Arturia V Collection 4 – Review

Having experienced my first super-duper mega synth bundle at the back end of last year with UVI’s Vintage Vault, I find myself with the pleasure of trying out another one, this time in the shape of Arturia’s V Collection 4. As the name suggests, this is their fourth iteration of this all inclusive bundle, featuring all their soft synths in a single box. Naturally, the price of this bundle vastly undercuts the combined individual cost of all these instruments and version four also introduces some new additions to the Arturia stable.

Arturia have been in the software synthesis game now for quite some time. They made their name by attempting to emulate certain classic, vintage analog synths, both sonically and visually and depending on who you ask, they either succeeded or failed in that respect. Apparently, Bob Moog endorsed their Moog Modular and Minimoog emulations, which naturally garnered suitable respect from users and critics alike. But they often came under fire for getting other emulations such as the CS-80V and Jupiter 8V quite wrong. Now, I cannot, and won’t, comment on that because, for my shame, I have never played a real CS-80 or Jupiter 8, so am in no position to pass judgement. Part of me thinks that an emulation has one job. To emulate. That is, it must be able to do what it says on the tin. But another part of me says that if it can emulate the ‘feel’, then this is a good place to be in order to foster a spirit of invention. But I think, ultimately, if you’re in the business of creating software replicas of old hardware, you should at least be able to hit that mark.

So, with that taken into account, I began exploring the latest V Collection with as open a mind as I could possibly muster. Firstly, I had to download this from Arturia via their new Arturia Software Center application. They seem to have adopted a method akin to that used by Native Instruments and have a single app that manages updates and authorisations in one, handy place. Click on the ‘Register A New Product’ button and you are taken to their website and asked for the appropriate codes. These are then registered to your account and then promptly appear in the ASC for you to download and install. Overall, the process works very smoothly and it wasn’t long before I had the entire suite installed on my iMac. The suite consists of the following instruments:

CS-80 V2
Prophet V2
Jupiter-8 V2
ARP 2600 V2
Mini V2
Modular V2
Oberheim SEM V
Wurlitzer V
Vox Continental V
Solina V
Spark 2
Matrix 12 V
Analog Lab
Arturia Software Center

I’ve had limited experience with some of these in the past, either via demos or playing with them on other people’s systems. The one I have most experience of is the Mini as I own the Minimoog V Original that Arturia gave away to mark World Music Day in 2012. So I came to all of the other synths in this collection with fresh, untainted eyes and ears. And once they had all downloaded, it was very much like being the proverbial kid in a candy store, not quite knowing which one to play with first. And then when I did choose one (CS-80 V2), I instantly went searching for signature sounds (Blade Runner type patches). And given that almost all of these instruments are recreations of some undeniable classics, I don’t think it is something only I would do. Prophet V2? Let’s look for some Barbieri type sounds. Jupiter-8 V2? Must be some Nick Rhodes stuff here. And so on…

I could discuss in great detail each individual synth, but then this review would take some time. So I’ll give you a more overall perspective, if I may, with smatterings of specifics where necessary.

First of all, I think the Arturia Software Center is a simple and effective management tool. It takes care of your licensing and means you only have to access one application to check for updates to 13 others (more if you have other licensed Arturia apps that support the ASC). Even my Keylab61 shows up in there. And maybe that’s where I’ll start, with the Keylab and Analog Lab. Arturia very kindly sent me the Keylab 61 over a year ago to review. After eagerly unpacking and plugging it in, it became very apparent, very soon, that all was not well. Basically, myself and many other Keylab owners found that the Keylab wasn’t being recognised in OS X properly and it required multiple reboots and the like to just be recognised. It was infuriating and support was virtually non-existant. So non-existant was it that the support case was closed without my knowledge and I was basically left in the cold. Scant help from Arturia staff on the forums did not help either and eventually, a firmware update coupled with an update to their MIDI Control Center application eased the problem, but it did not solve it. And to this day, it remains unresolved. Why am I telling you this? Well, firstly, this taints my opinion of Arturia somewhat, so I wanted to be honest and get that out there. But also, it means that I’ve had Analog Lab for that time too and, infuriatingly, due to the close integration of that software and the hardware, I couldn’t use that properly either. What good is a tool packaged as a hybrid hardware/software synth when the two struggle to communicate? Ultimately, I just gave up on trying. Every time I turned the thing on, I’d have to go through the rigmarole of rescanning for MIDI devices, deleting rogue instances of an unnamed USB MIDI device until the Keylab showed up in the MIDI studio window. It became a pain in the backside VERY quickly and so I just popped the Keylab onto a stand and left it there. Arturia did say, about a year ago, that they’d arrange the collection of the item and deliver a new one, but nothing ever happened.

However, Analog Lab seemed a great idea. Essentially, on its own, it’s a “Best Of..” compilation of around 5000 patches drawn from all of Arturia’s synths. The interface is nice and useful and is directly tied into the Keylab control surface with everything mapped out for instant pleasure. The idea is, provided you can get the Keylab to be recognised, that you can control the software directly from the keyboard with little or no mouse involvement. Patches can be selected, banks whizzed through and settings adjusted, all from the keyboard. The concept is great, but the execution is flawed by the suspect hardware. But I gave it another chance when V Collection arrived. I thought it deserved it. And opening Analog Lab now that I had all the full blown synths installed made it an even more comprehensive and powerful tool because I was able to edit Analog Lab patches in the individual synths and save them back into Analog Lab for use later. Think of Analog Lab as an equivalent to Apple’s MainStage but just for Arturia products. To add further weight to that comparison, Analog Lab has a “Live” option that clears away GUI clutter and provides you with a program map to store your patches, in order, and reference them to songs. Snapshot buttons take you to the edit page for live tweaking. Again, control over all of this can be done from the Keylab directly.

Ok, so I’ve gotten that off my chest. I still hope to do a proper review of the Keylab, and I feel it truly deserves one because, aside from that communication issue, it strikes me as one of the nicest controllers I’ve used. But more on that for another day.

I think it’s fair to say that V Collection ticks most of your virtual analog boxes. Arturia have introduced some new additions to the collection, which are also available separately. These are Matrix-12 V, Solina V, Spark 2 and the Vox V. People were rightly excited about the Matrix-12 V and Spark 2 is incredibly intuitive and inspirational. It has huge depth of control and programmability spread across a number of well laid out pages. Solina V and Vox V are pretty much as you’d expect them to be. They’re recreating fairly limited instruments but they do them very well indeed. Both have a raft of controls, many of which are hidden behind delightfully animated ‘lids’. Things like Key Contact Age on the Vox allow the user to really get authentic but I was disappointed that whilst you can pick an FX stompbox and amp models, you can’t have multiple FX in the signal chain, but it’s no biggie if you want to add in your own favourite FX within your DAW of choice.

I suppose Matrix-12 V is the one most people want to know about and it certainly sounds the part. Editing wise there are some nice touches with pop up menus to select things like filter modes and modulation destinations. Sound wise, it performs as expected with some really nice big sounds and searing leads. However, my only quibble is, as much as there was a Matrix-12 size hole in the soft synth world, do we really need one? I’m sure this will appeal to fans of the Matrix 12 and those who may have owned one in the past and wanted a dedicated recreation, but sonically is it delivering something that was already missing? I guess you could argue that for any soft synth which is why I prefer synths that try and deliver something new, something that improves on the paradigms of old rather than copy them.

I suppose this leads me on to my overall criticism of this package and its contents. Arturia make some good synths, no question. They have often been criticised for taking classic hardware synths, recreating them in software and then shooting wide of the mark when compared to the original hardware. I guess the one job you have when recreating hardware in software is to be as faithful as you can, both in sound and looks. Otherwise, if you can’t do that, create something new, or at the least state that it’s “inspired by’ an original. However, that’s not my main problem. No, my issue is more with performance, both in terms of CPU and user interface.

Firstly, CPU drain on many of these synths is significantly more than others I could mention. As I write this, I have Matrix-12 V open and I’m not doing anything with it yet the CPU meter is show 50% usage! I’ve not loaded these up into a DAW and tried to create a multi track, multi instance recording, but my confidence wouldn’t be high in my success at doing so. Ok, so I have an ageing iMac but I also have good audio hardware (Balance) and I have plenty of instruments that take up less than 10% each at most.

The other thing is the user interface. There is an overall degree of inconsistency. Here’s an example. Matrix-12 V’s drop down menu’s actually look and work very cleanly, but choose one of the more established members of the V Collection family and the the drop downs are difficult to select and, well, drop down! It just seems that Arturia are happy to address problems with UI performance by making it better in their newer instruments, but they can’t seem to go back and fix the others. CS-80 V2 is a particular culprit for this. To drop down the menu, there is this tiny, semi-circular hit point that you have to accurately click before you get a response. On the Matrix-12, you just click on the heading and down drops the list. Little things like this make using an instrument easy or frustrating.

Other inconsistencies are things like the Sound Map feature, which appears in some instruments, but not in others. I kind of like this feature, and use it when looking for a bit of inspiration, but it’s notably absent on the Matrix-12 V, for example. Also, the more recent additions feature Keylab mappings and older ones don’t. I can understand not supporting other controllers, but surely you’d support your own a bit better? It’s these inconsistencies that undermine the cohesive expectancy of a suite of instruments. If you’re going to bundle up your gear and sell it as such, surely it makes sense to ensure that aside from their own individual characteristics, you’d get the universal UI features working the same. Doing so makes it more appealing to stick with the instruments as a sole source of sounds, because it’s just more comfortable to do so. Arturia’s French neighbours, UVI, achieve this with their libraries. All of them have their unique visual designs, but they all, to a man, feature the same, consistent approach to the GUI specifications. Switching between instruments is made that much easier when you don’t have to keep switching mental templates in order to use them.

I guess it also needs saying here that the size of some of the instruments on the screen could do with addressing. Large screens with high resolutions are far more common and it is the older instruments in the collection that suffer from tiny interfaces, laden with knobs, slider and switches. Again, newer instruments seem to embrace the norm. Come on, Arturia! Address this simple stuff. We’re no longer locked in a world where 800 by 600 is the standard. We are now in a world of 4 or 5K ready displays. It can’t be that hard, can it?

The value in this package is undeniable, just as it is for any similar bundle you can buy today. £339 seems to be the average price and you get four or five times more value than that in this box, so if you are looking to buy three or four of these instruments as standalone packages, you may as well go for V Collection. If you want good virtual analog synths and drums, this could well be your only go-to package. There is something for everyone here in that respect, and then some. Analog Lab works that much better when you have the standalone instruments too, and coupled with Spark 2, this is a sonic powerhouse, regardless of whether you think these instruments represent a faithful recreation of their hardware namesakes. Personally, a box like this is the only way I’d ever see myself buying these instruments. If Arturia can do something to ensure UI consistency across all the component parts, this would be far more pleasurable to use. A little spruce up and polishing would work wonders. That said, these instruments will fulfil most, if not all, of your VA synth needs.

Try a free demo here