![]() Analog Lab 3 extends the already-compelling virtual instrument that was Analog Lab 2 and offers even more sounds and more bang for the buck. By David Baer, July 2018 Arturia makes, among other things, virtual instruments, and their coverage is extensive. They currently have software recreations of nine analog synthesizers (counting one string machine), four digital synthesizers, an acoustic piano, three electronic organs and three electric pianos. The entire collection is sold as a bundle (V Collection 6) for the list price of $499 USD – not a bad value given the amount of sound capability – and all the instruments are individually available as well. But you can also acquire all the sounds of the entire collection for just $149 USD in the form of Analog Lab 3. Analog Factory 2.5, a software allowing to play and modify 3500 synthesizer sounds. Analog Experience “The Factory”, a bundle of Analog Factory 2.5 along with a dedicated control keyboard, the Analog Factory Keyboard. In this package you will find: A CD-ROM containing the Analog Factory 2.5 installer for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/Seven. Analog Factory 2.2.1 Description: Analog Factory is a powerful yet extremely easy-to-use virtual instrument. Loaded with 2000 legendary sounds carefully selected from the Arturia Classic Synths, Analog Factory provides the contemporary musician with a broad, versatile and instantly striking sonic palette. What’s the catch? Simple: with Analog Lab 3 (hereafter AL3 for brevity), you can play, you can even modify sounds to your liking up to a point, but you may not program sounds. As I think you’ll see as we look more closely, AL3 is a tremendous value even at list price – but Arturia has a history of sales with significant discounts, so the value proposition can be even more compelling. AL3 is 64-bit only and is available on both PC (Win 7+) and Mac (10. Microsoft office 2010 for free. 10+). It offers a standalone version plus DAW-hosted modules in all major formats. Authorization (up to a very generous five concurrent installs) is via Arturia’s fairly new software management application for which an internet connection is required. We reviewed Analog Lab 2 in Nov. Of 2016 – read that review. Much of that review was dedicated to briefly describing each of the (then) sixteen component instruments. We won’t revisit that ground here, but we’ll look briefly at the four entirely new instruments in the collection. The modelled acoustic piano module, Piano V, has also been upgraded to Piano V2, and primarily boasts three new piano models. All of the instruments have been improved to some extent. The biggest attraction for many will be the fact that the screens are now resizable. What are entirely new are three synths and an electric piano, and we’ll look at these (in no particular order) next. New Instruments DX7 V is a recreation of the venerable Yamaha DX7 FM synthesizer. We reviewed the full instrument in SoundBytes in March of this year (read the review ). The Arturia recreation is much more capable than the original. All the basic facilities are there, of course, but a number of new possibilities have been included, such as multiple waveforms, per-oscillator (“per operator” in DX7-ese) feedback and filters, new modulation sources and a unison mode (something for which original DX7 owners would have totally lusted). Next is the odd (as in whimsical and imaginative, but not as in other-than-sane) Buchla Easel V. The original inspiration was of the so-called West Coast school of synthesis, one that eschewed keyboards, preferring more abstract controls that skirted an affinity for standard western musical pitch structures. The Arturia promotional descriptions offer this: Design and perform soundscapes that burble, shimmer, pulse and evolve without ever touching a keyboard or pad—unless you want to add even more control. Really, that’s not too flowery a way to describe this instrument. It’s definitely not just another subtractive analog synth. Only the more adventurous sorts need apply. You can read the full SoundBytes Magazine review from Jan. Then there’s the CMI V, a recreation of a digital instrument of the very early 1980s, the Fairlight CMI. This was a digital sampling power house (at least a powerhouse at that time) that only a few extremely well-healed musicians could even dream of owning. Analog Factory 2 5 Mac CrackersThe Fairlight CMI also included additive synthesis capabilities that were on the cutting edge of sound creation as well. Today, of course, these kinds of capabilities are available for a pittance to anyone owning a DAW computer. What makes CMI V special at present is not the inherent technology but the ability to realistically recreate iconic sounds of the past. That’s not to say that the Arturia recreation doesn’t improve upon the original capabilities – it absolutely does. But I suspect most users will be primarily interested in the ability to replicate authentic characteristics of innumerable hit recordings of yore. Read the full CMI V SoundBytes review. Finally we have the only non-synth instrument among the new members of the family. This is the Clavinet V, based on the Hohner Clavinet keyboard introduced in the mid-1960s. This one is categorized as an “electric piano”, but sounds even less piano-like than the other two electric pianos in the collection, the Wurlitzer (Stage-73 V) and the Rhodes (Wurly V). For all those fond of synth presets named “Clav-”, this instrument is worth checking out because it’s the real deal. Analog Lab 3, the Big Picture AL3 has changed only slightly since its predecessor, although a few of the improvements are most welcome. High on that list is UI that can be resized, something Arturia has been doing for all its virtual instruments. But the main strengths and weaknesses remain (not that there are a lot of weaknesses but they need to be acknowledged). ![]() The biggest attraction here is the vast number of sounds: a whopping total of 6553 presets are included, those presets include the totality of all the presets in all the instruments in the V Collection 6 bundle – in other words, all the presets in all the Arturia individual virtual instruments. Of these we have 5640 synth presets, 429 piano presets (acoustic piano and three electric pianos), 408 organ presets, and 76 multis (more on these shortly). Fortunately, there’s a very good browser with filtering supplied, which can be seen in the screen shot above (click on the image for a more detailed view). We can filter on underlying instrument, sound type (bass, brass, keys, et. Al.), styles (not something I’ve ever found too useful, but maybe that’s just me) and banks. If you haven’t bought any expansion sound sets, this last one will just be Factory, but we’ll consider other options in a bit. So, you’ve found a sound that’s close to what you’re hoping to find. From here, you may be able to take it in many more directions, all depending upon what the preset designer choose to implement as macro controls. All of the factory presets are designed with macro controls made available. The screen shot above shows the UI with the macro controls visible (and the on-screen keyboard as well). With AL3, you may not change the macro assignments unless you own the underlying instrument. In that case, you may immediately pull up the full instrument with the click of a button and edit away to heart’s content. Otherwise, you must hope that the preset designer supplied what you need to tweak to the sound as you’d like. To be sure, a great many of the presets have very well-chosen options in this regard. And where the knob purposes are clear, sound tweaking can be quite straightforward and rewarding. But if you would like to have a control to, say, adjust filter key-follow, unless the preset designer added that as a macro, which is unlikely in this case, you are out of luck. And this is the most significant drawback to AL3. You have a massive palette of sounds with much individual latitude for modification, but you are at the mercy of preset designers in each case as to whether or not the preset options meet your needs. Well, what do you expect for the price? AL3 qualifies as a great value regardless. A corollary impediment is the inability in some cases to fully understand what’s happening. You might see an LFO Speed macro knob and find that it seems to do nothing. But then you move the mod wheel up a bit, and all of a sudden, there’s LFO-ness in the sound. Without being able to see the programming of the underlying instrument, some of the operational characteristics of a preset can be obscure. Similarly, there are features present about which you have no way of knowing. A number of the organ patches implement a two-keyboard mode, accepting MIDI channels 1 and 2 for the respective manuals. Hint: if you are playing around with organ presets, experiment with using two MIDI channels (1 and 2) to see if that gives you an unexpected bonus. The Marvelous Multi If 6500 or so presets aren’t enough for you, hold onto your hats, because AL3 allows you to layer any two presets such that the sounds play together or you define a keyboard split (classic example: bass sound low, strings high) and to add FX to that composite. When doing so, you get the macro controls for each of the two component sounds for individual use (the Part 1 and Part 2 tabs in the screen shot above), plus you get a tab of macro controls to which the individual macro controls can be subjugated. And this programming is entirely under your control.
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