Arturia MicroFreak Review and Tutorial: Everything you need to know, including all 12 sound engines

Every major feature and a few minor ones reviewed and explained...

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If you just want to hear what it sounds like, here's a video I made with all 160 factory presets:

Want to get all my tips in one convenient place including those to come in the future? Check out my In-Complete Book of Electronic Music Ideas, Tips and Tricks (hint: it's in-complete because it's always being updated…):

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Timeline:
0:00 Intro
1:00 Is it paraphonic or polyphonic?
1:45 Overview
3:50 Sound engines
4:20 Basic waves
5:40 Superwave
7:10 Wavetable
9:05 Harmonic oscillator
10:00 Karplus Strong 10:50 Virtual Analog
11:45 Waveshaper
12:30 Two operator FM
13:20 Formant Engine
13:55 Chords
15:05 Speech
17:05 Modal resonator
18:00 The SEM filter
20:30 Exploring the touch keybed
24:00 Modulation sources
24:30 Envelope
26:10 Cycling Envelope
28:40 LFO
29:30 How the Mod matrix works
32:25 The Arpeggiator & Sequencer, and the Spice and Dice functions
39:50 Misc, pros & cons

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NOTE: Occasionally I’ll try out affiliate marketing and include affiliate links. This means that I may earn a commission when you click on or make purchases via affiliate links. The content of this clip is entirely my opinion, and was not paid for or dictated in any way by the company creating the gear. Without addressing the particulars of products shown here as they might be under NDA, gear shown on this channel may be either sent by the manufacturer, on loan for review or bought at a discount.
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[Phillyfast]

It's a great time to be alive if you're into synthesizers

[iskariot]

i noticed that when i order something, like say a microfreak, i tend to watch your video about the product almost daily between ordering and arriving. It only takes 3-4 days on average, but by the time it arrives i have a decent idea about it, and this info is priceless. I can dive straight in, without reading that f'ing manual ^^
Thank you!

[ryangunwitch-black]

My fiancé bought me a Microfreak Vocoder bundle for my birthday and it just arrived yesterday. I love it. I plugged it in beside my bed and fell asleep with it last night.

[AI-Heaven-Hell]

A very thorough and knowledgable review. I 've had the privilege of using the MicroFreak for several months. I've seen go through many alterations and improvements. Personally what I like most is that you can modulate oscillator type. I made at least 15 presets based on that feature and the sonic potential of it is amazing. At one time during the development process modulating the oscillator type was removed because it caused problems in paraphonic mode. Fortunately, the developers managed to solve these problems. I'm very happy they did.
The keyboard takes time to master but when you select maximum sensitivity in utility you can create crazy arpeggios by alternating soft and hard pressure/velocity. Done the right way you can create very interesting dynamics.
The assign function works as you describe but does more. If you assign a column to a knob (by turning that knob) it will not only assign the current intersection on the Matrix to that knob but all knobs in that column.
Another favourite of mine is transferring an arpeggio to one of the two sequencer patterns. I sometimes find it hard to come up with a good sequence, I find it easier to improvise an arpeggio and than quickly transfer it to a sequence pattern. The nice thing is that this option is somewhat intelligent; it will automatically adapt the arpeggio to the currently defined sequence length. It's a very flexible setup but you can change the length of the sequencers on the fly by pressing shift + the Rate encoder. (this only works in the very latest firmware edition).
Thanks again for a brilliant review.

[detrechter]

The 1 thing I always do before for the Loopop review 🙂

[tylerallen]

This ended up being my first hardware synthesiser, thanks for your thorough explanation of how it works!

[richnewman]

Every single synth fan should buy one of these. It's chock full of inspiration, functionality, and fun.

[kabood]

man so many demos or reviews on this thing, none of them give you even half as much as loopop covers here...thank you so much for this video.

[imgointardhard]

I know this is an old video of yours, but seeing this vid in the past few days inspired me to finally take the plunge from softsynths into the world of hardware synths. Your video was just so concise and motivated me to venture out of my comfort zone. Thank you, your content is top notch.

[gkillmaster]

I can't imagine an overview being better than this. Thanks so much for the conciseness and thoroughness and clarity!

[Baby_boodle]

My goodness you make 40 minutes fly by, this video was terrific to watch. Now I'm just that much more excited to play around with this as my first synthesizer. c:

[stupidbeetle]

I bought it just because of this review and now the Microfreak is probably my most used hardware synth.

[templemu]

really clever synth, takes on many softsynths with one hand behind its back

[philfazer]

A video still useful in 2023, thank you for all the work you do on synthesizers, Merci from Paris ( France )

[YT]

You're becoming so thorough and methodical, it's actually a little getting a little intimidating. lol. (:

[DonSmiths]

I'm only posting this because I'm sure others can relate. I watched this review months ago and KNEW I'd be getting it at some point. When I decided to watch it again tonight, I wondered, "will I be able to get to the end of the video before I order it?" I knew the answer ahead of time, and I was right. I didn't make it to the end before ordering it. Picking it up tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a good day. Long time fan of Loopop and current Patreon supporter. A true legend in the synth world. Ziv, thank you for all you're doing for us.

[locksh]

Your reviews are a blessing. I hope you realize this.

[SuperOssi]

more stuff with new firmware
Added a new “WaveUser” Oscillator with 16 embedded Arturia Wavetables
Load your own wavetables using Midi Control Cente
Three new Oscillators types from Noise Engineering : BASS, SAWX and HARM
Unison mode available for all Oscillators, with control on the voice spread.

as always thanks for your effort on these reviews

[ConwayBob]

This is the first review of MicroFreak that got me thinking that maybe I should get one. Thanks, Lou Pop.

[MsCellobass]

Thank you much for your thoughtful display of this magic machine. Some YouTubers are ANNOYINGLY ALL TALK without showing anything.