another nice difference besides the white/swan/mic
it wasn’t likely to get retrospective effects as the DAC will be pre analogue Filter - not the best place to put a reverb, before a resonant filter - it seems highly unlikely they’d have an ADC/DAC after that for fx, nice though that would have been
no doubt all in one packages offer most convenience, but tagging a cheap reverb after this it is still better value than most - it’s a bit of a hassle for sofa jam situations mind you, but many excellent synths fall in that scenario
It’s still an appealing synth
The ‘hidden’ TRRS isn’t that new, Korg did this years ago in the Monotribe, hid the ability to offer cv/gate on a sync port
I have the same problem with it - well, maybe not so much unusable as difficult to listen to. I don’t know what it is because I have a Braids and that doesn’t have the same effect, but the raw Microfreak sounds, well, too raw - but not in a good way, more like it’s missing a final polish. But! A touch of reverb / delay can make a huge difference. I do think it’s a real missed opportunity not having some basic FX onboard, especially on a proudly digital synth that manages to cram in just about everything else. But it remains remarkable for the price, and I suppose having to go from DAC back to ADC and then back to DAC post-filter might be more of a hassle or expense than I’m aware…
Whilst I’m not the world’s greatest vocoder fan, I do think this is a really nice addition and, for me, a much better addition than some perfunctory effects. Synths at this price point tend not to have the most amazing fx and I would tend to turn them off for anything but the most inconsequential noodle about. Whereas I think the vocoder has some interesting applications for sound design for example by feeding rhythmic material that has odd time sig’s or dynamics. Or found sound that has interesting transients. However…
This is a genuis idea so if it isn’t in Arturia’s plans hopefully someone from them is lurking on the board here and is taking notes! If the ‘Wave’ knob faded from Sin-Tri-Saw-Pulse and was Input 1, the external in was Input 2, the ‘Timbre’ knob did just that and then ‘Shape’ controlled the algorithim… that would be amazing.
Perfect timing! I purchased a microfreak on the 15th and it just showed up. Seller sent me a message saying that tracking showed it as delivered, and that if he knew an update was in the works he would never have sold it at the price (200$ after shipping) or at all. What update? I asked. Google it, he answered. Dope, I have the tc helicon perform ve for vocoding but won’t turn my nose up at freebies. I haven’t updated anything yet but I will be sure to follow up with my thoughts and experimentations once I have toyed around with it a bit.
It is very fast becoming my goto synth: easy, flexible, small, and a very usefull arpegitor/sequencer/dice thingy. And i actualy like the keyboard: its’ very fast.
Nice update, although i’m not that vocoder-minded, but the ‘hidden’ input makes me curious what arturia will do with it the future. Some ideas:
external input through the filter
external input as mod-source
a simple (non-volatile) live-sampler.
a oscilator that uses the input (other karplus strong, or somekind of percussion oscilator (think wavedrum)… or whatever…
I just went to update my microfreak. Update seemed to have went well, rebooted and it is bricked. Everything I’ve had from arturia had problems and customer service has never responded to me. Done with them.
