A few months ago, I posted here asking about a small footprint synth to replace some of my gear, mostly because of my small apartment. However, a few weeks ago I said “fuck that” and created a very small synth studio in one of my closets, precariously perched upon packages and packing supplies. I then purchased a microfreak.
I gotta say, I really should have bought this thing sooner. It’s been such a blast making patches and messing with the many oscillator types, toying with the matrix in whatever way I can figure out, and the touch sensitive keys with aftertouch are such a game changer.
I got it for what I feel to be a steal at 300 bucks from a local synth shop in my city, and it’s just so worth it.
Lately, I’ve been using it in conjunction with the liven xfm, and I think the pairing is quite nice. Maybe a bit lo-fi, but who doesn’t love a bit of crunch on the drums and bass?
Long live arturia! I am now a fan.
Everyone I talked to both online and offline loved the MicroFreak, and even if they mentioned one or two minor annoyances, the sentiment usually was that whatever the reason, it was easy to overlook given the excellent price point.
I bought mine for its versatility with the intention to use it mostly for sound design, but acquiring a bunch of instruments from SOMA labs shortly thereafter has kept me from spending some intense quality time with the MicroFreak. However, that means every time I come back to the device there are still some pleasant surprises left, so I’m not complaining.
As for the XFM, I was looking at the Liven Texture Lab, but the reviews were so mixed and sometimes downright negative, in particular with respect to the build quality, that I finally gave up on the Liven series. Currently looking to replace the Texture Lab with a MIDI controller and some Supercollider code I have been using for a while - I’m not yet in the market for a GR-1.
What kind of stuff are you putting out using your devices? I’m in a bit of an unusual position since I rarely make music, but rather soundscapes for e. g. art installations, so my setup is mostly oriented towards weird sounds and ambient.
Unfortunately I don’t quite have all of the bits and bobs to record any of my hardware jams, but for now I kind of just make progressive house stuff, dnb and the occasional synth wave/80s inspired beat. Eventually I would love to record some of my ideas and build them out into full tracks, but I just don’t have the scratch for it yet.
Yeah! I love mine too! My favourite 2 things about it are the spice/dice feature and the keyboard.
Putting a subtle cutoff and (very subtle)lfo->pitch on the key patch is a great way to add movement and feel into your playing.
The spice and dice in combination with the pattern random makes it my go to synth if I want to mess with arps. Just put on a cool arp, set it to pattern random, mess with spice and dice and you’ve got the start of a new song