Arturia Intros V Collection 8, Adding 4 New Instruments

Arturia today introduced V Collection 8, the latest version of their virtual instrument bundle.

The new version introduces 4 new instruments:

  • Jun-6 V “Legendary easy-to-use polysynth with an irresistible creamy sound that stirs the soul.”
  • Emulator II V – An ‘80s sampling icon
  • Vocoder V – a 16-channel vocoder, supercharged with its own sampler and synth engine.
  • OB-Xa V – base on the classic polysynth

It also features 2 upgraded titles:

  • Jup-8 V4 – The polyphonic flagship reborn with a colossal new sound and modulation engine.
  • Stage-73 V2 – EP classic with redesigned physical modeling

Official intro videos:

Pricing and Availability:

V Collection 8 is available now with an intro price of $499 (normally $599).

46 thoughts on “Arturia Intros V Collection 8, Adding 4 New Instruments”

  2. Looks like they want $200 to upgrade and get the four new instruments. Not very enticing in a world where companies like Cherry Audio are releasing $25 versions of the Juno-106. I’ll stick with version 7.

    1. Totally agree. The upgrade prices are absurd. People: don’t buy it until they get real with their pricing, which they definitely will if enough people don’t cave and just pay through the nose.

    3. What??? 200$ is a comparatively cheap price for four premium analog modelled instruments. Their prices are gonna drop, but 200$ is not unreasonable for a launch price at all. There are plenty of SINGLE plugin synths released every year for 200$, Arturia are asking 200$ for four…

      1. $200 as an upgrade price is totally, egregiously unreasonable. The entire bundle currently costs $499 and has 28 instruments. Arturia are demanding 40% of that as an upgrade price even if, like me, you own V7. 4 out of the 28 instruments are new–approximately 14% of the bundle. You call that “comparatively cheap”? Lay off the glue. Or go ahead and shell out that exorbitant price if you’re so eager to overpay. But I hope most people don’t allow themselves to be fleeced by this garbage corporate behavior. This is one of many instances where a company treats their supposedly valued existing customer base like hostages. I like Arturia’s products, but this upgrade pricing is so bad it’s actually insulting.

        2. Like I said, there are several single 200$ plugin instruments of comparable quality released every year. So Arturia asking the same amount for four instruments is comparatively reasonable. 499$ is VERY cheap for that amoung of instruments, 199$ is comparatively cheap. It feels very entitled to ask for Arturia to sell their premium software for rock bottom budget prices (which under 50$ is) at launch, not to mention they will be very cheap if you wait until next summer’s sales…

    4. I just paid $99 to upgrade from V6 to V7 on Black Friday, now they want to charge me another $199 for V8 and it’s been less than two weeks! I’ve been with them since V3, and have paid them more over the years to keep upgrading than someone just diving in now.Yikes!

      1. Man just contact the support, tell them that, you surely could get the upgrade for the difference. You never know before trying 😉

    5. Some major shifts in softsynth and plugin pricing have started. Not quite a pricewar but $29 is the new $150. So pricing remains a key issue to keep in mind. Yes, Arturia offers steep discounts twice a year (one of those just ended a few days ago). But they expect that people pay a significant upgrade price every year, which puts the subscription model in perspective (e.g. ROLAND, Plugin Alliance…).

      What I find the most disappointing, though, is that they didn’t expand MPE to other synths in the lineup. Pigments remains the only Arturia softsynth which supports it. At minimum, it’d fit the Buchla emulation.

      The free version of Vital is a worthy alternative to Pigments and the inexpensive Cherry Audio synths also support MPE. Applied Acoustic Systems has a rather solid lineup as well at a reasonable price, though those synths are like Arturia’s in not supporting MPE. ZEN-Core might not be everyone’s cup of tea but ROLAND now makes it central to a strategy which integrates their hardware (including the just-announced AE-30 Aerophone “Pro”).

      Arturia might be paying too little attention to “the room”. Sure, some people who’ve been in this for a while might be fine with this yearly expansion of a few extra emulations of beloved synths. Just had a whole discussion with a former student who’s just getting into electronic music, A whole part was about Arturia’s controller. Hadn’t noticed this release. Analog Lab could eventually be a factor in such purchase decisions. Or software versions of MicroFreak engines. In the end, we figured it’s best to focus on using the iPad as controller for now, and using a large Yamaha keyboard for performance. Arturia has great products, including *Step series, the FX Collection, the *Brute series… But they make it sound like they take their customers and users for granted as profit centres.

    3. OB was released about 5 days after I purchased the collection. Thought for sure they would just add it on. They wanted me to pay another 99 bucks to grab it. Nah. No ways. Honestly I don’t really like the new UI for AL this go around. I’ll stick with what I got. If I can’t make tunes with what I have it’s me that is the problem. Shiny is always nice but not always needed.

  5. And I’ll bet you still can’t put the Jup-8v in proper 8-voice subtractive unison mode…… and its LFO only goes up to 20hz.

    1. Manual for the new one says for the lfo: ‘,the frequency range goes from .035
      Hz (incredibly slow!) to 30 Hz (which is in the low end of the audible range)’

    2. that and the new unison mode is now 100% faithful to how the original behaves (with the same subtractive voice management) 🙂

  6. I have zero need for more emulations of old things, especially at the price point. The next step is to mash all this modelling tech together into ONE instrument, in which the user can pick and choose the components to use, ala Diva style. Pigments is great… so… do that please, Arturia!

  7. Arturia and Native instruments always offer their current software upgrade at an attractive price just before announcing the next one. It’s pretty much a sign that a new version is coming.

  8. Having played a lot of the originals, I know that Arturia gets the character of each instrument right. Being able to drop user samples into their Mellotron & Emulator is yuge, if you want to fiddle with it. I recommended their Moog Modular V to a friend who cranked it through good speakers and it sounded very much like my MiniMoog, kaboom! Its easy to envision buying 2 or 3 of these separately to fill out a rig. OTOH, If someone wants to live in a singular environment like this for a big space opera, its not as if they’d be lacking much.

    1. I picked them up on the Black Friday sale and they sound great. I own a bunch of hardware and these are my first software instruments.

      However, I find I can’t use more than about 2 instances of V collection instruments before static, dropouts, and running out of ram. It’s kind of soured me to the whole software instrument thing. At least until I can afford a better processor and more ram.

  9. Well.. I’m sticking with V collection 7.1 for now. I do notice they dropped a bunch of updates on Most of the existing instruments. But Damn! Software Center sucks! Its annoying! It has the problem that it starts downloading an update and it gets stuck! It’s a frustrating installation experience!

  10. Also, I notice that everyone here one is quoting “$200” ??? Not in my case.. If I wanted to upgrade it would be $149 …. why the difference?

    1. Mine is too ($299) – probably because I skipped V7 upgrade. Shocking when I could be a new customer and pick it up for a $100 more. Says a lot about how they treat current customers. Was upgrading every release before that. I’ve had the V collection, since V2 and it’s always the same. Intro upgrade is never the best, hold-out for six to eight months and you’ll pay half or less, depending on how long you hold out. I analyzed this last year when I only really cared about the Synthi being added, but it ran like crap on both my systems. They have a 16-18 month release cycle between major versions. Personally, I’ll wait till the summer or next Fall when they have a sale, but I refuse to give them more than $100 per upgrade. If they can’t meet me there, I’ll keep waiting. I have plenty of other synths to keep me busy.

  12. I have some NFRs of these instruments and generally don’t like any of them as much as Omni or U-he. Some of the new ones are pretty good, but a lot of the stuff is for some reason very uninspiring to me.

    1. Yep, got it without paying a cent. Rest of the content doesn’t interest me at all…
      Maybe ver 9..?
      Skipping this one for sure and it’s not even MacOS BS or M1 ready…

    2. Agreed – I tend to skip a version on both this bundle and NI Komplete, and even then, only buy during a sale. Rarely buy anything full price any more to be honest.

  16. Excuse my english.. but – the Emulator II V … it’s not a sampler – like the original. The original can record samples. This one – can only import them.. It’s a sample player!!

    The stole the looks of an Emulator II, but they did certainly not emulate one.

    (btw It’s the same with the Fairlight CMI – and their Synclavier as well if I remember this correctly.. got the V-Collection 7 here… I still think the Moog Modular Vis the best they have come up with so far.. what started them out.. ).

  19. Wait a few months and you can get this update for 99 euro. This is also the highest price I would pay for this update. But this time I will wait a year and update than for the same price to V9. The same goes for NI bundle or rob papen bundles sometimes is waiting one year much better for your wallet…

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