serve as inspiration for my own sound design.

There’s another category of “monster synth” which isn’t really approached by Pigments 2. It’s the one with Falcon and Hive and Omnisphere and Kyma and BT Phobos… These are very deep… and much more expensive. Haven’t tried any of them as they sound too involved and too taxing on the CPU. Falcon is the one I found most intriguing. It’s one of those synths which could replace the DAW. As I really enjoy Bitwig Studio 3, it didn’t sound like a reasonable purchase. Falcon has a much deeper sampler than Pigments 2. It also has a Karplus-Strong mode and an additive one. It sounds like it’d be easy to get lost in there. The Pigments 2 workflow is much more straightforward.

So… I’m left wondering what you thought Pigments 2 should have been. Maybe there’s something useful in there for Pigments 3. Just not sure what that would be.

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