So I’ve had my MiniFreak for about two weeks now, and I’m already very, very impressed by it.
A lot of menu-diving (as compared to, say, my Behringer Poly D,) well, yes. Much higher learning curve than a vintage-style synth? Absolutely.
But I will, say: if you employ just enough patience to continue to stick with this synth, it will just continue to give back, in droves. I am particularly loving Sound Designing on it.
So I will say,-from my perspective, at least-if/when you decide to add the Sample Playback functions that you already have added to the MicroFreak, well, at that point I think I would have to say the MiniFreak will have entered Near Perfect/Perfection territory.
For what this synth does, and is intended to do, the addition of Sample Playback, I think, immediately takes it into the territory of important classic synths like the Prophet VS, the Korg M1 and even the Yamaha DX7. They’ll be talking about the MiniFreak in that same way, 20-30 years from now, is my opinion on that.
So, Arturia: pleaaaaeeeaassse, add it, soon?
Anybody else interested in Sample Playback on the MiniFreak?
Yes, The MiniFreak IS an amazing ‘little’ beast for sure, i LOVE mine
I’ll mark this as a Feature Request as it could be a fantastic feature.
Ps
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I agree 100% with the initial post, the synthesizer is a war machine but with the ability to add samples it will truly be the perfect synthesizer. I hesitated between the microfreak and the minifreak because the microfreak offered the incorporation of samples. We are very close to perfection (I’m not saying flawless because I haven’t found any faults) But with samples there would be just no reason not to throw yourself directly into the arms of this synthesizer. I am very optimistic for the future of this brand, it is our little French pride!!
Seriously… microfreak gets all these feature additions and we buy up the minifreak thinking we’ll get that and more and in the end, aside from more routing assignments, the microfreak has several more features … including sample playback… all which was added with multiple firmware updates which made the freak line so attractive… all the activity around it. wish i bought a micro instead.
Hi @mute and welcome to our Sound Explorers community!
I think the thing to remember here is that the μFreak has been around for some years now and has developed into a highly mature piece of equipment over that time.
The MiniFreak has only been around for about a year, so hasn’t had the same amount of time to develop.
I own a MiniFreak myself and am REALLY looking forward to it developing and maturing in a similar way, I hope.
If there are things you would like specifically, then create a post to ask for them.
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yeah, but…that response is kind of whatever… it’s built off the foundation of the micro… same engine, different body, more power… what’s the hold up with updates? c’mon already… the little brother can still do more than it’s newer and bigger sibling… it should at least be equal.
They look the same, but they are quite different in the inside.
Without even mentioning the HW, the firmware is really different, the communication system totally new (if you have a Micro, perhaps you noticed that presets transfer between PC and a Mini are more than 10 times faster than the Micro), and last but not least, the Mini have MiniFreakV, which twice de development time, as we need to implement every features in both the SW and the HW.
Please have fun with the features you already have, and please be patient.
Hello to the entire community!!!
I’m joining this Minifreak wishlist, hoping the Arturia developers read this.
I would like that by having audio input and a “rec” button we could record small fragments of audio (5 or 10 seconds) directly from the audio input and then be able to process those samples with granular synthesis.
Also, taking advantage of the Minifreak’s polyphony, it would be nice to have more grains overlap to get really nice ambient and drone sounds.
I send you a big greeting and I hope that many will support and wish for this so that Arturia can develop it.
Bye!
Well, yeah, I’d have to agree with you at this point. It’s important to note that they did in fact implement Sample Playback, but when I first started this thread, I was speaking specifically about being able to play back our OWN samples, in addition to whatever ones Arturia chose to include in the firmware. You know: the functionality that the MicroFreak owners already have.
Arturia-we’d like this please. Please implement it. Thank you.
i just bought a hardware MiniFreak, after using the VST for several years. Arturia – could you please give us an update with the ability to upload our own samples? You built all this cool sample-related functionality in v4 but left this out for some reason, after saying it was coming soon quite a long time ago. Any updates? Thanks!
Hi-OP here. Given that I started both this and another thread which has been posted on recently on this same topic, I have decided to include my same reply to that post:
“I have been wondering the same thing, especially given that we are now just past the year mark of the last big update, which gave use the sample play function to begin with.
I have been a big supporter of Patience towards Arturia with all of this, but I must admit, now I too am pretty disappointed in them. This type of delay, given all the mouthing off over a year ago from the Arturia employee about adding support for user samples(I think he was the head of Arturia), at this point, I find somewhat deceptive, or irresponsible, at the least. Especially given that no one from Arturia has seen fit to address the obvious absence of the update, despite the clear statement, so many months ago, that there was going to be one “soon”-I definitely remember the use of that term.
And, there have been pleas from people at Arturia for patience-on this very forum-and we have all been patient, and throughout all of this, no one has seen fit to give us anything other than that admonition.
So, to me at least, their actions-and lack of actions-and their words on the matter all come across as pretty unfair.”
I remember a time when people didn’t think immediacy was their god given right.
I got a Minifreak when it first came out and sold it a year later. I loved the sounds, but had no sound design experience and was just playing the presets. I could not wrap my head around the sequencer and arps, and found the UI to be fiddly.
So for a while now, I’ve been playing with a pair of analog mono synths (Dreadbox Hades and Erebus), and have a firm grasp on sound design. I’d been using my Yamaha CK61 as a controller and got an Arturia Keystep 37 MK2 a few months ago and now understand the sequencer and arp functions.
I also got rid of the mental block I had wrt the UI and now I understand that it’s a simple matter of practicing and remembering a few multi-function buttons, and which features reside where. I had the same problem initially with my beloved RC-505MKII, but now it’s all second nature.
I saw a video on the new FW updates including wavetable and vocoder, and got another Minifreak. They could easily have created an entirely new platform for these features but they gave them to us for free. Elektron was equally generous at the end of the OG Digitakt lifecycle. The response from users, “yeah but…”
Designing, building, maintaining and distributing devices like these is not a simple task. This is an amazing little board. Quit whining and make use of all the features that are currently present in the Minifreak.
Here’s a video of what I imagine as a day in the life of Arturia engineers. The part of complaining users is played by Louis XI.
Or: you could just do you, and be happy with what you have-as is your right-and let other people, whom are not so happy with the current state of affairs-do them, and let them voice their points in peace, and realize their feelings are not your business, and you don’t have to be bothered by them because it don’t have anything to do with you.
You are late to the game of sound design, and now you’ve seen the light, and are enjoying the MiniFreak for what it is? Good for you.
There are also those out there who are not, and not Arturia, nor any other company can serve their community best without honest feedback-both the positive AND the negative.
A year and a half from now, when you’re busy enjoying the power to add user samples to your MF, you’ll have all the people who “whined” to thank for that enjoyment.
And given how you don’t seem to be the type that is able to give other people Grace, nor the type who cares to imagine how or why other people could possibly see things differently than you do, I predict that when that day comes, you’ll probably be blissfully unaware of what a debt you owe to those same “whiners”.
Arturia, collectively, are big boys and girls: they don’t need you to fight for them. No company does. They need people to tell them the unvarnished truth. They can take the negative feedback.
BTW, I gotta give it to you: comparing your fellow Music Makers to pigs? Classy.
Thin skinned much? Pretty funny to get lectured on grace by someone who created two separate threads to complain about the same feature request.
As to sampling, the Digitakt is my go to for this. It’d be nice to have the ability to load my own samples onto the MF and take advantage of a completely different set of design and modulation tools but that’s not why I repurchased the MF. The vocoder and my augmented skill set were the main reasons.
Last but not least, I compared the complainers to King Louis XI. If you identified with the pigs, that’s on you.
You seem like the kind of person who has to get the last word so I’ll leave it to you. Rest assured, I won’t be dipping back into this thread so you’ll be yelling at clouds.
