I have often ranted on the substandard quality of products released these days when it comes to aiming for satisfying customer demands. And synthesizers for music production are no different - while designed with a lot of effort I find they often lack in workflow, tend to make things overcomplicated or keep forcing the user to make extra clicks that are annoying and in the way of intuitive sounddesign.
Well, i'm pleased to say that after years and years of trying out different soft synths of all kinds I think I have finally found my mothership. Spend a good two hours in it so far and I can say: Finally some product that has been done RIGHT.
Arturia's Pigments is something I have been waiting for for a long time, but only noticed recently that it had actually been built and released. A wavetable/analogue soft synth vst with pretty much all the capabilities to generate the most mindblowingly complex to bare minimum sounds imaginable with a smile and great joy in workflow. AWESOME!
While I always loved Serum's approach to sound design (showing you exactly what is happening in your program patch by displaying moving dots that align with your beat grid and timestamp), Serum tends to be multipage work with a minor recurring feel of annoyance as I have to jump between pages to keep my patch together. And while Pigments isn't solving this to 100% satisfaction, they pretty much do it to like 95% or so, more than I am used to or allowed myself to demand of synths! It's just so handleble and usable, I can't stop programming patches because it's so much fun.
The parameter areas are organized in a much more fluid way that is highly noticeable. For instance the randomizing (chaos) function has not been shoved to another tab but is just as accessible as all the other sound shaping parameters, never forcing me to loose my overview over what I am doing.
Where in Serum I have to eventually go to my mod matrix that tends to become very uneasy to see through after so many mod settings, I find this has been solved in Pigments to a much more satisfying degree, always laying out all your mods and their behavior right in the main page while you tweak different things from a centralized place. Instead of a bar we get to see lfo like representations of all our mods right in the middle of our current patch on every page!
Sound capabilities are amazing, Pigments really does sound amazing and it featurs its own high quality FX section just like Serum. I am really hopeful I will feel at home in Pigment's fx section just as much as in Serum's in a few days. FX have their own tab, which is fair and not in the way of sounddesign. Though I love the way the modulators show up at the same time MUCH MORE than how Serum handles it. But maybe it's just personal preference and suiting my workflow better.
For now I am missing a basic saturator in Pigments, the kinds of distortion and saturation lack a bit in quantity of selection as opposed to Serum, but literally anything else I could compare really feels like Pigments is taking the lead already! Wouldn't be surprised if I found out after some more tweaking that I have just failed to notice them to be honest ;) From my intuition I wouldn't put it past Arturia to update a few more saturation moduls as time goes on as well.
While I never really use presets, did I mention that they are simply mindblowing in Pigments? They show how much the synth can do, how clean and spookily realistic it can sound even when emulating actual instruments. It's a freakin' holographic generation tool for the most elaborate sound illusions!
I also noticed that Pigments tends to run much smoother and more efficiently on my I5 laptop compared to Serum while not lacking anything in quality. I feel much more free in Pigments to just design and play with things instead of endangering to kill my sound by accident that I am working on.
Finally something done right! Great job Arturia, really. See, it's not like my ego can't recognize when something has been done right. And while not perfect, this synth got damn near close in its early phase of release, it's barely a year old and already miles ahead of other synths I've played with.
If you want to get into sound design and rapidly increase your learning curve, do start with Pigments. It really is invaluable to see what your patch is doing vs. tweaking parameters without graphical representation of what they are modulating, especially after revisiting a track after a long absence. It's also on sale now and then as opposed to Serum.
The workflow has me so incredibly hooked that I will probably get a chill track done soon, as kind of a vacation from my long term psy project that will greatly come back to life with this new divine sound design machine.
New tracks await!!!
If you are curious you can check out Arturia's free demo for Pigments (14 day trial). It sadly requires you to download and use their proprietary software center thingie which I have never been a fan of, but considering the quality of the synth and what it does in bringing out my best workflow with incredible results I can say: Do try it out, it's worth it! Especially if you are still wondering whether you should buy Serum or some other synth to become your mothership of sounddesign. It will take a lot of effort by Arturia's competitors to beat this thing and all if has to offer.
