From French synthesizer manufacturer, Arturia, this morning:
“As we’ve announced during the Arturia 15th Anniversary [in early October], it is time to reveal that in 2015 Arturia will introduce a new generation of audio interfaces.
“The next reveal about the product will be made on December 22nd….”
The short video teases the idea that Arturia is designing the new audio interfaces to be more “musical instrument-like” and that it will stand out from the growing range of gear that performs a similar function.
With only a single press photo (right) of a plain white square and the video, above, it’s impossible to guess whether the new interfaces will live up to the hyperbole.
We’ll keep you posted as we learn more information about the new Arturia gear.
The worst kind of hype- at least have SOME sort of substance to your tease…!
I hope it comes with the GREAT customer service they provide for all their products…. (I say facetiously…)
Can’t we just lose the software dongle before trying anything ‘newer and better’?
Please..?
dongles havent been necessary with them for some time now.
Great! A whole new generation of constantly buggy, often unstable software and cheaply-made, customer support-less hardware from Arturia!
I literally just had an Arturia rep finally reply to a tech support ticket I submitted in March. No joke.
What a hype-riddle they have given us to mull over!
Perhaps they gave us the clue. It removes “the octopus”. No wires?
It solves “the biggest problem” facing audio interfaces– not enough i/o (including MIDI?), that wouldn’t get rid of the octopus. Perhaps latency? (“Wait&see”). Perhaps poor build quality and noise mic pre’s?
Fortunately they are only solving one problem, so we won’t have to worry about having to buy it.
and as soon as these machines are out, please get one guy back to work on imini audiobus issues!
The only bad problem with current audio interfaces is that one must use one to get things done.
Agh, I see all the Arturia haters have turned up!
Arturia did a great thing with cheap analog synths like the mini and micro brute (particularly the latter in terms of a real analog for not much more than a vst….
I look forward to seeing what they have done in terms of a real analog digital interface!
Like the world needs more audio ins and outs. Fail…
gotta agree. the audio interface market continues to be as over-saturated as ever. i’d rather see them make a hardware controller with more knobs/sliders.
the Spark is an amazing piece of kit.
It’s kind of funny to see how much criticism there’s before we know anything about the new products?
Why? I think there’s simply one major reason: people are so frustrated with Arturia’s “business model” and their customer service. I am one of them. Their policy is to throw out as many products as possible and leave them unfinished. If you question this, just check Arturia Forum: it’s FULL of unhappy people waiting to get their problems fixed.
In my opinion most of their products are good on paper but realization leaves a lot to be desired. And it’s not a secret that their customer “service” is a disaster. To me it’s amazing that they feel that they can afford loose so many customers with this arrogant way of treating them. I am not saying that I will never buy any Arturia product (while many people say this) but I am very sceptic to anything new from this company. It must be a more like a miracle to invest my money to this company’s product.
That’s not my experience at all. My microBrute and beat step are solid as (and when I did screw up the settings I found the ticket system fast and efficient). I also use iMini and iSem on iPad and they sound great.
The ‘brute’ synths were game changers in my opinion, and not just cause they’re cheap. The OSC section is phenomenal.
The beatstep is also total no-brainer. When it first came out it was cheaper that pretty much any pad controller and you got rotary encoders and CV sequencing. No other company that I know of even came close, especially for the price.
December 22nd… Well, we have plenty of time to buy something else until then, LOL!
Way way too early for teasing with so little in the video…
I love my micro brute, it’s so instantly useable & fun. But I do agree with bagging of support from Arturia. I hope they come up with something original as there’s heaps of audio/midi interfaces out there.
I feel a tiny twitch of disappointment every time I hear about a new Arturia product. I love my MicroBrute, but I’m still kicking myself for buying the beatstep.
I suppose it taught me an important lesson: buy hardware for what it is, not for what it might become after a firmware update.
Are you talking about the sluggish rotary encoder thing? because a simple firmware update fixed that for me.
I can say that the company really is focussed on solving these support problems. ’till now most of these were software authorization related, and this is sort of bought from Steinberg (Syncrosoft), so it goes thru to many hoops, Most of the plugs can now be used dongle free (Alleluia)… and the info is all on the web site on how to re-license, swap computer etc… but it massively confusing!
In a very near future there will be a software manager kinda similar in purpose to NI’s Service Center, AND, finally, would be able to instal software and authorize it in up to 5 computers, via this.
A guy that used to work at Apple with similar functions is now hard at work on improving quality and service!
As to the rest I have never seen one product that at launch didn’t do exactly with it said it was supposed to do. In fact a lot of then do so much more a few months/ years down the road. Take Spark and Spark Le for instance!
I think the only really promising product that did fell a little sort was Origin! Not that It did less than it was supposed to do, but it didn’t delivered what everyone came to expect that it would do ( for instance to have all modules of all Arturia’s emulations, and to have it regular updated with more feat.s and modules).
Sound card – Can say much but it’s rather visually striking and their putting up against stuff like RME’s Babyface and Apogee 2 channel stuff, so they are aiming clearly above that… price point is unclear but I would bet a little (or not so little) bellow the mentioned competition, as Arturia is know to have “very reasonable pricing, for it’s build quality and feat.s”…
One of the revealed details is that it has 2 DISCRETE Pre-amps which I think is a first in the industry, and these won’t be cheap noisy Pre.amps… again the starting point is at least RME/ Apogee quality…
Regards and lets wait and see 😉
I for one am excited about this… 😉
I hope by “fully discrete audio” they mean they are putting Neve pre/eq in a sound card.
While there is an endless glut of audio interfaces they all seem to have the same problem. I love my DAW, plugins, and outboard gear. I hate my audio interface. It’s my least favorite part of makiing music today. Latency, bandwidth and connectivity limitations. Characterless preamps and poor midi implementation. We’ve had firewire, USB and Thunderbold for many years now yet these connections never fully solve the common issues we face everyday as musicians. Thunderbold can provide some good bandwidth, but unfortunately is becoming too “Mac only” for my taste. Firewire is mostly dead. USB2 interfaces mostly just don’t cut it. Yet the most capable and obvious connection – ethernet – somehow escapes the minds of gear developers. While I’m aware there are expensive high end systems out there from Focusrite, DigiGrid and Motu. Why can’t an underdog like Arturia make a sub thousand dollar ethernet based system which had plenty of bandwidth for audio and midi. If all of their keyboards (and other manufacturers) had ethernet on the back and it could completely free us from audio cables, midi cables and USB cables all in one go. It could even potentially be wireless if well implemented. Someone needs to shakeup the interface world with a new paradigm.
My guess would be a wireless interface 🙂
Control voltage is back. Think real hard. Stop the hate, you all chose to use vst’s rather than hardware so channel your anger somewhere else
only 1 question:
how about the LATENCY?!!!!!?
i solely use RME, because they have the FASTEST DRIVERS!