Arturia let us know that they’ve released a major update to the firmware for their MicroFreak synthesizer, adding three new oscillator modes and more.
MicroFreak Firmware V3, created in collaboration with Eurorack maker Noise Engineering, adds a variety of new features:
- 3 Noise Engineering oscillator modes – Bass, SawX, Harm; 3 new algorithms that also feature in Noise Engineering’s flexible Virt Iter module, offering additive harmonic color, wavefolding, phase modulation, and more. Digital never sounded so dirty.
- Unison mode – Up to 4-voice unison is now available for all oscillator types, with unison spread of up to 12 semitones that can also be used as a modulation destination. Make your basses bigger and your melodies more massive than ever.
- More factory presets and slots – The number of preset slots has increased from 256 to 384, giving you more legroom to make MicroFreak your own – this even includes 96 more factory presets for more musical madness straight out the box.
- Saving and loading presets – Enhancements to preset functionality makes MicroFreak easier and more intuitive than ever, including loading the last saved preset upon restart, and always retaining Chord Mode’s most recent chord within your saved preset.
You can see MicroFreak Firmware v3 in action in the video above. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the update:
The update is available a free download for MicroFreak owners.
Why do they have dead trees in their office? That disturbs me.
Because they’ve been working so hard for so long on the firmware during lock-down, they forgot to water them!
– see all the cigarette butts, coke cans and pizza boxes in the background *_*
Birch trees held much symbolism in ancient times, especially for the Celtics and the alchemists. But, it’s mainly cool and symbolic because psilocybin grows on dead birch 🙂
Nonono… headbanging and wristflipping again.
The 3 new Oscillator types really add value n sonic power to this Freaky Beast. The new presets are unbelievable. I love using this keyboard for working out new ideas. Just within this last hour after I did the upgrade
I came u with 2-3 new sketches.
Nice work Arturia and Noise Engineering!! Very nice work.
This update is amazing. Just amazing.
Out of the box it was a great value synth, then the (previous) additions brought the noise oscillator and the vocoder as a nice bonus – then these 3 new oscillators are really uniquely useful and great sounding.
Fantastic value synth this.
…did he touch the DFAM? 🙁
I’m looking forward to the soulful Bernie worrell inspired update that is hopefully in the pipeline.
In the meantime loving this instrument.
Lucky Tom, to have three of them lined up! Its interesting to watch this keep growing in a way that resembles the Korg -logue family. It does a lot of modular work without requiring a traditional rack to get there. I’d love to see a slightly more premium model with a tougher case & knobs, but its still a keeper.
Been considering selling my mininova for one of these. Can anyone speak to the experience of programing the micro freak? Mininova is cool, but I feel like it pretty much needs to be hooked up to the CPU to program anything interesting.
Buy it and do not look back. Programming Microfreak is amazingly easy and you never need to touch your computer.
Programming it is fun and easy — I just have it starting with an INIT preset and make something new from scratch every time.
@Wilson: it’s amazingly powerful and intuitive. double functions on many of the knobs via shift button, a few functions buried in the utility menu but arguably for a reason. the mod matrix is insanely powerful and you can basically mod everything, with a sequencer that can also record multiple modulations. the OLED screen could stand to be a bit bigger but it’s still informative and even has cute animated graphics in places. really no need for an editor, but there’s a nifty free one for max4live that will allow for outside editing or automation. it does have a weak output signal unless you use just the right audio cable (balanced mono, i believe). also if you power it with USB rather than with the proprietary wall wart it will most likely do glitchy weird things its not supposed to. but i love the thing. one of my favorite synths ever.
I’ve got mine powered by USB and it’s working 100% fine. But I’ve heard other people say that only the pitch bend strip acts weird for them over USB.
@Alf,Starthief, John Paulson,
Thanks! Sounds close to perfect for me. Mininova is good, and extremely versatile, but every time I think about dusting it off, all I can think of is how annoying it is to hook it up and load the dorky-looking editor.
@Wislon the freak is 4 voices paraphonic, while the Mininova is a true poly. otherwise the sound engine of the freak is very modern, even has the mutable instruments Plaits which is one of the best voices for Eurorack, and insane for this price. if you don’t mind sacrificing the polyphony, swapping the mininova for the freak is a no-brainer.
New update is awesome, looo e the new oscillators
Such a cool device. Had a blast with the new oscillators last night. This thing is so rad.
Usually I’m not keen on the Arturia music demos videos but I must confess that this one is superb, sounds really fantastic
I use mine as an animoog style board for my old school 5U Moog modular. You can send S-triggers by menu diving. Highly recommended.
Gosh, I don’t know it’s possible but wouldn’t be nice if Arturia could work in some kind of Reverb and delay variants into a future firmware upgrade. Mind you, I love my Microfreak even if they never do it! Not whining here!!
This last upgrade blew me away. My wife had to pull me out the wall ….
My Microfreak, to me, was a great investment. Hats off to Arturia and Noise Engineering.
The hole in my studio wall is testimony to the fact I was blown away ….has a sign over it noting “here is proof of a home body artist being blown away on such and such date/time!!!
Give Arturia credit for supporting this instrument. It is astoundingly versatile for its price. It’s going to be a classic one day.
Rumors of a new update coming for the MICROFREAK :
https://www.reddit.com/r/MicroFreak/comments/qcvg39/something_very_good_is_about_to_happen_to_your/