EM has an interesting review of the Arturia Origin Keyboard – a new “laptop keyboard” that features sound modules from famous synthesizers (Moog Modular, ARP 2600, CS-80, Jupiter-8, Minimoog and Prophet 5 and Prophet VS) and organs (Tonewheel, Rotary).
EM’s reviewer, Gary Yealton, was impressed with Arturia’s $3499 keyboard synth:
I highly recommend the Origin Keyboard. It’s an inspiring piece of well-designed gear at a fair price. It isn’t cheap, but you get a tremendous amount of sound engine for your money.
Although the Origin has lots of useful and interesting factory programs, it’s one of those synthesizers obviously designed with programmers in mind. If you like to build sounds from scratch, you could spend many happy hours and years exploring and programming the Origin Keyboard. If live performance is your gig, it could very effectively take the place of half a dozen vintage keyboards onstage.
I was especially impressed by the well-thought-out versatility of the ribbon controller, which may be reason enough to prefer the keyboard model over the module.
See the full review at EM. And if you’ve tried out the Arturia Origin Keyboard yourself, let us know what you think of it!
Is any keyboard worth $3500 anymore?
Faster laptop, same software, better keyboard = $2k tops. Almost everyone appreciates what this company does, and it's quality of product, but they couldn't have put a few midi knobs on the keyboard as well? The desktop would be a much more financially rewarding purchase.
$3500 for a VA presumably based on their soft-synths of questionable respect? Paaaaleese! You better be giving me real analog hw for that money. In the VA category they're putting themselves up against the Virus TI2 with this, the TI2 being well respected and loaded with amazing presets, and they're charging more than it! This has to be the most boneheaded move ever.
Reminds me in a way of Open Labs, and look what happened to them..
Hmm, reading some more recent reviews maybe their emulation quality has improved. I still would not pay anywhere near that price for this.
I love its sounds, sequencer, crazy dream modular stuff, interface and its duophonic aftertouch…but speaking of touch; at this price you could at the very least have included a touch screen!!! That alone keeps me away from this.
Wtf, I would rather buy a real moog with real components.
Yeah, in that price range it'd be hard to compete with a Virus. I get what Alastair was saying about open labs, but I think the open labs would be more worth it because you're not getting a proprietary system, (at least from my understanding) it's a full fledged PC built into a keyboard (with a touchscreen) and you can put whatever software you want on it. At any rate, the words "ribbon controller" always get me a little excited, but short of that I would need to see the price come way down before I would seriously consider it.
MiniMoog Voyager XL