Recording - January 2012 - 57

The 12 Types are: Bass, Brass, EFX, FM, Guitar, Lead, Organ, Pad, Percussive, Piano, Sequence, and Strings. The 18 Characteristics are: Acid, Aggressive, Ambient, Bizarre, Bright, Complex, Dark, Digital, Ensemble, Funky, Hard, Long, Noise, Quiet, Short, Simple, Soft, and Soundtrack. As you can see, these are general descriptions that go for a “feel” or “intent” rather than technical details, and in practice this setup works well, especially for newcomers to analog synthesis. You can tag Presets as Favorites and browse them yourself, and certain parameters in each sound—like polyphony, pitch bend range, parameter settings on the front panel, and a few other things—can be changed and then saved, giving you a User Preset, with an option to only browse User sounds if you wish. These tweaks are pretty simple; we’ll discuss them below. If there’s a particular model (e.g. Minimoog V) that you’d like to dive in and program in full detail, you’ll have to buy the full plug-in, but if you do that, you can then access it from within the Analog Experience if you wish. As I mentioned above, Analog Laboratory runs as a standalone application or as a VST, AU, or RTAS plug-in on Windows or Mac; it takes up about 450 MB of disk space and uses a Syncrosoft eLicenser USB key for copy protection. An added bonus is “Soft eLicenser”, which allows you to register the software on a single computer’s hard disk without having an actual eLicenser key. For folks who hate USB keys, this turns the software from a non-starter into an easy choice. Sounds and Scenes If you like analog synth sounds and wish you had more of them, Analog Laboratory gives you a fantastic collection of classic emulations to choose from. People will forever argue the question of how perfectly accurate any synth emulation is; I’ll stay off that topic here, noting that with the simplified and unified set of controls you’re given for all seven of these wildly different synthesizers, control emulation is out of the question anyway, making sonic emulation a tougher call. I will say that to my ears, accuracy aside, these models all sound really good— and for many users, “really good” is all they’ll ever need to know. Within Analog Laboratory, the ten encoders and nine sliders are mapped to specific parameters: filter cutoff frequency and resonance, LFO rate and depth, chorus and delay mix, two sets of ADSR controls for two envelopes, tempo (used for DAW sync of LFOs and other applications), and four assignable parameters whose functions are displayed on the virtual front panel for any given preset. See Figure 2. Needless to say, these parameters don’t always—or ever?—accurately map to any single parameter on any model. For example, the Jupiter-8V filter is a dual filter, highpass and lowpass, with separate controls, and the Prophet-V’s Prophet-VS envelopes have looping sections and multiple stages not representable by a simple ADSR. But the choices made for mapping are musical ones, and you’ll rarely find yourself in a situation where turning a knob doesn’t do roughly what you expect it to. (And if you do, a lot... time to buy the full plug-in model!) If you tweak a Preset enough to be really your own, you can save it in a User Preset bank; you can place ten sounds of your choice on the Snapshot buttons for instant recall with only a brief muting. Analog Laboratory also lets you combine Sounds into Scenes (see Figure 3). A Scene has two Sounds that can be split (you can program the split point) or layered, with either part playing a preset Melody. A Melody is sort of halfway between a sequence and an arpeggiator pattern; it’s a musical arrrangement of notes triggered by the notes you play, that can change its form based on how many notes you hold, offer syncopations, rests, fancy rhythms, and so on. You can’t write your own, but Analog Laboratory comes with hundreds of them in 11 genres. In Scene Mode, the four Pads can trigger sound effects or rhythm samples that you drag and drop from a built-in library; they can play as one-shots, turn on whenever you hold the pad down, or loop continuously. Loops can cut one another off or play in parallel, and Arturia offers Expansion Packs that add to the available library (I got to try the nifty Electro Shock Vol. 1 pack, which was available free from Arturia’s website during the review period). Put it all together and you have a full hands-on soft synth experience that combines leads, repeating patterns, and rhythms in inspiring and fun arrangements that change as your playing technique changes.

Final thoughts My overall experience with the product wasn’t 100% perfect; the patch editor program had a few bugs, and the entire process of creating and saving universal MIDI control presets is very poorly documented. But when specifically using the keyboard with Analog Laboratory, the combined hardware/software system worked flawlessly, and the software itself was a blast to play with.

At one time or another in my long and messy career, I’ve owned three of the seven synthesizers being modeled and have done a lot of recording with three of the others. In fact, I’ve loved, bought, owned, played, gotten frustrated with, and sold the Prophet-VS four times! (Celine Dion’s musical director has one of my VSes—hi, Yves!) It was a lot of fun to hear the powerful, evocative sounds of these synths on my computer, and the seamless integration with the keyboard’s front panel made sound tweaking a delight. If you are looking for analog synthesis software that’s painless, fun, easy to use, great-sounding, and combined with a useful and highquality control hardware system, you should rack up some Analog Experience for yourself! Price: $399 More from: Arturia, www.arturia.com.

RECORDING JANUARY 2012

http://www.arturia.com

Recording - January 2012

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