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Arturia SQ80 V + 2 Sound Banks + V Collection 8 Upgrade - $149


Olong Johnson

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1 hour ago, telecode 101 said:

i listened to the demos and the soundpacks. i like the sound of it. but i think i have too many retro synth VIs. I think I will pass. I have all the arturia products  I need.

I'm in the same boat.  I have had this conversation with @abacab - I used to think there wasn't such a thing as too many synths, but now I think differently.  (Unless its hardware synths - you can't have too many of those).

At some point, I will probably get Fathom.  

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12 minutes ago, husker said:

I'm in the same boat.  I have had this conversation with @abacab - I used to think there wasn't such a thing as too many synths, but now I think differently.  (Unless its hardware synths - you can't have too many of those).

At some point, I will probably get Fathom.  

I have Fathom Pro, and all the sound packs. One of the best sounding synths out there! Very powerful semi-modular synth, with tons of options that allow you to build up your own signal chain and modulations.

But I struggle with the GUI, especially if I have not used it in a while. Not entirely intuitive to dig into. The synth is developed by a one-man shop, who has generally been very accessible via KVR forums, but he has shown little interest in changing the GUI or workflow. He does not care for skeuomorphic design.

Since I now have Voltage Modular by Cherry Audio, I wish to pursue my modular ramblings in their entirely skeumorphic and intuitive workflow. It has infinite possibilities! 😎

Edited by abacab
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22 hours ago, scook said:

I upgraded from V 6 this morning using the $149 offer in my account.

The invoice does not mention SQ80 but the Software Center installed it.

Later I went into my account to look for the 2 expansion packs and found them along with a few others I forgot.

It was sorted within 30 to 60 minutes.

SQ80 sounds pretty good (messed with it for just a couple minutes).

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Though I had 7 I went for this. I weighed it up and say pretty much 6 or 7 new synths added for the $149 inc the SQ80v which I more than likely would have bought anyway.

As i outlined above, i used the 4 month easi payment plan for the extra $5 .. next 3 months $37. Not for many but i do think this kind of plan for software etc is a nice option for us who wish to manage our finances in a way. 

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For those on FACEBOOK - Arturia V Collection Users (International/Global) GROUP:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2742887915850458/

They are now discussing an apparent imminent V Collection 9

A Q asked is:

So what is expected in V9

And ans is:

 I have no idea but Arturia made a comment mentioning they would look after you on pricing if you took advantage of buying the V8 discounted price when V9 comes out.

 

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Excellent. After years at V6, and never finding the magical $99 upgrade to either V7 or V8, they've finally made me an offer I can't refuse.

The $199 upgrades they'd been offering were too expensive for the (to me) limited usefulness of the somewhat more esoteric things they've added since V6. Only ones I wanted were the Mellotron and the Emulator II...

But those plus the SQ-80 for $149 (and some other stuff thrown in for good measure), now we're talking!

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11 hours ago, John Bradley said:

Excellent. After years at V6, and never finding the magical $99 upgrade to either V7 or V8, they've finally made me an offer I can't refuse.

The $199 upgrades they'd been offering were too expensive for the (to me) limited usefulness of the somewhat more esoteric things they've added since V6. Only ones I wanted were the Mellotron and the Emulator II...

But those plus the SQ-80 for $149 (and some other stuff thrown in for good measure), now we're talking!

What John said!!

Just purchased and downloaded - i have about 6/7 new synths - excellent value and I will use certainly some of them!!

Nigel

 

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Despite (or perhaps because of) owning a working Ensoniq ESQ-1 and copies of the now abandoned SQ8L and Krosswave software emulations of the ESQ-1’s successor, the SQ-80, this week I spent actual money on yet another emulation of the SQ-80, the Arturia SQ80 V.

My first impression is that it is so much better all round to have graphical representations of synthesis parameters like envelopes and filters than just digital readouts. The SQ family were state of the art for ease of programming in the 1980s, but expectations and technology have changed since then.

With their gains balanced, playing the same programs on the original 1986 hardware ESQ-1 and the new 2021 software SQ80 V, I am hard-pressed to tell them apart, so my verdict is that this is a faithful emulation. It should be though, as the old and free 32-bit SQ8L, which still works, is also close (even though it has some differences the developer deemed improvements).

I ran into some odd behaviour when I imported a bank of ESQ-1 programs. Twice the Arturia software appeared to duplicate every program in the bank, telling me there were 80 when I had uploaded only 40, but this problem seems to have gone away. The first time it happened I deleted what appeared to be duplicates by hand, only to find that I had one by one deleted every program in the bank. The second time it happened I exported the bank to Arturia’s proprietary sysex format, deleted the offending bank, and reimported it without problems. Subsequent imports have behaved perfectly. Arturia support suggested deleting the temporary file C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\db.db3, which apparently can obstruct program (Arturia call them presets) updates.

So what I learnt from that was that once programs go into the SQ80 V, there is no getting them out again. Arturia’s proprietary file format is the only form of output I can see so far. The other thing is that it looks like Arturia re-encode most parameters in decimal form, whereas ESQ-1 and SQ80 programs used integer values. The range of a DCA was, and is, encoded as 0 to 63, in increments of 1, whereas Arturia expresses it as 0.00 to 1.00 in increments of 0.004 or thereabouts. For some reason, just to be different, the envelope parameters stick to Ensoniq’s integers.

The recoding is understandable when you consider that the SQ80 V is much more than the SQ-80. It has a suite of effects, which can be saved as part of individual programs. It also incorporates elements of the VFX methods for sound engineering, that were not catered for in the early Ensoniq program sysex. There are three ways to set up envelopes in place of Ensoniq’s one, an arpeggiator, new unison settings, and so on. In other words, it is a superset of the old synths.

Another way this manifests itself is that program names can now be long and in both upper and lower case. Amazing! Programs can be classified, tagged, favourited and generally made a lot easier to find, sort and reorganise than they ever were in the hardware (or on audio cassette or floppy disk).

I am editing programs simultaneously in both the hardware and the software as I write this up, to see where, or if, sounds begin to diverge, so far the results are alike, even though the process and values are quite different. I’ve noticed that LFO waveforms might be ordered differently because a program that calls for noise is being assigned a saw wave. This requires investigation.

I’ve had a couple of crashes within Cakewalk, and I have heard crackling, but I think this is due to my system being stretched to its limit already, or may be attributable to the less than solid SQ8L. Once I’ve got all the programs off that, I doubt I will use it again. Another quibble is that there are a fair few spelling errors in the in-app quick tutorials provided by Arturia. Nothing show-stopping of course, but I always find that a bit disappointing. On the other hand, the support team moved with alacrity when I emailed them about my program duplication issues.

Another neat feature – a clipping warning light in the display. Why wasn’t that in the 1980s hardware? However, I wonder whether the clipping I am seeing is because there is no way to regulate the way the master envelope modulates the final output? In the hardware there is a way to scale this.

Overall, I am happy with the Arturia SQ80 V and look forward to getting more out of it.

Edited by MarkP
grammar correction
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I've had a bit more time with the SQ80 V, and I can clear up a few open questions in my previous post.

The duplication of programs is a recurring problem. It can always be overcome by deleting the db.db3 file as described, and reloading, but this is clearly a bug.

No more crashes since using SQ80 V without also using SQ8L at the same time. And the crackling was, I think, something to do with my audio interface. I had the buffer set to 512, went to change it, got offered a driver upgrade and then a firmware upgrade for the audio interface, both of which I took, then experimented with a buffer size of 1024, then tried 512 again - no more crackling.

The other issue was that imported LFO waveforms seemed messed up. I can confirm now that the only waveform that imports properly is TRI. The other three, SAW, SQR, NOI, are all mapped to the wrong settings. I've notified Arturia support of this. If they fix this, I presume it will mean having to reimport all old programs, which will be a pain.

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My price for SQ80 V + V Collection 8 is €269, or about $312 US. I don't have any previous version of V Collection and I own just Analog Lab V and some other stuff.

Is this a good price, historically speaking? I mean it's 28 additional synths for about $11 a piece, but I also have the "3 Modulations You'll Actually Use", which I haven't actually used...

Edited by Pseudopop
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2 hours ago, Pseudopop said:

My price for SQ80 V + V Collection 8 is €269, or about $312 US. I don't have any previous version of V Collection and I own just Analog Lab V and some other stuff.

Is this a good price, historically speaking? I mean it's 28 additional synths for about $11 a piece, but I also have the "3 Modulations You'll Actually Use", which I haven't actually used...

Sounds good to me considering the full price is €599

https://www.arturia.com/v-collection/details#en

 

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9 hours ago, Pseudopop said:

My price for SQ80 V + V Collection 8 is €269, or about $312 US. I don't have any previous version of V Collection and I own just Analog Lab V and some other stuff.

Is this a good price, historically speaking? I mean it's 28 additional synths for about $11 a piece, but I also have the "3 Modulations You'll Actually Use", which I haven't actually used...

That is the offer I got as well, only priced in USD ($269).  Interesting that they give us Yanks a break. I owned Analog Lab 5 and Pigments 3.  After some research I went for it, and I am very happy with it.  I mean, 10K new presets and all the tweaking you could want.  I started going through them A-Z to mark favorites and I am still on the ARP 2600  because I get carried away.  Anyway, digging through old forum posts it looked to me like you could  get it for about $200 on BF 2019, and $250 BF 2020.  I decided it was a good enough deal for me.

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20 hours ago, Brian Lawler said:

That is the offer I got as well, only priced in USD ($269).  Interesting that they give us Yanks a break. I owned Analog Lab 5 and Pigments 3.  After some research I went for it, and I am very happy with it.  I mean, 10K new presets and all the tweaking you could want.  I started going through them A-Z to mark favorites and I am still on the ARP 2600  because I get carried away.  Anyway, digging through old forum posts it looked to me like you could  get it for about $200 on BF 2019, and $250 BF 2020.  I decided it was a good enough deal for me.

VAT adds about 24% to my prices. That's why I prefer certain vendors (like JRR and AudioDeluxe), because they don't add VAT to their prices. It can make a huge difference.

On 10/1/2021 at 2:32 PM, aidan o driscoll said:

Sounds good to me considering the full price is €599

https://www.arturia.com/v-collection/details#en

Yeah, I'm just wondering if it could be better at some point? The thing with collections though is that they tend to go UP in price as more stuff is added.

Well, three more days to decide.

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On 10/1/2021 at 4:49 AM, Pseudopop said:

My price for SQ80 V + V Collection 8 is €269, or about $312 US. I don't have any previous version of V Collection and I own just Analog Lab V and some other stuff.

Is this a good price, historically speaking? I mean it's 28 additional synths for about $11 a piece, but I also have the "3 Modulations You'll Actually Use", which I haven't actually used...

My "too good to pass up" offer for V Collection 8 (prior to the SQ80 release) was $249.

And I only owned Analog Lab V and Pigments 3.

Now Arturia wants to sell me SQ80 V for $49. So it looks like with that new deal you could be getting SQ80 V for $20.

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