At the 2016 NAMM Show, Arturia introduced the MaxiBrute synthesizer.
This video offers an overview of the key features of the new synth.
The MatrixBrute is a programmable monophonic / duophonic analog synthesizer, outfitted with three ‘Brute’ oscillators, Steiner-Parker and ladder filters, three envelope generators, analogue effects and a matrix-style modulation matrix.
Pricing is expected to be around $1899.
A very reasonable price for such a feature packed synth. Fingers crossed Arturia can deliver the goods and give us a bug free modern sonic synth!
Doubt I’d ever leave my house ever again if I got this….very cool
That thing is a road to insanity. I don’t know if it will be the MatrixBrute or me, but I reason within six months one of us will be dead – I ain’t taking the risk, I am getting a Roland ScaredPants-100
Yes, she did say oscillazers! I call dibs on that name. Synth isn’t too shabby either!
OscilLazers would be a great band name !!
Looks like somebody already called dibs on it, tho…
everything she says can be guess just looking a hi-res photo of the instrument. We now need to listen the instrument and find a sound designer that demo the potential of the synth that in my opinion looks fantastic.
I hope the construction, software and plastic hardware is good.
Please show me at least one person who actually PLAY anything more than testes and exiting about the sound on Moog these days
That’s just nuts.
My feeling is that Arturia brought a not finished prototype to the NAMM, to avoid to lose the US market with this product launch, but we can clearly see that there is absolutely no preset in the synth, and the Arturia team on the booth are not prepared to do any good demo…
And when this synth breaks down. You will 2000 Euro studio decoration because Arturia Have zero I mean zero customer service. You can send 20 emails. And you will get no response. Hundreds of people say the same about their previous release the Origin micro-brutes etc. Which now collects dust in my storage and I haven’t way to fixit despite all efforts. Don’t buy this. Wish it was different
Yeah, this synth has me very excited but — Arturia made 2 Beatstep Pros that broke on me. I would have to wait another six months from release just to evaluate the experience of end users concerning the Matrixbrute before I would buy one, and only if it was given a healthy thumbs up.
yes thart is really true, i have an iprophet for ipad-3 an ARTURIA must admit that this software synth is really a 4VOICE synth!!!!
aditional to that either ARTURIA or someone else cares about!!
well the 8 voice spread in I-prophet…it´s a fake !!
Withheld: Regrettably I concur wholeheartedly. I had a conversation with Frederic Brun, the CEO of Arturia a couple of years ago at Messe and he told me pointedly that the Origin nearly bankrupt the company and that any further OS development would be halted as there are not enough users to justify time away from other products. I was stunned! I argued that at the very least the synth should be stabilised, regardless Arturia’s business model is astonishingly NOT customer service driven. Classic sell and abandon. I could never support them, no matter what they created unless they fundamentally changed their methods which sadly ash become a habit at this point.
A beta presentation from any other company would not alarm me, however from Arturia, you are seeing what will be essentially the finished product.
Yup. That non-functioning display unit is exactly what you will receive from them when this ships.
My Beatstep is a pain to use and won’t receive anymore updates.
My Beatstep Pro died once and the replacement is problematic as it sometimes needs to be booted up twice to work in Sync. It will have to be mailed to Arturia for service…and you can guess how that goes.
My Microbrute works well enough, as long as you don’t expect it to output a voltage within 5% of what it should be. So it’s worthless as a controller unless you are going for a really random “human” feel.
Their hardware, in general, is crap.
I don’t care if Arturia have crap service, the shops I buy from give their own warranties of 2 or 3 years, I don’t need to go back to Arturia.
I always wonder why that is entrusted with the presentation just as ingenious new devices such employees !
the matrix brute should be played as soon as possible by an experienced musician in the net !
On the one hand large sums are invested in the device development to ?? to be then presented in sequence so ! ? !!
shameful.
This behavior show currently very many companies , a mystery !
my producers to sell their products over their specs ?? !
how about some proper english first…
Obviously not an English speaker.
Try posting in Italian or Japanese on a native site before you make fun of others abilities.
I don’t get the sequencer. I mean, this thing has got like 16 instances, but the synth only has one or two voices at a time. When she turns it on at 2:37, it plays a monophonic sequence, although all 16 instances are activated?!?
It has 4 columns of 16(=64) sreps. Each column has buttons for Step, Accent, Slide and Mod.
And to my GREATEST disappointment ever:
Finally there seemed to be a great synth with lots of potential to be fantastic centerpiece of your setup with a matrix sequencer and all.
But the bloody sequencer only has ONE instance.
If it would have run a couple of tracks for playing external gear while at it, it would be my dream synth and I would buy it in an instance. Now it is useless for me.
You’re not good at this, are you? 16 instances of what? It’s 4 bars (displayed at once) that go to a mono synth
Put the others out to modulation destinations, eg if you want to sequence the filter or amp emv attack.
$1999 @ Sweetwater preorder
She did say “under”…
I think that if I was going to get one synth this year it would not be the Minilogue (though if one were offered to me, I’d not say no), or the OB-6, it would be the Matrix Brute. This is by far the most exciting synth to have come out in quite a while. The price in US dollars suggests around $3000 AUD at the moment, though I’m tipping it will go above that down under. But hey – if I sell my Microbrute SE, my Minibrute and my Novation Bass Station 2, then that will ease the pain. I am interested in hearing the synth perform properly – the beeps and buzzes they have programmed for NAMM seem a bit limited, but looking at its capability I’m sure this synth can sound powerful. I sense this is a real competitor to the Moog Voyager, and even though Korg have gotten a lot of attention with the Minilogue, they must me wondering whether they need to pull something else out of the hat to compete with this. An ARP 2600 re-issue maybe in time for Musik Messe?
Yeah they are distributed by CMI like korg, so if they can double the price of the minilogue, you just know this thing will be $3500aud.
Nice try with this product placement comment, Arturia. This thing to compete against the Moog Voyager? Yeah, right!! I know they copied the look, but seriously, come on! Their hardware is starting to sound like the Behringer of the synth world.
I love Rebecca’s presentations, she’s always clear and knows the details. She clearly has a passion for this progression Arturia are taking.
I just wish they’d gone poly.
And i hope they sell that sequencer stand alone.
The Matrixbrute is a nice surprise from Arturia. However, dare I say, this is more synth than I was hoping for from Arturia (along with being more expensive).
What I was hoping to see from Arturia was a synth along the lines of the Minibrute. A synth perhaps called the Brute with two (or three) oscillators (just like those on the Minibrute) and the Steiner-Parker filter and a three octave keyboard. A synth that perhaps would cost $800. The Matrixbrute is a lot more and a lot more expensive.
Aside from the content of this review, the audio of this review is painful
Roll off 1 – 2 kHz on Rebecca’s voice. It hurts my ears.
Nic does a great “look at” on sonic state, 3000 aud someone has to do something about Australian prices as 3000 is out of my league 2000 ish my max, it’s a pity our market down here is controlled by just a few!
so many opinions on videos that NEVER show someone playing the instrument… please post a video of someone using it is impossible to create an opinion just by photos and tech specs.
really? only ONE parameter can be assigned to the Modulation track? and only ONE parameter can be automated in the step sequencer???? …. these machine need an urgent redesign to explode the use of that massive matrix of buttons for sequence more than ONE parameter.
Im a big fan of step sequence many parameters changes and I can believe these new big machine with all that beautiful hardware CANT DO IT!!
I think that it is one modulation track, but you can assign many parameters to it in the mid matrix.
No, in the video of SONICSTATE they ask about the modulation track in the sequencer and the answer was only ONE parameter can be assign in the modulation track… you can sens Nick’s disappointment too.
I love edit parameter in step sequencers and these is non sens in these era, Im sure there is a software solution but I think they must fix that before selling the machine.
Pretty sure it’s also Paraphonic.
The voice modes were briefly explained in Sonic State’s NAMM footage. There are three voice modes: monophonic, paraphonic and “duo-split”. In duo-split mode, the sequencer and the left side of the keyboard control one oscillator and it always goes through the ladder filter. The right side controls the other one and it always goes through the Steiner-Parker filter. No info on how the third oscillator behaves in duo mode.
Dodgy firmware alert !
Great concept in some ways, seq presentation looks usable and it probably sounds OK too but if the firmware is like the BSP …..
I fell in love with Rebecca
i like it but i won’t touch one till they have been out for some time and the firmware has been updated several times. its got bugs written all over it and its nothing personal about arturia but theirs a lot to go wrong on it and experience tells me, if can, it will!
I like her
IDK, I think Arturia may have bit off more than it can chew with this one. I love my Microbrute, but it is admittedly a pretty cheap-feeling little machine (which is part of its charm). This sort of just seems like a bunch of microbrutes cobbled together with an obnoxious sequencer and some additional fx. I’m not sure if a Frankenstein microbrute is really going to be worth the $2K, especially if their manufacturing goes the way it has in the past with their other releases. I’d love for them to prove me wrong, but I have a feeling they may have set themselves up for a spectacular failure with this beast.
I’ve owned several , Excuse me, I’ve TRIED to own several Arturia products but every one of them were bug farms. They should start naming their products after insects. The Arturia Dung Beetle or The Arturia Cockroach. From Origin to Spark to Sparkle to Analog Lab, nothing but system crashes and lockups. And NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. This MaxiBrute looks like the coolest synth ever made but if I know Arturia, It’s nothing but a big expensive lite-brite ornament that occasionally produces noise.
i was almost sold on this synth until all the comments about breaking downm bad customer service etc i would have to pay 2500.20 dollars, here in norway for it, so its a lot of cash to spend on my first “real” synth, having only a gaia sh01. to compare With. its either this or the prophet 12!
Well people are knocking Arturia so much here I thought I would chip in with something positive – I just love my minibrute SE, this is a never-sell little monosynth. Pity it only has a 12db filter but that is the only weakness, the oscillators are amazing. When you combine the waveshaping ability on ALL oscillators with the fact that all waveforms are simultaneously available, you can always tweak it to cut through a mix. The in-built sequencer is ridiculously simple to use and a very creative tool, especially when you use the swing function.
Me – I have been playing synths since I bought my first Korg MS-20 in 1978 and currently have 23 of them in my studio, including new analog synths like the Sub37 and Prophet 6, and older ones like the Monopoly and Matrix 1000. I will definitely be trying the Matrixbrute out as soon as it turns up here in the UK