i absolutely love the fact that these presets don't have stupid FX washing the raw sounds that this powerful engine can deliver.. It sounds awesome! Glad to see new synth designs coming from arturia rather than traditional synth emulations.. looking forward to see your review. Thanks!
Wow.... I recently just bought an Op-1 and am just loving getting into synths and sequencers after 35 years of playing electric guitar... this little rig is a micro FREAK for sure! Love it!
Thanks for making two types of videos, one with talking and one without! It's annoying trying to check out reviews with endless chatter! Yet, when we want to hear your valuable opinion, it's nice to be able to click on that as well!
The Freak is one of the most bad ass synths you can get today and it’s $300!! It’s a future classic and one day will be a collectible. It’s really an insane little beast of a synth. The thing will make sounds $3000 synths can’t make. It’s a nutty little synth! I use mine in combination with my Moog Sub-25, love it!
@@electriceyeslide5959 No you're wrong, the price is increasing for every synth and it's for a reason which has nothing to do with popularity. All industries are facing a shortage of PCB and electronic components since Covid pandemic till today.
@@lambertlambert7076 No I'm not wrong, that's a big con that the manufactures used when there was truly a shortage. Many of the prices were locked in for large bulk buyers. The price increases were for companies that bought components on demand, Arturia doesn't just used COTS components so your statement doesn't apply to them. Do your research before you open your uneducated mouth.
Am I the only one who's actually inspired by the presets? I can picture something i'd want to do with at least half of them. Ideas pouring out of this thing.
@@sircliff323 I agree Sir Cliff. IMO, The keyboard and the aftertouch are the only worthwhile thing about it. However, it is getting a lot of press (thanks to the price tag).
@@sircliff323 Everything has to do with where and how you place them in a track, what seems bad on the surface can be perfect for a part in a song. When listening to presets and synths I always look to how it would fit or not with the music I make.
For a synth so capable of amazing sounds, these presets blow for the most part. Unexpectedly, it sounds great on those ambient sounds. Can’t wait to put this machine through some nice delay and reverb pedals.
Hi! I've got one of these on order and I'm very excited to play with it. The designers left very little out of this beasty. Thanks for the presets-run-through :)
For the most part i consider my pets as genderless, but only because it feels both a little "too familiar" and a little *weird* to be looking to scope out and see if they've got balls or not. But that said, i'm pretty durn sure my MicroBrute has balls.
@@CubeRepublic Sure but I was referring to physical interface ie it being almost playable (unlike phones and Pocket Operators) without looking at it too much. Still too mini for my uses though
Thanks for this. All the examples I’ve seen have shown one thing: Shrill, brittle and harsh sounds. The filter still sounds bland to my ears, and many of the presets have far too much of a clangorous quality to them, but there are some nice tones here and there. Much of it “sounds” digital, and not in a good way like the Blofeld, so it’s nice to hear it has the facility to make some sweet tones, even if I absolutely hate most of the presets.
Thanks for running through all these. I'm intrigued by the hardware, but I want to get my hands on one to see if the capacitive keys are a good fit. Hope you will post a video with your thoughts on the Microfreak. It's bold.
My observations on the unit as I played it as is. It has 128 presets that most are arpeggiated or have heavy FX. Not really for PLAYING music per se, but with every preset I tried, I found ways to disable what I did not like in order to HEAR that preset's musicality. Some wave and sound altering settings seemed to have very little change or was very subtle changes in sound, but others, gave me instant gratification! The real power and true test of this unit as a SYNTH, was in the empty INIT patches. THAT is where you get to hear and tweak, the synth fresh and then you can tell what it has and what it does not, without all that auto arpeggio and effects. I liked the init patches the best and YES, the synth is a winner for the cost and size and feature set it offers.. I played the init patches with a normal midi keyboard..ahhhh yes, an normal piano action is more like it.. ahhhhh..
Thanks for the presets demo. I’ll wait for your review before I make any judgments. The keys intrigue me. I’m a horrible keyboard player, so, maybe they’ll suit me.
Like all factory presets... some nice ones and some crappy ones. Useful that, for each sound, the mod matrix lights up what is happening to the raw tone(s).
what a quality demo! exactly what I wanted to hear...the range of this beast....the only gear I can buy this year ( hopefully)...so does this have a step editor? or visual interface for the steps? Thank you.
I have a question ...How does this compare to the Minilogue XD's Multi-Engine? It almost seems similar, although one is user installed, and the other factory installed. Would it be redundant getting the MicroFreak if I already use multiple synth engines in the XD? Great Video as Always! :)
There's tons of brilliant VST's that are just as inspiring and in many instances are able to do way more than this machine. Only thing that this has over them is an analog filter and a cool ass touch keyboard (with polyphonic aftertouch which is super sick). Check out U-he Zebra 2 / Image line Harmor / Xfer Records Serum / Native Instruments Reaktor (also Massive X is on the way!) / Tracktion Biotek / UVI Falcon These are the most cutting edge digital synths I can think of from the top of my dome, and they're all VST's ^_^
@@bitroast Read this full article. Obviously this synth isnt in VST form...but from what it draws itself from is a VST. cdm.link/2019/01/arturia-microfreak/
But really....you have no room for something this small......do u live in a closet? Or os your studio room like the size of a prison cell? I tried to have my studio in my bedroom which is actually approximately the size of an american prsion cell...mso I had to build a studio building in the backuard to have any room, I reccomend doing this. Now I have room for my 30+ keyboards (imagine that in a tiny bedroom) if you live in an apartment I reccomend moving out into the country where you can get a home for the same price or cheaper plus have room.
@@ipadoddschan7184 Ironic, they _did_ put in some basic sampling, in the Version 5 firmware (2023). Along with a bunch of other stuff. Loopop turned a microfreak into a drum machine, with that feature.
So are there two sequencer patterns you are playing saved with each preset (as demos I presume)? Kind of like the patterns you can optionally load per kit on Maschine?
Thanks for the preview. It's difficult what to make of this FM machine. On the presets alone it sounds like bank after bank of poor DX programs. Arturia missed a trick here, FM is great for bells, raspy brass, organs, percussion bass, percussion and strings. Had there been more of those, and less of the throw away FX the MicroFreak would be more tempting. On the plus side it looks like the immediacy of the Cutoff & Resonance knobs could be it's main feature.
Isn't it monophonic though? So organ sounds etc. would make no sense if you can't play chords. I think it's an amzing machine for sound design and layering sounds. I admit it sounds thin, but that's what I actually like about it. You can layer alot of instances, and it won't sound overdone.
@@leo.nordmannI, I was sure I heard a few chords during the video, so without re-listening to the entire video I checked out the online manual. It is an interesting read. The synth is monophonic and 4 part paraphonic. Arturia suggests it is extended paraphonic since the 4 voices can have different amplitude. It does also have a chord mode. Perhaps though I made a snap call based on the presets alone, as according to the manual the synth does offer many sonic possibilities. The FM patches are certainly sounding better now that I know they are 2 Op FM and not the 3 or 4 Op I presumed was under the hood. :)
@@rorz999 No it's not indeed. It has a monophonic mode, but also a 4 voice paraphonic whith one envelope per vice, but 1 lfo and 1 cycling envelope for all voices. Makes it quite playable as a paraphonic synth and much more useful over something like a behringer Poly D. Got the MF sitting next to me and it's such a workhorse. Really lvoe this machine.
I was thinking to use MIcrofreak + Volca Bass + Volca Kick + Drums on ABleton Push .... now i dunno anymore what to use in my live performance... WHat do u think about Microfreak + Microfreak + Drums and no Volca Bass? In this case i would use one Microfreak just for doing bass sequences and the other for make the rest.. . What do u think about this? Thanks for the video, its very useful for us =)
Loving this beautiful and powerful machine so far!! Looking forward to be my first hardware synth, but I have some questions, like, can I sequence and play more than one track/pattern ? Havent seen anybody talking about it, if you could enlight me I would be grateful
Some people say this synth is paraphonic / poly so i'm kindof confused. Can you play 4 voices chords with an external keybord or only works with Chord mode?
@@schwajj The entire reason Mutable made it open source is so synth designers actually take the code and use it in their creations. It's what open source is. You release it to the wild for everyone to use. So no, they didn't gank (steal) the code.
@@HH-Thorsten well this is the first hardware synth with presets from them. as for the original comment by illusiox their software synths are completely amazing sounding, and I've had the Minibrute 2 and 2S and never heard a lack of character.
For me this sounds like what the Korg monologue was trying to do but better. I know the monologue is mono and this is poly however some of the sounds are very similar. I'd love to try one of these.
@@loopop hey loopop! Are you sure about that? I have the Waldorf Pulse 2 which is full analog and is capable of an 8 notes paraphonic mode, and in my experience i'm 99% certain there is only one amplification envelope as well as 1 filter only for the concept of a paraphonic instrument, but maybe for the micro freak because the osc are digital they each have an amp envelope? All i can say is it's very difficult to make use of the Waldorf paraphonic mode, unless if using a sequencer that triggers chord notes at the exact same time. It would indeed be a massive improvement if the paraphonic mode on the micro freak had dedicated amp envelopes per notes...
Yep I am absolutely certain each digital oscillator has its own vca. I’m not sure if it’s digital or analog but I believe the individual osc vca is digital and there’s an overall vca that’s analog
Wonderful Video! Thank you. Question: is this a 2019 killer machine??? Also because the present is not the only thing inside, but analog filter and matrix patch!!
Thanks, within the first two minutes I heard enough sounds I'd want to modify and use for some tunes. It has a nice 8/16 bit feel to them all. 90s era Super Nintendo sounding. Edit: Lmao at 18:00 "Cliched Things"
