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Sound:
After creating some amazing sounding softsynths, Arturia decided to make a zero latency hardware unit. And they made it something of the ultimate synth by taking oscillators, filters and other elements of these killer vintage instruments and letting you mix and match them as you please. There are limits, as these are pretty juicy analog-sounding building blocks, and the limit seems to be 20 units. But keep in mind that a Jupiter 8 is made of nine or ten units, so you can make some huge sounding synthesizers. Arturia even provides more basic Origin oscillators and filters which are easier on the CPU and ram.
The sound is something else, like a Moog Modular patched into a CS80 and a Jupiter! To take the sound power even further, they included the digital wavetables of the Prophet VS, and in the latest O.S. update, there is even a drawbar organ model and a leslie effect. And the organ can be run though the filters and other elements just like any other oscillator.
Does this thing have features. As you can see, the unit has dozens of knobs and buttons, meaning fewer menus to plow through, and immediate tweakablilty when programming or playing. Eight knobs along the screen even give you access to a range of parameters of your choosing, to give you quick and easy control over your patch while you play. The small color screen is quite legible, and shows you a lot of useful info at once. Because this is a modular approach, you get to decide how you want to modulate and control the thing, making this as expressive as any rompler workstation.
You get three effects at once for each patch, based on simpler stomp boxes over Eventide rack units, so distortion is going to be more like an Electro=Harmonix than a SansAmp or Pod Pro, but it's still quite useful for dirtying up a lead or organ. And even for a basic reverb, it sounds very nice. The bonus is that the effects are run separately from the synth section, so you don't have to sacrifice any synth modules for your distortion-leslie-reverb effect. And the sequencer and arpeggiator is its own unit as well, with three 32 step sequences controlled by its own row of knobs, so techno-trance-ambient-new age-whatever textures are just a few button presses away. And who hasn't wanted to try being Jean Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream at one point or other?
The unit is loaded with hundreds of patches, so you have plenty to play with and enjoy if you don't want to get your hands dirty creating instruments. Along with all the instruments created by the sound designers, there's a template for a Minimoog, if you want something basic and immediate, but with the extra parameters of the Origin synth engine to hot rod the thing. More templates, such as a CS80 and Jupiter 8 are coming this summer. Many patches are taken from classic keyboardists and their trademark sounds, like Keith Emerson, Eddie Jobson, Rick Wakeman and Tony Banks. Traditional analog sounds are there by the boatload, but there are some things which go way beyond what you find on a typical synth, like the Galaxy modulator, and the rare Bode Frequency Shifter from the Moog Modular III. So if you want ARP 2600 leads or outer space bloops and twitters, this thing has you covered. On that note, the Multis are just amazing with all the things going on, layering up to four of these patches, each with their own effects and sequences. Because the Origin is doing hundreds of things at once, Multis are usually limited to a few notes, and with really busy patches, just two, but then big chords would just turn them into a mess of sound anyway, and you want to hear what's going on as you hold a note. And remember, this means not just four multi-oscillator patches, but up to 12 effects and 12 sequences all running at once! It's not Karma, but it's darn close. And while the manual states that a synth patch has up to 32 note polyphony, it's usually quite a bit less than that. But then, modular synths rarely let you play more than one note, and if you have a rare one, two. Besides, how many notes could a Jupiter or an OB-X play? Most likely, you have a rompler anyhow, and you're buying one of these to get "THAT SOUND" which only an analog will provide, and these TAE oscillators and filters are about as close as you can get.
If that wasn't enough, you get eight individual outputs normally set up as four stereo pairs, as well as a SPDIF out. And you get audio in, which you can use as an oscillator source and/or to send into the effects. So if you want to plug your synth into it and mingle it with all this modular power, or a guitar or voice, you can do it. And for heaven's sake, when an update becomes available, get it! The latest update at the Arturia site gives you the organ and leslie models, as well as some nice performance and stability enhancement. And as I say, this summer there are more goodies coming, like the CS80 and Jupiter 8 templates, and more with time. As for support, there are Arturia people here in the US as well as Europe, and the site has a message board where you can expect quick responses to questions or issues. Along with that, there are additional patches put up by sound designers, as well as a section for your own patches you might want to share. It's empty now, but I might just have to get the ball rolling on that...
Heck, I want to get back to the music room and dig into this thing, but I wanted to let you know that if you want an instrument which will give you a little something extra that no other synth will, look no further. You found it. The only thing better are the soft synths themselves, and there, you have to come up with a PC and sound card with no latency, and good luck on that!
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