PIGMENTS Review
Arturia Pigments is their flagship software synthesizer, which features two multimode synth engines two multimode filters, and extensive modulation and effects section and powerful arpeggiator. So far every year since it’s debut, Arturia have given it at least one significant update, usually adding new effects, filters, or oscillator engines. They do not promise to make these updates, nor do they charge for them, but if anything is added in the years to come, i’ll make sure to cover it and link it in this review. As it’s name suggests, Pigments has a colorful UI where each modulation source has their own color coordination, and visual display so you can see all the motion and easily figure out where things are routed. They’re recently added a “Play” page, which is a stripped down interface more similar to something you might find in a rompler or kontakt instrument, not really my cup of tea, but it turns Pigments into an instrument for beat makers rather than sound designers if you’d rather browse presets and actually make music for once.
One of the first reviews I ever wrote, before ever creating the website, or really having any traction with my sound design, was about Pigments, this review never and will never be released, but I might reference it a bit while writing this one. At the time this was version 1.0, there wasn’t even granular yet, and I was calling it the “Serum killer”, a mentality I have since abandoned, as every synth has unique features and characteristics, and they are not “killed” just because something new exists. I just feel the need to mention this, because at the time I was so excited by this plugin it motivated me to write a review for my own personal experience.
I’ve covered the 4.0 update here: https://www.databroth.com/blog/pigments-40-update
future update coverage will be linked here as well
SYNTH ENGINE
Each oscillator can be one of 4 different engines covering a pretty wide variety of synthesis methods. Each engine can be sent to either filter and include a few different unison types, and sometimes alternative effects/processing (in addition to the engine its self). In a recent update they’ve even added the ability to modulate from one engine to the other, which really multiplies the sonic potential of Pigments. This is done via the “modulator” oscilator section present in both engines. Additionally there is an Utility engine, which includes a sub oscillator, and 2 basic samples intended to be used for noise, but you can use them for transients or any other audio you’d like. Some of the engines and modulation in the oscillator section get a little bit noisy or dirty, especially on the top end, this is fine for most sounds, but often times with basses and various sound design, you want that top end clarity to really craft the sound you’re after. A lot of people seem to think this makes Pigments sound more natural, and perhaps it mimics the natural break up and drive you’d experience in a real world synth, but personally, I’d rather add this in if it were something I was intending on.
Analog: The analog engine is simple, featuring three oscillators with 5 shapes, and some simple FM routing. You get a little drift control, and the first oscillator can be hard synced, otherwise, not a whole lot to say here. I usually don’t use this one, I’m sure it’s fine, I just have a lot more fun with the other three modes.
Wavetable: Pigments’ wavetable engine really excited me at first, if it weren’t for that lack of top end clarity, which is mostly a problem here, I’d likely use it a hell of a lot more often. You get full wavetable import, and a pretty wide collection of tables come pack in the factory content. This is fed into four different oscillator effects, which is significantly more than most other wavetable synths. Each one of these effects has a few options to pick from and even secondary controls as well. You get ring/frequency modulation, phase modulation, which can be fed back or from the other engine, “phase transform, which contains 7 different phase distortion algorithms, and three wavefolding shapes. Playing with wavetable position and these various controls in different combinations provides a myriad of options and sonic capabilities. Ring modulation is always fun to play with, but being able to do ring mod prior to wave folding and FM is a nice treat. One of the phase distortion effects I particularly enjoy is the fractalize option, which bends the waveshape to one end, but imagines there were infinite copies just out of frame to fill the gap. It’s also worth noting that both the phase distortion and wave folding can be modulated by the modulator osc.
Sample (Granular): When selecting which engine mode you want to use, this one shows up as simply, “sample” selling its self short, as it is one of the most capable granular engines out there. There are synths out there that don’t even do quite as much as this one mode. The sample engine allows for 6 slots, which you can map to key ranges or velocity, you can have them round robin or randomly swap, or even use sample pick mode to switch them via a modulator. Each slot also gets a mini editor to set playback mode, pitch, volume and start/ loop periods.
With that out of the way, the fun part is the granular section, which is turned off by default. This includes randomizers for all the classic granular jitter controls you’d want, size, time, density and window shape. Density can go pretty fast, up to 250hz, which actually means you can manage some bass range frequencies from it. There’s 8 shapes to choose from, each one with the ability to warp between different shapes. You can tempo sync the grains as well, making this a fun generative sequencing tool, especially when you consider that the grains can actually be used as triggers for the various modulation sources. It’s also worth pointing out that the round robin and random sample selecting happens per grain, so you can actually apply several samples into a single granular swarm. If that weren’t enough, for some reason Arturia gave this engine a few extra modes in the unison corner. You get a resonator which has an inharmonic control, bit crusher, and FM and ring mod.
Harmonic: The most recent mode added is the harmonic engine, which they careful chose not to name “additive” as it doesn’t quite do everything I’d want to consider a synth “additive”. You get up to 512 partials which can be spread apart or pushed together using the ratio control. In place of the unison section there’s 3 effects modes to choose from: a windowed FM, which targets specific partial ranges, a cluster effect which pushes specific ranges of partials together in a variety of ways, and a shepherd’s tone, which moves all partials down by 1, creating infinite motion like a barber pole. This is then fed into a spectral filter that gives you 2 of 12 shapes to choose from and blend between and focus around to really sculpt the sonic quality of this engine. You cna then spread the harmonics left and right using one of 3 algorithms for interesting stereo effects. One choice they’ve made is either sync or randomize the phase of each partial, this gives the harmonic engine a bit of a sawtooth-ish quality no matter what, even though they’ve recently allowed you to randomize the phases, it never quite gets away from this character, and because phases can’t be offset in the same way other additive synths would when spreading partials, you miss out on all those thwippy watery laser tones, which some might consider a bonus.
Filter: Because Pigments is so deep, I’m including the two filters in the “synth engine” section. They’ve given Pirments a wide variety of filters at this point, 11 in total. The first of which is a digital multimode filter, that has 14 of its own filter modes, which I’m happy to say include a notch. Six of the modes are analog modeled including a LPG, presumably borrowed from their V-Collection range of products, they sound good to me, but I’m no analog expert. Next is a strange “surgeon” filter, which creates some bizarre artifacts while modulated, it also includes a notch. Next is a comb filter, this one has an all-pass for some atonal madness, and a few different damping methods, so you can get some interesting physical modeling. And finally there’s phaser and formant filter options. In all this is an incredibly wide array of choices, and given the filters can be either serial or parallel, you can really develop your sound quite a bit at this stage.
EFFECTS SECTION: Pigments effects section is pretty neat, you get 6 insert slots and 3 sends, best used for delays and reverbs. They’ve included 18 different effects to choose from so it would have been nice to get even just 2 more inserts and a send. These include all the classics like delays, modulation effects, distortion, reverb, but a few are worth talking about in more detail. They give you a pretty solid EQ, which is incredible for preset design, as it’s often necessary to further process a sound after the synth, so being able to include this in a preset is nice. The pitch shift delay and shimmer reverb can be used in a bunch of different ways to harmonize your sound. Super unison is unlike the other modulation effects and has an interesting almost “holographic” quality. The distortion effect is quite incredible, with 16 shapes and a bit of filtering, this effect alone offers an order of magnitude more sounds for pigments. I would also like to mention the included “OTT” style effect, which is sometimes a necessary ingredient for squeezing the last bit of juice out of a sound.
MODULATION: The modulation section is broken up into several different categories, each with their own color for a bit of fun UI visualization. The LFOs can smoothly warp between shapes, all the way into SH randomizers. They also can be bent left or right and smoothed out for a wide variety of custom shapes and morphing. If you want further shape customization, but don’t mind loosing some of the morphing, you can use one of the 3 function generators, which are basically MSEGs. They give you a wide amount of control over and a large window to edit the shape, it’s unfortunate there’s only 3, but 3 is better than zero. (I also have a trick to get a couple more, though with a tedious editing window).
Next is the randomizer section, which features 3 methods of generating random modulation. The Turing machine is fun because it creates random patterns that loop and evolve over time, there’s also a sample hold, which can both sample and trigger hold from any of the other modulators. After this is the combinate section, which lets you combine a couple sources in various ways including some math and even a remap editor, this area is pretty advanced, but once you start running into walls, it can be a nice little utility to solve problems.
SEQUENCER: Finally we get to the sequencer/ arpeggiator, because the arp is just the sequencer without note selection, I’ll be focussed on the sequencer only. This sequencer can be up to 16 steps total, but each lane for velocity, octave, probability, gate and slide, can be their own sequence length. This lets you create phased patterns and polymeters as each cycle the synchronization drifts, while remaining perfectly in time. You can even set a restart period if you want don’t want the pattern drifting off “forever” (until the lowest common denominator is met). Trig probability is always a bonus, but each lane also gives you a randomization amount, meaning you can apply probability to the probability (I heard you like probability). The pitch lane has scale quantization, so everything stays in key when you randomize. They’ve also included a regeneration cycle length setting which keeps the randomizer from regenerating the seed until a certain period of time is met, this lets things repeat in a more natural and musical manner rather than constantly changing every cycle.
I’m genuinely excited to see what Arturia add to Pigments next, it is a growing and already powerful synthesizer that could easily be in the realm of “the only synth you need”. Personally I love these power synths, so I collect nearly all of them, there’s a lot of crossover, but they also all do something unique, or at least in a new way that inspires creativity. I also really appreciate the manner in which they update Pigments, they use new version numbers, but I’ve never felt like I needed to learn a new synth, or lost anything available from a previous version. I’m not a huge fan of having each synth version as its own plugin, unless they’ve removed or changed so much that it’s basically a new plugin. It always feels like the Pigments you bought day one, but with more features than you remember. The plethora of options and modes to choose from make this one a great glitch design tool. I particularly enjoy combining the sequencer with the granular engine to create cluttered yet organized percussive cacophonies. I should also note the Arturia “Augmented” series, which are at their core, basically a stripped down version of pigments with a specialized set of presets and samples. There are some key differences, most notably the macroing system is a bit more advanced in Augmented, and there is also a convolution reverb. Ultimately pigments is more powerful, as it has more envelopes, more simultaneous effects, and more control over the oscillator engines. But it’s worth taking a look at what’s under the hood in the Augmented synths if you already own them and don’t have a copy of Pigments.
If you plan on purchasing PIGMENTS from Plugin Boutique, please consider supporting me by using my affiliate links
PIGMENTS: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/5018-Pigments-4?a_aid=61c378ab215d5
and if you already own Pigments or just want more presets, consider picking up my pack of 100 presets for Pigments “SPECTROSCOPY”: https://databroth.gumroad.com/l/ptlbkh