Arturia Pigments 3.5 Synthesizer, an impressive free update with full full M1 support, new engine cross-mod, all-new distortion effect, and more.
The Pigments Synthesizer from Arturia is a big success. A multi-engine synth plugin with tons of functionality and a great, color-coded interface. That is optimized for professionals as well as beginners.
The success is not only based on the features and interface but also the support that Arturia has given users since the release. At the beginning of the year, they published a major 3.0 update as a free download. Other software developer would ask an update price for this quantity of new features.
And just before the end of the year, Arturia is knocking out another impressive update for Pigments. Yes free again and with many new synth goodies.
Arturia Pigments 3.5
Pigments 3.5 is not a huge major update like Pigments 3.0 at the beginning of this year, but a smaller one, let’s say a little major with lots of great new sound design goodies. The update 3.5 introduces cross modulation between engines 1 and 2. You can now use the engine as a modulation source for the other engine with a number of parameters to customize. This gives you yet another shaping option Pigments and one that can create wild harmonics, unusual waveforms, and bizarre results in the right settings.
Then, the developer have expanded the comb filter section with three new damped modes including LP6, BP6 and HP6. These filter out certain frequencies in the feedback loop and enables more distinctive physical-modeling style sounds like ambient plucks, shimmering bowed leads, and much more. Big fan of this feature.
Another big new addition in version 3.5 is an all-new distortion module in the effects section. It comes with 16 distortion algorithms covering everything from rich germanium fuzz, Buchla-style wavefolding, soft saturation, and more. Plus, you can shape the distortion with a dedicated filter section. A feature will love sound designers with a preference for characterful and dirty sounds.
Smaller Goodies
The sample and wavetable engine also got an update. You can organise your samples in sub-folders giving you a more convenient and easy way to manage your sample. A highlight for me is the ability to preview samples right in the manager before loading them in the engine with a single click. A very welcomed workflow improvement. The wavetable engine doesn’t receive a feature upgrade but got a content update. Users can now benefit in Pigments 3.5 from dozens of new wavetables inspired by molecular structures, mineral textures, and aggressive modern timbres.
Further, the user interface got a makeover including subtle menu redesigns and workflow improvements to streamline your sound design process. And to forget, Pigments is now fully compatible with Apple Silicon M1 computers. It now runs natively and give you now more smoothly and more CPU headroom. Lastly, the update ships with over 150 new presets exploring the new features.
If that’s not enough new sounds, Arturia has more on offer. They published “The Energy Triad”, a new preset bundle with three exclusive sound banks with in total 450 sounds. It covers a wide range of electronic sounds including trap, grime, future bass, house, and more.
Yet another fabulous free update for the Pigments Synthesizer. Always very positive to see that Arturia continues to add so many new features as a free update. Big LIKE.
Arturia Pigments 3.5 is a free update for existing customers. Existing customers can also benefit from the Energy Triad Pack with three new sound banks for 29,99€/$, for a limited time. New users can purchase Pigments 3.5 for an introductory price of $99/99€ (reg. $199/199€) with the Energy Triad Pack at no additional cost until January 6th, 2022.
More information here: Arturia
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“Pigments 3.5 is not a huge major update like Pigments 3.0 at the beginning of this year, but a smaller one with lots of great new sound design goodies. The update 3.5 introduces cross modulation between engines 1 and 2.”
yeah, definitely not a huge update… are you for real?! THIS IS GIGANTIC 😀
as a reminder: Pigments 3.0 introduces additive synthesis, a noise engine, 4 new effects… for me it’s a little major update 😉
i see where you are coming from. 3.0 was huge, but cross-modulation opens up this synth soooo incredibly much. to me this was the last thing holding it back. it’s now fully unchained and ready to go wild with not only 1 new distortion, but 16 (!!!) including wavefolders. oh well, the filters can now also be modulated by engine 1/2..
soooo audio-rate additive synthesis modulation by wavetables with autio-rate filter modulation with buchla wave-shaping? OH YEAH! pigments is becoming my best purchase this year! 🙂