Pigments 1st macro not functioning when previewing presets

Software Instruments Pigments
#1

I was demoing the new Explorations preset packs for Pigments in Analog lab and I noticed that altering the first macro parameter was either subtle or non-functional for all of the presets I demoed.

I then switched to Pigments 5 and found that the first macro is greyed out and non-editable when previewing presets in the store.

So my impression is there is one of two things happening, either:

  1. Arturia is no longer allowing the first macro to be adjusted when previewing presets, and so Analog lab not greying out the 1st macro is a bug
  2. This is a pigments bug and it shouldn’t be greyed out & shouldn’t be non-functional in Pigments or Analog lab

If it’s (1) this would be a shame as usually the first macro is the most impactful in figuring out the scope of the preset. I’ve found myself hesitant to buy the new preset collection because I don’t have the full scope of the presets

Many of the preset descriptions will encourage you to mess with the first macro in their descriptions, every time I saw this but the first macro did nothing I had a pretty negative impression of the preset pack. This was before I realised analog lab might be broken, I just assumed that presets were poorly made. To be honest even if I knew macro 1 not being functional was intentional I’d still be pretty disappointed.

Pigments 5.0.1.4491 (x64) VST3
Analog Lab 5.9.1.4493 (x64) VST3

#2

Hi @pike ,

Sound like you have Pigments MPE enabled in the sidepanel settings.

1 Like
#3

Either I don’t really understand the issue, or I simply can’t reproduce that behavioron my machine (Windows 11, Pigments VST within FL Studio).

When I open the ‘Expressive Explorations’ soundbank from within Pigments 5, I can use all macro-knobs with the mouse and they do effect the sound.

What (still) is an issue: the knob-assignment for the MiniLab 3 keyboard is flawed and doesn’t make any sense to me.
I had to create an own configuration which you can download here:
Arturia Presets

Hope that helps.

#4

Thanks you’re correct. I do use MPE, but mostly for the pitch bend/tuning functionality, not always for the per note expression (well I use polyphonic AT, but that doesn’t use MPE). Treating the 1st macro as the timbre expression when using MPE makes sense, but I would like for the macro to still function as an offset for all notes, or have an extra checkbox for auto assigning timbre or not. Also Arturia could explain the MPE system better, as it’s really not discoverable of why the macro doesn’t work - a little hover popup text explanation on the disabled knob would go a long way.

The analog lab behaviour I guess must be a bug, as disabling MPE in Pigments causes the first analog lab pigments macro to start working again. Analog lab doesn’t support mpe, so I hope that mpe will be implemented for it at some point so all of this is way simpler and consistent between their products.