Arturia iMini – A Virtual Minimoog Synth For The iPad

ipad-minimoog-arturia-iminiArturia has released, iMini, a software recreation of the classic Minimoog for the iPad.

iMini is based on Arturia Mini V software, originally created in partnership with Dr. Robert Moog, back in 2003. iMini comes with a large collection of preset sounds, created by Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream), Geoff Downes (Asia) and other sound designers.

Arturia has also partnered with the Bob Moog Foundation so that a portion of each sale goes to support their work in music education, making available the archives of Dr. Bob Moog and funding the Moogseum.

Here’s the official intro for iMini:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aoIKCS_jsY

Features:

  • Minimoog sound.
  • 3 Oscillators
  • 24db per octave filter.
  • Simulated headphone jack/external input feedback.
  • 2 Assignable XY pads
  • Chromatic or tuned scale keyboard modes
  • Polyphonic mode
  • Full featured arpeggiator
  • Repeat
  • HOLD and MEMORY latch modes
  • Octave span
  • 5 note order modes
  • Speed and sync controls
  • Virtual Analog Chorus
  • Virtual Analog Delay
  • Owners of both the iMini and Mini V software apps can transfer sounds from one platform to the other via iTunes.
  • Full user MIDI mapping of panel controls.
  • Supports WIST sync with other iOS devices.
  • Tabletop Ready
  • Soundcloud seeder (via Tabletop)
  • Render to .wav file (via Tabletop)
  • Audiocopy to paste your audio into another iPAD application. (via Tabletop)

Arturia iMini is available now for $9.99

66 thoughts on “Arturia iMini – A Virtual Minimoog Synth For The iPad”

      1. Some patches work on the iPad 1 in mono mode, but I think the iPad 2 requirement is accurate.

        Too bad though – I wonder if they could get it to work fully if they tried; after all the original Minimoog V could run on a 1 GHz Power Mac G4 (come to think of it, Reason, Live, Logic and other audio software worked fine on my old PowerBooks which had even less in the way of CPU and RAM…)

  5. Umm…It’s totally ok to bring yet ANOTHER VA to the iPad. But honestly, I think there’s a little too much VA stuff that’s being pushed to the iPad.
    Just have a look at the incredibly awesome stuff Wolfang Palm is doing on iOS. It’s so much more challenging and fun to program the WaveGenerator! The sounds are so much more interesting and really have a reason to exist in the digital domain, because, well they are DIGITAL at heart! Even Moog didn’t bother with VA on their Animoog. It’s just not what the iPad is good at!

    Also, decent sounding, real analog synths have become really affordable. Mono Lancet, Dark Energy, MFB, Minitaur, MS-20 Mini, Minibrute, Mopho…There’s more than one for every taste!

    2. Another key feature is that patches can be moved from iPad to desktop, allowing you to do some cool sound design on the go and easily use it on a desktop DAW later.

  8. Works fine on iPad 1 , but keep it in mono and close all previous apps.
    It sound great and compared to the animoog it’s a pretty good jobs but can’t beat the beast.
    Midi learn is perfect, now let’s try it on tabletop together with the MPC, wow, exciting !!!!
    And withsome small analog around it’s perfect.

  9. now this is bizarre. a few days ago i actually dreamt of arturia porting synths to ios.
    woke up, thought:bummer, but it would be funny if this hapenned anytime soon.

    and now this.
    i am off to try and explode some heads with my powers.

    1. yep. I love you Retronyms. Your app is slick and pretty and could fill the gap that I always thought Reason for iOS would fill… but alas, the synths are underwhelming, the space is limited, and every sandbox gets boring after a while, even if someone throws in a shovel and a pail (meaning iMPC and iMini… I don’t think my analogy was very clear…)

      ahem…. just add audio bus… there…. I said it.

  11. Does it have the velocity/aftertouch control over MIDI option that the desktop version has? Anybody tried it with a MIDI controller with velocity yet?

  14. This is great news, – rest of the collection please Arturia – with the real estate on Retina even the Moog modular should be no problem.

    +1 for Audiobus support as well!

    Kind regards

    Derek Jones, Owner: MusicInclusive LLC.

  15. I was ready to buy until I discovered there is no Audiobus support. I just don’t understand why a major develop would leave this out. It’s like crippling your app on purpose.

    2. It’s very wise to release “something” and add features over time, rather than wait until the product is “perfect”. You can fund continued development of the product and because there is no perfect. Just like a real bus, your AudioBus will be along shortly.

    3. Would Arturia be able to acquire the Audiobus SDK, or would they have to wait until it became public?
      I’m a bit puzzled as to which developers have been given access; I mean, I understand that ‘the major players’ got it, but then there are others that I found surprising.
      Not being familiar with the whole SDK ‘thing’, or developing for that matter, I’m just curious.
      I’m sure it’ll get Audiobus in the future, whatever the case might be.

      1. FWIW, the creator of Audiobus, when asked on his forum about this getting it, said tell them to email me. So I think pretty much anyone can get the SDK by now, but they still have to ask.
        Doesn’t tell us whether or not they have any intention of adding it, but if they wanted to they probably could….

    4. ..or not. Looks like it was actually Retronyms who ported the app, and they seem to be too invested in their Tabletop ecosystem to care about Audiobus, Virtual Midi etc.

      1. Sebastian, a dev for Audiobus, said on the forum to “Just you guys wait.” in response to Audiobus and TT coming together.

        The question is… how? They both are very keen on keeping their interfaces simple and intuitive. I wonder if TT will show up in AB’s device list, or if AB will become a TT module… or BOTH?

  16. No Audiobus…. Wah, wah. Currently hate iMPC as well. Totally botches the alphabetical import of cd sampler libraries through iTunes. Have requested that Retrowhims fix this many times. No help there.

  21. £7 for a pretty faithful mini moog yes please! – doesn’t the desktop version cost like over £100? The sound is gorgeous to my untrained ears.

  23. I just read that it only works within tabletop which comes in at nearly 1 GB in size since it includes every plugin which can be unlocked via in app purchases. I cannot spare the drive space for overpriced bloat ware. Too bad.

    1. To be fair, the app itself does work stand alone, which is fine for just playing out to speakers. But if you want to do any recording or audio export, you’ll need to use it from within Tabletop.

    2. I should clarify that audio copy feature is only available from within tabletop. The stand alone version without the basic ability to paste to other apps is practically useless to me. One should not have to install nearly a gig of bloat ware just to have basic audio copy functionality.

  24. price is really nice. beyond that it is just another 1:1 port. Another big developer that forgot how to being innovative with a multi touchscreen computer. thats the main feature of the gadget.

    1. Update: Downloaded a most recent version of Tabletop and now iMini is running inside Tabletop. Still needs Audio Bus, Background Audio, etc…

  26. Do the knobs on a real Minimoog exhibit as much stepping as they do in iMini,
    or is that just Arturia’s simulation of 43 years of oxide accumulation on the potentiometers?

  27. Audiobus support will be great yeah, but has anyone pointed out that there is no background audio, or am I wrong? Can’t find it anywhere. Very good VA none the less.

  28. as much as its hideous that this app only records
    within tabletop, its equally hideous to see self imposed limitations by persons who cannot use an app unless its audiobus enabled. Clearly arturia have some arrangement with retronyms, and we can just stick with the other great synths we have!

    If a product doesnt fit our needs, we dont buy it!

  30. Its a great little synth, and has good sound. But I wish they would midi-enable it so I could use ios sequencers. Oh and of course secondXX Audiobus.
    XY pads are a great feature though 🙂

      1. Only a few patches seem to work satisfactorily on the iPad 1, and only in mono, but I was still pleased to have it work with LMM!!

  31. i’m not an audiobus or nothing guy (in fact i don’t have audiobus yet), but the fact that all audio recording needs to be in tabletop is a deal-breaker for me.

    oh well, save my money for something else.

  33. lol, what’s all the fuzz about?
    tabletop r u kidding?
    i erased the auturia minimoog vst they gave out 4 free last year, it just sounds bad
    but all u need to say is moog and everybody is head over heals in love with it

  34. I’m no Audiobus diva or anything, although it’s hugely appreciated when it’s included, (honestly, I’m surprised ios music really got anywhere without it). But for a developer like Arturia, who make such classy plugs like the Moog Modular, where every little detail is thought of and more, why they chose to release this with only Tabletop integration is beyond me. That’d be like only being able to run Arturia’s VST’s inside Garageband. Ah, hell… I’ll probably still buy it anyway.

  36. Can you share patches you create with this with the arturia vst? Would be cool if it was just a dedicated midi controller for each of their products in one so you can control many instances in your DAW from this nice interface. Does it sound the same as the vst?

  38. just bought it and I was testing out the presets in a hurry to see if it matches the vst version, hell it does! there’s a patch called k_ujiue Fat, and it’s really really fat, something I missed are the modulation options present in the VST version, and audiobus , but its a really good app

  40. Since I didn’t notice anyone else mention it, the other problem of using iMini in TT is that polyphony is disabled within TT.

    Apologies if someone did already say that…

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