In the same way, a third combinator takes modulation into wild new areas. The oscillator presents a choice of waveforms, and each element - noises and oscillator - has its own filter mix and volume controls (two filters are shared by all engines).īeing able to stack up three of these engines leads to some profound sound design moments, the third engine enhancing what’s already an excellent sounding synth. The noises are based on a range of samples including machine noises, digital tones, and natural sounds such as forests and rain. You can even turn off the first two, and use Utility on its own, dialling up two different noise forms, and adding the oscillator and filters. The extensive preset library tells you everything you need to know about Pigments in general - excellent quality sounds, with depth and movement, more focused on blatantly being a synth rather than emulating real instruments, and many using the built-in arpeggiator and sequencer, which are always good with Arturia.Īs we’ve reviewed Pigments before, let’s focus on what’s new in version 3, starting with the Utility Engine, which is a third sound engine in its own right. From left to right, there are the preset browser, Synth, FX, and Seq tabs, a tips icon, and master volume.īelow that there are the tabs for three engines - 1, 2, and Utility - followed by a filter section, then a row of modulation controls, with more tabs, this time toggling views of an on-screen keyboard, envelopes, LFOs, functions (three complex modulation sources), randomisation, and combinators (another type of modulation source that combines two other modulation sources).įinally, at the lower right are four macro controls, and a button that enables MPE and displays some relevant options. All of Pigments’ controls are contained in one panel, but some tab-clicking is required - inconvenient but not unusual for such a full-featured synth.

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