Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Arturia MicroFreak v2.0 firmware update – what’s new?”.
Hello, I’m Robin Vincent and welcome to multi music technology. Today, we’re looking at the Micro freak from Arturia. It’S had a bit of an upgrade. A version 2 firmware has been released, which gives it a couple of extra features that we’re gon na look at now. I know what you’re thinking you’re thinking.
Well, why haven’t, I done a proper, a proper, deep level review of the Micro freak. Oh no reason really. I just kind of haven’t found the time so far, but in a nutshell, to give you my 30-second overview. The Micro freak is an extraordinary, interesting, fascinating, little synthesizer, but probably one of the worst opening presets of any synth ever, but ever than that, it’s fantastic. It’S packed full of oscillators, it’s got an extraordinary fabulous sounding filter and an interesting modulation matrix that you have to undo manually. The keyboard thing is both fantastic quirky, interesting expressive and really annoying the observations inside give you a huge versatile range of sounds, and yet a lot of them, because they’re stolen from eurorack just don’t really fit in the keyboard synth pad, I’m that well, but those things Aside, it’s one of the most interesting and quirky little desktop since that you couldn’t get and I’ve used it live and I’ve used it a lot of other places and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable experience now, with version 2 is not a whole new synth, the tool they’ve.
Just introduced a couple of features, and all you need to do – is pop over to the website and download it via their midi control app. The version I’m running here is the very last beta, so there is a slim possibility that there’s some sort of change between this and the actual release version, but what the heck? What can you do so update? Number one they’ve stuffed in a noise oscillator is not a noise oscillator that you mix in with the other oscillators. No, this is an oscillator all by itself. You get to it via the oscillator type knob, this first of the orange for wipe it all the way to the end, then you get to noise. Come back in momentarily. Gives you a picture of a.
I could have a hi-hat going because it’s that kind of vibe that it’s after, although I know entirely sure that I can get it do that and what you get. Is this? Yes lots of noise. Now, of course, we have our three modification knobs here under wave. You have the noise type that goes from a white noise through to a more metallic noise. Now you can hear a tone in there. That’S because they’ve also mixed in a sine triangle, wave kind of waveform thing in order to give it a bit of. I still need to latch on to, but that doesn’t have to be there and this Nass knob actually changes the balance of that. So this is pure noise.
The middle knob then decimates the noise. I think it is in interesting ways: [ Applause, ] interesting. It gets very interesting when you route it through the filter. Stick on an appreciator, get it moving about. You stick the are to the cutoff what it does give and what I imagine the reason. The intention behind it is to put a little bit of noise engineering in there those modules from noise engineering that are full of noise, that you can shape and play with percussive crazy, weird, decimated and pulled apart bits of noise that are forever being modulated.
Ever-Changing about you could create a sequence of different, changing ever being modulated types and balances that could create a very expressive. Percussion line feature number two chords now I know there’s an oscillator inside that’s called chords, but this is not that all this is is a chord memory. If you hold the para phonic button, press four notes, but then it comes a chord on a single press. [ Applause ], then he goes away again hold it down.
I have no idea how many notes it takes feature. Number three is scales you get to that in the utility menu you can scroll down to miscellaneous hit that go down to scale. Now I can scale that to major so there’s no longer a minor note being activated, it’s all major minor harmonic, minor, Dorian, mixolydian, mixolydian and blues and pentatonic the idea being that you can then set the scale and you can play a bunch of notes and it’s Never gon na be wrong. I’M finding that every time I choose another scale, there’s a slight glitch there, which I can only assume, is going to be ironed out with the proper release.
But if not arturia take note, there’s a little glitch, there’s also a root notes option, so you can change the. I suppose the transposition of that scale where that scale starts the next we feature is in the sequencer and that’s the ability to copy Hannay to pattern B. I know right isn’t that extraordinary, so you don’t have to. If you just want to do a slight variation between the two patterns, you don’t have to re-record the whole thing into pattern B, with just the little change. So now, if I select all right sticking, sequencer mode select a hit record which is here somewhere. I can do my sixteen steps like so have that play now.
If I hold a and hold then hold B, it’ll, flash and you’ll go is copied so now B. Also has the same pattern. So if I go to B and put it into record, I can step through and stick some other notes in like so so I can have a plane, easy and the last big new feature is the ability to clear the modulation matrix, because you find yourself in This all the time like I’m, going to stick that to that and turn that up and then I’m going to put this to wave and turn that up. I’M gon na put this to here and turn it up, and the LFO is also going to go to there turn that up and the pressures gon na go. There turn that up and you get all this stuff plugged into your patch, though, if you wanted to change it, you’d have to go through each one individually and turn the back off again, whereas now with a shift and a hold of the encoder, and it’s all Gone, it’s all gone, not entirely sure how long supposed to hold that encoder for were you sort of it told you something happened when it did, but you’re just gon na have to go with it. So there you go. That’S five new features for the Arturia micro freak, tons of other bug, fixes and bits and pieces that they’ve chipped away at as well, no doubt, but as it is there, it is the quirkiest most interesting little desktop synth there is has just got a slightly bit Better with the version two firmware there you go. I hope that was helpful in the meantime. Go make some tunes .