Superbooth is going on over in Berlin, and already, the news is spilling out. I’ve seen reports of a few interesting developments, but so far, nothing has excited me as much as the news that Arturia is rolling out another firmware update to the Microfreak.
Yes, you read that right! This month, the Microfreak turns version 5! Like almost every previous update to the Microfreak, this one is chock-full of enhancements, including the addition of four new oscillators! The first is a straight-up sampler (you load the samples/waveforms through the Arturia MIDI Control App) and it does the basic sample things. This sampler is in addition to the User Waveform oscillator. The other three are the ones that really excite me: Scan Grains, Cloud Grains, and Hit Grains. As you might guess from the names, they’re all granular synth oscillators. Again, they’re not as deep as all full-fledged granular synth like my little Lemondrop or some of the other high-end hardware granular synths. Nor is it as deep as even the granular aspects of Native Instruments’ Absynth or Dawesome’s Novum. But it’ll get the job done!
Oh, yeah, there’s also a snazzy-looking _Microfreak Stellar limited edition version of Microfreak, but it’s the same hardware that it’s been from the very start.
There’s still one thing I’d like to see Arturia add to the Microfreak, and that’s poly-chaining. I’d really like to be able to tie one or two more to mine for greater voice counts, but I suppose they might be worried that would negatively effect sales of the Minifreak. But, I know that if they added it, I’d get another Microfreak or two in a heartbeat!
Anyway, here’s a video from Arturia:
And, of course, I’ve updated my mega-list of videos about the Microfreak: