I haven’t been producing music for long. I first started dabbling in 2016 but didn’t even know about Arturia back then. I’d heard of NI and a few others but it wasn’t until 2022 when I got serious about creating music that I found Arturia and tried a few demos of their instruments. I really like the Piano, and the Augmented Voices seems like something that I would definitely use. I am told that the Mini V is one of the best implementations of Moog. With the software offering, I have purchased the KeyLAB MK3. I played with the AudioLab play and it looks like fun.
I am left however wondering how many of the actual V Collection instruments do you actively use?
(edited to better define the question being asked).
That really depends on your personal requirements. It’s definitely true that by the time you’ve funded the cost of say three apps you may as well just buy the V Collection. Arturia offer considerable discounts at various times in the year, and this is often the best time to buy. Likely the next will be Black Friday or Christmas.
Don’t forget you have the option to download any of the instruments as fully-working time-limited demos.
Just to add though, some people never feel the need for anything more than an acoustic piano, yet others, the need for an entire symphony orchestra; with most being somewhere in between.
Possibly think of The V Collection as a HUGE box of artists’ paints with oils, water colours, pastels, charcoal acrylics etc… You can cover pretty much ANY situation with a box full of those.
The question was more directed at what other users here really use in music production vs the well I’ve got 2 million possible sounds.
I have burnt myself enough times buying with a hope and excitement to not realize this purchase doesn’t really offer anything I truly need. I take it that V Collection is just another box of sounds with nothing special or spectacular inside. Thanks for letting me know…
No that’s not at all true, in fact you couldn’t be more wrong. V Collection gives you access to literally every aspect of every instrument just as though you had 30-odd synthesizers and sound modules in your studio. It’s not just a bigger box of presets. Whether you want that flexibility is entirely down to you. That’s why I suggested downloading the demos.
To more directly answer your original question, I’ve probably used every instrument in the V Collection in a project at some point, all except for the Buchla Easel, Obviously we each have our favourites.
I play around with all the instruments from time to time. It’s just a privilege experiencing classic synths (even as emulations) that work (virtually) and sound like the originals. I’ll never even see most of them in real life.
Not a surprise, but I usually head for the Mini V and MS-20 for starters and add others from there. Those two synths have such a high reputation in the synth world and I can see why. By making them polyphonic opens up a new world too.
Add the Prophet V a Juno and a Mellotron and what more do you really need. It depends on what style of music you want to produce of course, but the V Collection is all about classic synths and most of those 70’s and 80’s bands managed to write iconic tracks with only those mentioned above.
I have my own personal favourites that i often reach for as I KNOW they’ll do the job i’m after and do it WELL.
I LOVE the EMU V… it’s my go to ‘quick and dirrrrty’ sampler, couldn’t be easier to use, yet you can create some humongous and really complex sounds with it… i just wish it had multiple outputs to make better use of some of the drum kits.
I find myself reaching for The Augmented series rather more than i thought i would initially.
I’m not generally a fan of sampled instruments like woodwinds, i particularly despise those sax sounds of 90’s ROMplers, even played by a decent blower with an EWI… they make me cringe!
But the Augmented series manages to sound organic but ‘new’ and ‘believable’, at least to my ears.
The Solina V gets pulled out rather a lot here too, so much so that i bought a ‘Bolina’ a little while back and like to mix it in with The Solina V as they stack REALLY nicely.
Arturia did a very good job at creating these old synths replicas (software emulations). They really are very close to (and I’ll dare to say in most cases undistinguishable from) the originals.
But it all depends on your profile and what you are looking for. If you feel nostalgic and do want to get the exact same sounds as the original synths, then as suggested in other answers, just try’em out !
BUT if you want to use ANY type of synth sounds, from 70’s-like to latest EDM types of sounds, then I would warmly recommend that you check Pigments, which can do all of that.
You can hear sevral examples of these emulations and of Pigments sounds in my History of Synthesizers video .
Personally I use Pigments for all my synth projects, with EastWest for all classical (symphonic) instruments, and a few other VSTs for specific piano or othe “real” instrument sounds.
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