Arturia Memory V review: Memorymoog taken to your DAW with extras

Arturia Memory V is a new, authentic Moog Memorymoog emulation for your DAW with modern extras: full review + sound demo.

In 1982, Moog released the legendary Memorymoog, its first polyphonic analog Synthesizer with dedicated voice cards, each containing oscillators, filters, VCAs, and envelopes. Often described as six Minimoogs in one hardware. 

To get your hands on one of these days, you often have to shell out around 10k€. Puh, that’s a lot. Emulations are a more affordable option. Following Cherry Audio’s Memorymode, Memorymoon, and several sample libraries (UVI, Akai Pro), Arturia has now unveiled the Memory V, a new emulation of this classic.

Arturia Memory V

The Juno-106, SH-101, and Minimoog are certainly among the most frequently emulated plugins. That’s not the case with the Memorymoog. The Arturia Memory V is only the third commercially available one.

The Memory V is an authentic emulation of the original Moog Memorymoog with the original feature set, including three oscillators and more.

The developers didn’t stop there; they expanded the entire synth with more polyphony (up to 12) and additional options, as with every Arturia emulation to date.

Visually and in terms of features, the plugin’s front panel is very similar to the original. In the middle, you have three oscillators, each with a pulse with PWM option, saw, triangle, or any combination.

Oscillators 3 can be used as a modulator in the modulation section. Perfect for frequency modulation sounds. Memory V also covers your beloved sharp, sync sounds. Press the sync button, and you will see the engine sync OSC 1 and OSC 3.

An additional noise generator is available in the oscillator mixer. 12-voice unison with detune is located next to the scope.

Filter & Modulation

The filter is classic and, as is typical for Moog, a ladder filter. A welcome bonus is the ability to switch between the original 24dB and the added 12dB. This allows for more sounds, even without high-pass or band-pass filters.

There’s also a switchable bass compensation that fixes the weakness of the legendary ladder filter at high resonance values. Let’s stay in the filter section, where you also have two ADSR envelopes: one for the filter and one for the VCA. 

Classic, yes, but Arturia added some neat additions like retrigger from zero, the entire attack, keytrack, and velocity envelope times. The latter gives you longer envelope times at higher velocities.

To the left of the oscillators is the built-in global LFO with multiple waveforms, routable to the OSC pitches, pulse-width (PWM), filter, volume, and pan. Thanks, it goes into the audio rate, unlocking crazy sound design.

Additionally, you have the voice modulation, consisting of the OSC3, which is routable at the same destinations as the global LFO. And, you can modulate OSC3 with the filter envelope, giving you raising modulation effects. 

The voice panel concludes with volume, pan, and drive controls, as well as global and performance controls like glide, velocity, detune, and more. The obligatory vintage knob should not be missing

You can also dive into the fold-out dispersion section, where you can fine-tune the engine (VCO, VCF, etc.), making it sound more modern, “in tune,” or more wonky, vintage.

Up to this point, the Arturia Memory V is authentic in terms of features. If you press the Advanced button, the Memory V slides smoothly into the modern age. 

Advanced Features

If you’ve been working with Arturia plugins for a while, you know Advanced Mode inside out. You have a multi-arpeggiator, multi-FX, powerful three-slot multimode modulation, keyboard mods like MPE, velocity, or aftertouch, and four assignable macros.

The multi-arpeggiator is a fun feature that lets you layer up to four arpeggiators to generate highly evolving melodies.

Mighty is that you can set the mode, rhythm, and gate for each arpeggiator independently. And you have more than the usual up-or-down modes, which makes it very inspiring.

One step further, you’ll find the multi-FX engine with four freely configurable slots. It offers 18 of Arturia’s best-known FX algorithms, including Juno-style Chorus, tape delay, reverbs, and more.

Since the original Moog Memorymoog didn’t have an onboard effect that made it particularly legendary, this section wasn’t expanded. I’ve reported on these many times before. They still have a great sound quality and match the Memory V sound well.

However, I’ve now reached the point where I use plugins without effects first, since the built-in sounds are often completely enveloped in effects, which makes them lose some of their charm.

I like that you can turn all these effects off with a single click. For effect fans, note that you can also easily modulate the parameters. This makes them much more dynamic, adaptable, and flexible to use.

Modern Modulation

Speaking of modulations. The Advanced panel also includes the expanded modulation engine that hardware users can only dream of. Three slots are waiting for you on the self-service modulation buffet

Each slot can be a classic ADSR envelope with various retrigger options, a complex function generator with Batman shapes, a voice modulator, a modulation sequencer, or a random generator. 

The selection is diverse. I don’t mean the color coding but the modulators themselves. For classic applications, you can use the envelope or the function generator as an additional LFO. An additional envelope or LFO is always useful for bringing life to the sound.

If you delve deeper into the topic of movement, you can also use the function generator in its full scope, the randomizer, or the sequencer.

The Voice Modulator is particularly recommended for imitating the voice behavior of vintage synths. This allows for parameter variations for each voice. If you adjust it very subtly, you get very realistic behavior that fits very well with the Memory V sound.

Yes, they alter the feature set of the original, but they greatly enhance the emulation’s sound possibilities. A Memorymoog-like synth has never sounded this complex before.

Good: it’s optional; no one is stopping you from just using the front panel to get the authentic Memorymoog vibe.

Then, you have performance-oriented assignable modulators: mod-wheel, keyboard tracking, velocity, release velocity, aftertouch, and MPE. Like in the previous plugins, you can map multiple parameters to a performance modulator.

MPE is very commendable, but in my opinion, more sounds should have been mapped to it. There are a few, but there could be many more, and the mappings could be more creative. I would also be happy with an MPE section with all the MPE-mapped presets.

Alongside this, you have four freely assignable macro controls that can house multiple parameters, each with independent curve, modulation amount, and range settings.

Sounds 

Arturia ships the Memory V plugin with over 300 mix-ready presets, spanning vintage brass, saturated basses, cinematic pads, evolving textures, expressive leads, and modern electronic tones.

Users who own the original Memorymoog from 1982 can immediately compare it to the Memory V plugin, which includes all the original presets.

The patches are fun. The mix of vintage and modern sounds works well. The original Memorymoog is known for its fat, washed, or pad sounds, full of analog warmth and richness. It could easily fill an entire track. Often, that’s even too much good analog sound.

 

Does it sound like the original? I can’t say: I don’t own a Memorymoog, nor do I have the budget to buy one. Therefore, I’ll leave that to the Memorymoog users. 

What I can say, however, is that the sound is lovely, rich, and wide with that distinctly analog-ish character. It can be smooth but also brutal. A very beautiful, powerful sound.

 

I highly recommend turning off the built-in effects and playing the sounds without them to hear the instrument’s sound. Switch them back on when needed.

This way, you hear the actual sound of the Memory V Synthesizer plugin. And don’t forget, the sounds will soon be available on the Astrolab Stage synthesizers as well.

Arturia Memory V Review Conclusion

With Memory V, Arturia kicks off the countdown for V Collection 12. The first plugin is Memory V, and it’s absolutely convincing. It sounds fat, has character, and fills your tracks with analogish life. I can’t say it’s exactly like the original. 

More modulation, effects, and MPE support are nice additions that fit well with the Memory V sound. With these, you can easily move beyond the vintage sound and take it in more modern directions.

If I have anything to criticize, it would be the lack of NKS support. As usual, this will only be added in a later update. 

Arturia Memory V is available now for $149. Deals are available for existing V Collection users in their user account. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows. 

More information here: Arturia 

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