This special edition of the Arturia MicroFreak offers the same sonic arsenal of the original MicroFreak, including wavetable and digital oscillators, analog filters, a modulation matrix, and an expressive touch plate, and it ratchets up the sonic mayhem with a 16-band vocoder mode. The core of the MicroFreak’s adventurous sound is its digital oscillator and wavetable oscillators. With a slew of unique modes, such as Texturer, KarplusStrong, Harmonic OSC, Superwave, and sound engines from Eurorack pioneers Mutable Instruments’ Plaits module, the MicroFreak opens up possibilities far beyond the average subtractive synthesizer. When Arturia dropped the MicroFreak, synthesists were blown away by the power of this diminutive and affordable synth, which is packed to the gills with advanced features — 64-step sequencer, arpeggiator, modulation matrix, chord mode with up to four notes of paraphony, and more. Now, with the vocoder, there’s little this freaky synth can’t do!
16-band vocoder engine with tweakable parameters
From Zapp’s “More Bounce to the Ounce” to Daft Punk’s “Around the World,” vocoders have mystified listeners for decades with their “uncanny valley” robotic vocalizations. Equipped with 16 stellar presets, the MicroFreak Vocoder Edition delivers those classic sounds and much more — from celestial harmonies to epic formant sequences. Want to craft your own madcap vocoder patches? No, problem. The MicroFreak Vocoder Edition is eminently tweakable, with three selectable waveforms — sawtooth, pulse width, and noise — and timbre and shape knobs for individually sculpting the response of each of the vocoder engine’s 16 frequency bands. What’s more, you can process any external signal through the vocoder engine for glitched-out drums, otherworldly guitars and bass, and other mind-warping sound design applications.
Touch keyboard with poly aftertouch
You haven’t lived until you’ve tried MicroFreak’s etched touch plate. It’s caused a sensation among keyboardists who, on the whole, find it more natural and expressive than a conventional keyboard. The touch plate is pressure sensitive and even offers polyphonic aftertouch — pretty amazing at this price point, we might add. While its price makes it the perfect unique sonic complement to any budget home electronic music setup, the Arturia MicroFreak’s uniqueness also makes it a no-brainer addition to professional live and studio synth rigs. Pros will find it useful as an experimental sound design tool, much in the same way Eurorack modules are used.
Craft entirely new categories of sounds
MicroFreak’s digital oscillator is the ideal tool to craft entirely new categories of sounds, while its analog filter delivers the warmth and punch you’re looking for. MicroFreak can store up to 256 presets, so inspiration is never more than a button press away. Innovative synthesis is Arturia’s raison d’etre. And MicroFreak lives up to the company’s sterling reputation. It’s an incredibly value-packed synthesizer that’s like no other. Electronic music producers and rock bands will enjoy using MicroFreak to generate unusual textures and evolving sequences in a live setting and to add a refreshing grain of sonic unpredictability to their shows.
Features:
- Wavetable and digital oscillators deliver endless sound generation
- 16-band vocoder engine with sawtooth, pulse width, and noise waveforms
- Velvety analog filter section with lowpass, bandpass, and highpass types
- Poly-aftertouch flat “touch plate” keyboard is expressive and fun
- Multi-mode arpeggiator with Up, Order, Random, and Pattern modes, and a 64-step sequencer
- Jumpstart your creativity with 224 factory presets and 16 vocoder presets
- 256 presets slots for saving your favorite custom patches
- 5 x 7 modulation matrix makes complex routing a breeze
- Play chords in paraphonic mode
- Detachable gooseneck mic included