Arturia Microfreak 5.0 free firmware update with granular

[satya]

https://youtu.be/E9sh0rLbbfI

The new Arturia MicroFreak 5.0 firmware will be available as a free update on May 30th, 2023. The new Stellar version will be available soon as a limited edition for 339€.

https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/microfreak-stellar/overview

With firmware 5.0, they bring a 4-voice sampler engine with granular synthesis to the firmware and much more.the developers added a sampler engine and granular synthesis with firmware 5.0. On top, you get internal sample memory for your own samples for up to 3 minutes.

 

It adds four new engines to the algorithm list. First, you get a more or less traditional 4-voice sampler with the ability to tweak the sample length, etc. Powerful is that you can modulate everything and route it through the Oberheim-style analog filter. So you get a sampler plus an analog filter.

Granular Engines

Next, you get three new granular engines you can explore with the built-in content or your custom samples. It offers a scan grains engine that goes in the direction of vintage time-stretching. Then, the cloud grains is more the classic granular engine with an addition chaos generator. Third and last is the hit grains engine which is made for percussive and clicky sounds. Very unique.

That’s not all. Firmware 5.0 also adds random per-key modulation for super wild sounds and an option to unlock snappy envelopes. Further, they expanded the patch memory to 512 presets slots. And you get 64 new prestes showing the features in action.

[Nick Blanc]

The gift that keeps on giving. I can't wait to use this in my jams! Sounds awesome. It borders on insane how great their dedication is to the MF ?

[Sander Verstraten]

Here's an extensive video from Oscillator Sink:

can't wait to get my hands on the update

[Nick Blanc]

Freebeat also has a quick walkthrough the changes.

So next to all the existing oscillator types (including a vocoder and wavetable) we are getting granular AND samples?!

The year is 2035: Arturia announces version 18.0 for the Microfreak. It somehow grew legs and is able to dance on stage AND get you a beer while you jam. There is a new stereo output because the Microfreak, and only the Microfreak, is able to morph MIDI CC data into sound. It learned this with the implementation of AI in version 16.5. After it became sentient, it started to use it's microphone as a speaker to give you hints on how to properly use the granular arpeggiator, provided in 5.0 (!!!).

Arturia suggests to not connect it to the internet, as it started to make Youtube accounts where it makes fun of the upgrade price of V collection 15. We are yet to figure out how it is able to film, but we suspect it's the D# key.