Arturia — known for its incredible emulations of vintage synths and keys — has dropped the FX Collection 3. With 26 refreshing audio effects, including 4 new ones, it’s a playground of sound. We took a deep dive.
Arturia are legends in the field of software recreations, from insanely rare and expensive synths to keyboard instruments. You make not know they make audio effects of interesting and revered hardware units along with a few of their own.
The FX Collection 3 is the third iteration of the bundle that includes everything from distortions, reverbs and delays to preamps, EQs and compressors. We spent some time with the whole collection, focusing in on the four new additions for our Engineering the Sound video. Watch below.
The four new additions are The Distortion Tube-Culture, The Distortion OpAmp-21, the Tape Mello-Fi and the Efx Fragments.
The two distortion plugins are emulations of the Culture Vulture by Thermionic Culture and the SansAmp Classic Pedal by Tech21. Rarely modelled, these two are refreshing plugin recreations rather than a twist on the usual suspects of hardware units we see released regularly.
Both of these distortions come with variations and advanced settings that far exceed the limits of the hardware units. Starting with a clean sound, we used the distortions on bass guitar and electric guitar. If in-the-box, realistic distortion is what you are after these two hit the mark.
The Tape Mello-Fi sits in its own territory as it’s a preamp and tape plugin modelled off a Mellotron, but with extra features like Drive, Tone, Noises from the machine, and a variable tape stop function.
This is not the first time Arturia have pulled something from a unit and made a plugin. Their Chorus JUN-6 is the chorus section of a Roland Juno 6 synth, with extra features and variation on sound.
The Efx Fragments — we wrote an in-depth article here — is creative sonic reshaper. To put simply, it’s a granular delay with endless possibilities. Some highlights are the FX sends within the plugin that help shape the sound and a neat visual display to show the intensity of the delays.
This plugin sees Arturia moving towards creations of their own — rather than emulations — and it’s something to get excited about. Within their recent release, the V Collection 9, they added two of their own software instruments: Augmented Strings and Augmented Voices.
We made an Engineering the sound video on that collection as well, you can watch that here: Arturia V Collection 9 – Full Demo and Review.
The rest of the FX Collection 3 is made up of iconic reverbs and delays like an EMT plate, Spring, Roland Space Echo 201, compressors like the 1176, STA-level, VCA-65, Mu-Tron Phaser and some choice preamps like the Neve 1073, Trident, and the classic V76, plus chorus effects like the above mentioned Juno chorus, and Dimension D, plus much more!
If you don’t have any FX or limited audio FX this collection will give you a complete package of creative and technical tools for you. Alternatively, If you already have a tonne of plugins, you’ll respect these new and fresh emulations bringing some life to your music.
The FX collection 3 is $399 US dollars — that’s about $570 Australian dollars at the moment. You can also buy each of the 26 FX individually.
For more details head over to Arturia.com
