A 21st-century Soft Synth with Unparalleled Sonic Prowess
A massively powerful wavetable and virtual analog software synth two decades in the making, Arturia Pigments is a soft synth that boldly reimagines the possibilities of time-tested analog and virtual synthesis while deploying them across a slew of future-facing sonic tools. Featuring cutting-edge wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis, harmonic synthesis, and Arturia’s meticulous analog modeling engine, this fifth generation of Pigments heralds an inspiring and innovative era of muti-engine possibilities, including precise micro-tuning compatibility, generative sequencing, and comprehensive MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) capabilities. Arturia has spent the past two decades analyzing and reinventing the most legendary synthesizers ever produced, so the time was ripe for a soft synth with a powerful architecture and lightning-fast workflow that makes crafting modern sounds with complex modulations quick, easy, and fun. While Arturia Pigments may stand on the shoulders of some of the greatest synths of the past, it delivers wholly modern avant-garde sounds, features, and playability. With its incredible sonic prowess and remarkable ease of use, Arturia Pigments is a groundbreaking go-to synth for producers, sound designers, and synth lovers alike. For this long-awaited fifth iteration of Pigments, Sweetwater’s studio pros couldn’t be more excited to take their sounds into uncharted, future-facing territory.
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Conjure exhilarating sounds with Arturia’s pentacle of synth power
Since its first incarnation, Pigments has struck a careful balance between past- and future-minded sound design tools that masterfully merge multiple dimensions of sonic sculpting armaments into a streamlined, intuitive, and inspiring package. This fifth-generation soft synth takes up the mantle by expanding everything to love about its predecessor while making precise upgrades to empower you to explore the furthest, uncharted reaches of multi-engine synthesis.
Everything starts with the virtual instrument’s immensely improved CPU efficiency, resulting in multi-core processing that lets you painless explore and build with exciting new and returning tools. Its preset bank has been expanded to more than 1,500 options, leading to three additional sound banks to excavate, alongside purpose-crafted presets that take full advantage of Pigments’ voltaic, expressive MPE and MTS-ESP micro-tuning compatibilities. What’s more, this installment of Pigments brings with it a galvanizing generative sequencer, with one-click sequencing and boundless terrains of playstyles and presets that can be painlessly applied to any sound. Speaking of malleability, you can now deploy the extensive sound-shaping and effects tools of Pigments with nearly any audio, thanks to the Utility engine’s expanded functionality, allowing any external audio to be processed within the powerful Pigments architecture.
Wavetable, analog, granular, and harmonic engines: a quadruple threat
Wavetable synths are used to create many of the cutting-edge sounds you hear in today’s blockbuster movies, television series, and hit records. Granular synthesis is capable of creating otherworldly synth sounds by deconstructing sampled material. Harmonic additive synthesis manipulates partials for next-level sound design. And analog synthesis remains a staple of contemporary music making.
Combining modern wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis, harmonic synthesis, and analog modeling in one powerful, easy-to-use soft synth, Pigments is a synthesis platform that gives you the best of all worlds. Multiple soundbanks let you easily navigate an arsenal of presets and hundreds of wavetables, transcending the limits of genre through inventive and inspiring cross-engine modulation. From bombastic basses to evolving pads to molten leads, this soft synth has you covered.
Arturia Pigments lets you run up to two sound engines — a triple-oscillator virtual-analog engine, a detailed granular synthesis engine, a harmonic synth engine, or a complex wavetable engine with morphing and import — in parallel for impossibly colossal sounds. Furthermore, tools like the Wavetable engine’s Ring Mod and Pulse Width Phase Transformation, as well as the Harmonic engine’s partial-randomization phase modulation can be used with the plug-in’s versatile cross-mod capabilities, resulting in off-the-charts depth, dimensionality, and harmonic richness.
Near-infinite sound-sculpting control
And to shape the sounds you generate from those sound engines, Pigments has twin filters with dozens of continuously variable filter types and continuous series/parallel routing to give you near-infinite sound-sculpting control. Vintage-inspired panache abounds, with the ability to draw from any of Arturia’s V Collection instruments’ filters, including the lauded MS-20 V, Jup-8 V, and returning Multi-Filter. You can even modulate FM filters directly from the engines to evoke unwieldy sonics. However you shape them, the sounds coming from Arturia Pigments will take center stage in your productions.
Incredibly powerful and intuitive
Despite its awesome sonic prowess, Arturia Pigments is a ridiculously easy soft synth to use. At Sweetwater, we're intimately familiar with the challenge of seizing that flash of inspiration and molding it into sound. It's the most fundamental — and exciting — part of making music. Pigments streamlines that process with near-limitless patch creation and modulation options at your beck and call in an intuitive user interface that provides visual feedback every step of the way. Throw in cool features such as drag-and-drop Insert and Send routing, color-coded modulation, and a slew of both LFO shapes and sync modes, and sonic experimentation becomes as effortless as it is boundlessly inspiring.
A truckload of tricks up its sleeve
According to Arturia, "While Pigments can sound like other synths, no other synth can sound like Pigments." We couldn't agree more here at Sweetwater. Pigments' ability to scale quantized pitch modulations lets you easily build complex melodic sequences, but tonal accuracy extends beyond traditionally Western musical arrangements. Built-in MTS-ESP micro-tuning capabilities let you expand your sound to greater reaches of culture, style, and sonic precision. It offers continuous unison controls that can be modulated with classic and chord modes. Its wavetable oscillator boasts extensive wave-shaping options with unique aliasing controls. And in addition to the expected modulation sources, it has unconventional ones like the Turing and Binary random generators.
Your go-to versatile synth
Arturia Pigments also features a battery of modulators — advanced envelopes, morphing LFOs, randomizers, combinators, and more — that bring sound to life. Also featured is configurable gate/retrig handling for the modulators — great for unusual rhythmic sequences and self-generating patches. Arturia Pigments’ polyrhythmic sequencer has a strong emphasis on randomness but also has scale control to retain musicality. And the soft synth’s stunning studio-grade effects — including wavefolder, Shimmer Reverb, the legendary JUN-6 chorus, and more — make crafting rich, evolving patches instantaneous and fun. Plus, the Utility engine lets you route any eternal audio through the soft synth’s myriad of texturization tools, enabling you to seamlessly merge sounds across instruments and sources — virtual or otherwise — to craft an entirely distinct sonic landscape, powered by Pigments.
Arturia Pigments 5 Polychrome Software Synthesizer Features:
- Combines 2 sound engines in parallel in one powerful, easy-to-use soft synth
- Complex wavetable engine with morphing and import
- Virtual analog engine with 3 oscillators per voice and multiple waveforms
- Granular synth engine for mind-mending soundscapes
- Harmonic synth engine enables complex additive synthesis
- Generative sequencer allows for one-click sound design with immense depth and precision
- Massively upgraded GPU means multi-core processing to explore Pigments more easily than ever before
- External audio routing via Utility engine means Pigments FX style with any source
- Add a sub oscillator and up to 2 noise sample layers for extra depth and sonic color
- Twin filters with dozens of continuously variable filter types and continuous series/parallel routing
- Modulate anything with anything, including MIDI, envelopes, LFOs, random sources, and complex function generators
- Integrated polyrhythmic step sequencer and arpeggiator make it easy to create complex, evolving sequences and arps
- Powerful built-in studio-grade effects, including 18 FX algorithms and a versatile distortion module
- Visual interface with graphical representation of the most important modules
- Graphical editing, source-based or destination-based
- Living, moving waveform to see your sound come alive
- 4 assignable macros to control multiple parameters at once
- Ramp waveform for virtual analog engine
- Enhanced in-app tutorials
- Extensive factory preset library with hundreds of sounds from top artists and sound designers, including Jeremy Savage, Starcadian, Cubic Spline, Mord Fustang, and Jörg Hüttner — plus highlighting of recommended tweakable parameters
