“The ever elusive ‘desert island’ plugin collection gets redefined once again by our favourite Franco tech nerds Arturia”
Arturia is a brand that continues to shake up the music production world with their innovative instruments and software.
Known for their high-quality synths, drum machines, and software emulations, Arturia has carved out a niche for themselves by blending vintage charm with modern tech unlike anyone else in the pro audio world.
Arturia’s gear isn’t just for the synth nerds, though. Their KeyLab and BeatStep series have become go-to tools for producers looking to integrate hardware control into their DAW setups seamlessly.
The integration with their Analog Lab software gives users access to thousands of presets, making the creative process smoother and more inspiring.
But Arturia isn’t just about the tools; it’s about the community and culture they’ve fostered. They regularly engage with their users through tutorials, artist showcases, and updates that keep their products fresh and exciting.
Whether you’re an analog purist, a digital devotee, or somewhere in between, Arturia’s blend of innovation and reverence for the classics makes them a standout player in the music tech game.
Lets jump in:
Bus Exciter 104 is the Arturia take on the Aphex 104 Aural Exciter Type C2 with Big Bottom.
About 15 years ago this vintage of Aphex Excited was much maligned in the audio world, and you can see if you overuse it, it’s gonna stink.
Be used judiciously this piece can really add a touch of harmonics and bite to an instrument. It works especially well on an effects channel.
Bus Peak is Arturia’s first proper take on a brick wall limiter. It combines a clipper (all the rage in mastering circles), with a peak limiter, to really shave off those transients and bring up your loudness.
Can be used on single channels, busses, or the whole damn mix if ya like, and you can dial in the percentage of character from each aspect of the thing too.
AND it’ll give you a true peak reading and a LUFS level too, so you can really push your EDM mixes to -5 LUFS to piss off mastering engineers all across the internet.
EFX Motions is a cool one – a fairly complex modulator that’s pretty easy to pull a good sound out of, fast.
Make your choice of noise trigger device, from a spinning clock on the side, to envelope sequencer or Euclidean trigger; to transient trigger, or just MIDI it, and then pick what your filter is gonna do.
You can get the motion envelope a-rollin with the trigger affecting a filter set, noise generator, volume envelope, pan, and drive.
There’s so much to this constantly moving plug-in, and it’s really fun to use. Start with the pre-sets and then begin to dig in deep. From soundscapes to pop abstraction, there’s A LOT happening in here!
And for the last of the brand new plugins in the Arturia EFX package we’ve got Refract. It opens up sounding like a chorus pedal, but then you start to notice how detailed it really is.
It gives you a great visual of your signal hitting a rotating cone (akin to a famous LP cover by some prog geezers you have probably heard of) and emerging as a refraction.
Sure, you can shift the speed of the rotation, change the number of refractions from a single, wiggly line, to up to 8 voices, and really mess with the LFO. But then, it really starts to get cool.
You can start to choose what your refracted signals hit next and things get kinda psychedelic. Bandpass, a comb filter, a bit crusher, distortion, and a harmonizer, all represented as different shapes scattering you sounds across the audible spectrum (and your mind).
To learn more head over to the Arturia Website.
