INTRO

It usually goes like this: I buy a random synth that I think might be cool. I hate it for the first two or three days because the factory presets suck and I haven’t found the sweet spot yet to make my own cool-sounding presets. I shun the synth even more if it turns out there are UI shortcomings that slow down my creative process.

Then, after 20-40 hours of playing comes the day when I’ve learned or accepted the UI and managed to dial in some appealing timbres. Finally (after 3 to 12 months) comes the moment when I’ve assembled a sizeable library of sounds and I’m thinking to myself: how is it possible that I hated this synth? It sounds really good! Or the UI is actually quite clever! Or the insane versatility makes it really unique and fun!

Unfortunately with Minifreak I’m experiencing something opposite. At the very beginning I was under the impression it was a really accessible synth with a lovingly characterful and insanely versatile sound. Now that I’ve been playing this synth for over a year and my excitement has been replaced by experience, the instrument has lost some of my love in almost every category. Or to be more precise: I’ve developed a turbulent love-hate relationship with it.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a great-sounding synth with a great price-to-features ratio. But if you’ve come here, I’m sure you want to know more than that.

USER INTERFACE

Let me start with the exterior design. The freaky user interface is okay, but it’s is not the best I’ve seen, to put it mildly. This is my biggest gripe and I really wish the synth had been designed differently.

1: I’m not a fan of touch strips or touch plates. Unfortunately there’s loads of them on the Minifreak, most painfully in the pitch-wheel / mod-wheel section. Maybe it’s just my habit, maybe it’s the individual peculiarity of my nervous / motor system, but I don’t find those touch strips helpful for expressive playing. The other touch membranes (the ones for arpeggiator & sequencer, for example) produce undesirable triggers. Or no trigger at all! Oftentimes it’s a hit-or-miss affair.

2: The plastic buttons. I really dislike the click these buttons make and the force that is needed to press them. I’ve been lamenting this since 2007 and this issue is not just an Arturia thing. Why can’t all synth manufacturers use soft / cushioned buttons like the ones in Nord Leads, OB-6 or the Hydrasynth? Seriously, if you have an informed answer, let me know. Having to press the SHIFT button and the touch strip to switch between the mod wheel mode and the vibrato mode drives me mad. The LED randomly toggles and untoggles several times before I manage to dial in my desired setting. Last but not least: editing the gate length of the sequencer steps via the pitch strip is nothing short of a nightmare.

3: I’m also not a fan of the mini keys. Making a deep synth in a mini form, with a mini keyboard attached to it seems questionable to me, but I do realize this is the zeitgeist of today. People want to fit so much gear into the limited spaces that we live in. I’d love it if the Minifreak came as a desktop synth where everything was just a bit larger: larger knobs, larger screen, less stuff hidden in menus, etc. Right now it’s just a longer Microfreak.

4: Menu diving via the small screen + pushable encoder formula. I’m not a “knob-per-function” fundamentalist and I understand the necessity of menu diving in deep synths. But it can be done cleverly (like in Roland Gaia-2) and it can be done poorly (like in Korg Modwave). The Minifreak sits somewhere between these two synths in this respect. Actually, when I’m thinking about it, the process of navigating menus in Minifreak is pretty similar to Gaia-2, but the Roland synth comes with a large screen, while the Minifreak has a tiny one. And the Roland has a nice-feel pushable encoder, while the Minifreak does not. These details make a difference.

Summing up: I’ve been having a hard time getting into the feel of that keyboard and its controls. The touch plates and the number of features / options which are only accessible via the small display + tight encoder twiddling are a discouragement. The amount of various synths on the market today is ridiculous and I’d rather live in a reality where manufacturers focused their efforts on making fewer synths, but with more generous interfaces…
 

THE SOUND / MY SOUNDS

On paper the Minifreak looks really cool with its specs. I remember that whenever I played my Microfreak I could not resist the temptation to fantasize how much cooler it would have been if it had not been curbed by its engine limitations. So when Arturia released the Minifreak, it was only natural for me to buy one in order to take my adventure to the next level.

In its basic state (= the state when you just tweak the front-panel knobs in order to have some fun) the Minifreak hits you with a distinctive timbre that brings to mind the hybrid synthesizers of the late 1980s. The familiar sound of fancy waveforms running through Minifreak’s analog-resonant, characterful filter evoke memories of Korg DW-8000 or Ensoniq ESQ-1. What I mean by that is presets that sound unmistakably “digital” (bold, in your face, defined / precise, whatever) yet exhibit a significant amount of organic nuance and warmth somewhere around the edges.

Sentimentalism and recreations have their charm, but I thought: OK, is that it? Are we just going to party like it’s 1987? I felt like I needed to try and push this synth out of that stereotypical rut the factory presets and the front panel have put it into. In order to do that I shifted my attention to the FX section with its hidden modes, the optional Multimode Filters and the expandable Mod Matrix (the 3 assignable buttons). My collection of unique sounds steadily grew. A day came when it exceed 200 patches. Then came the firmware update which added wavetables and my library exceeded 300 patches.

In that moment I realized something weird or counterintuitive: namely, there was an inconsistency between the way I felt about the synth and the amount of sounds I was making. If I didn’t like the synth that much, or if I was feeling uncomfortable working with it, then I shouldn’t have created that many sounds, right? “I should have given up much earlier” – I thought.

My explanation is as follows: I think the Minifreak is a good-sounding synth with lots of potential, and deep down I knew that from the very beginning. And I have this personality trait that I always want to suck as much goodness out of any situation as possible. The awareness of a wasted potential literally hurts me in my stomach. I flipped back through the 300 patches and I realized how many LEDS were active in the mod matrix grid. I thought – “boy! I really forced myself – and the synth – out of our comfort zones”.

So if you like the sounds I’ve come up with, just bear in mind there’s a lot of modulation and extreme-yet-subtle things at play. The Minifreak does not sound like this by default. You will not get there by simply tweaking the front panel knobs. These patches use A LOT of mod matrix and FX shenanigans. Prior to taking this route my Minifreak sounded too “over the top” and too “confident”, if you know what I mean (the low end on it is spectacular). I wanted to get it closer to the understated appeal and ethereal charisma that I like in synths – the Sequential Prophet VS for example (which in my opinion is one of the most dynamic, sensual, perfectly imperfect, delicious-sounding hybrid synths of all time). After some considerable amount of time & tweakery I managed to bend the Minifreak more to my will and tame it into a softer, wonkier, more gracious (less-freaky?) state. But it’s been a lot of work.

 THE ENGINE

This is the place where the Minifreak makes a vertical take-off and burns the Microfreak in its trail of hot smoke. And this is the highlight of the show.

One: We have a pretty broad mod matrix where almost everything is assignable. That’s great for finessing your sounds and articulating their nuances.

Two: there are 2 oscillators, yet more important is the fact that oscillator 2 can work as a multimode filter, or comb filter, or phase filter, or wavefolder. I think it’s totally worth it to sacrifice / let go the second oscillator, because if you stay within the constraints of the main filter, you’re severely limiting the flexibility of your Minifreak’s timbre (it’s just a LPF / BPF / HPF filter with no slopes).

Three: There are 3 FX units with parameters that are modulatable via the mod matrix. What’s more, the effects can be used repetitively, which means that you can have 3 different choruses running at once (this does not apply to reverb / delay / multicomp).

These features, among others, make the Minifreak much more versatile than the Microfreak. The synth can sound cold & brittle, it can sound warm & lush, it can mimic an old tape behavior / a casiotone / a vintage gritty sampler, you can make it sound pro & cinematic, you can program it to sound as if something was broken, and so on. I love it when synthesizers give me that scope for experimentation.

As a countermove, I’ll say: “however”. However deep any given synth is, the resulting sounds need to be musical and enjoyable for the ear, and with my Minifreak this works only with a certain type of patches. This is where the “insane versatility” aspect starts to falter for me. I surely love the modern, ratcheted sequences and the “early digital synth” keys and leads – I kinda hate the majority of bass sounds that come out of it. I appreciate the ambient pads with some lush reverb – I abhor almost everything that goes through the internal flanger or phaser. I’m not sure what the issue is, but I’m guessing it’s the filter design that leaves an indelible footprint on the sounds regardless of their structural uniqueness. The velocity and / or envelope curves also play a role (I’d love to have fully adjustable envelope curves on this thing). Whatever the reason, the synth makes me pretty bi-polar, as you can see.

But I guess the problem is me & my expectations, not the synth itself. Maybe I should just use the Minifreak in accordance with its name and focus on creating mini-malist sounds with a freak-y tinge? This is where this synth shines for me. It has such a strong dynamic presence that departing from the minimalist route often lands me in a ditch where I find myself buried under an avalanche of mud. I mean… I do enjoy the other / big sounds too, but oftentimes they sound… grotesque to my ears? Yes, this is the word. Minifreak oozes character and confidence the point of being grotesque.

One more thing I should mention is that I’ve found absolutely no bugs in this synth (well, maybe except just one, but I don’t think anyone will ever notice it). This is in stark contrast to some other synths out there, even the “good” / “respected” ones – for example the Oberheim TEO-5, whose sequencer has just proven unusable to me (it messes up rests & ties). I have to put it into my closet for the next year and a half, until new firmware comes out. It’s a joke. So if any given synth engine is bug-free, it should be appreciated and praised. Props for Arturia!

OUTRO / COMPARISONS

I said in my Microfreak write-up that Microfreak was the kind of synth that was best understood and used most successfully while in the hands of the experiment-oriented people. I also said the touch capacitor keyboard with poly aftertouch plus the spice & dice randomization of sequences turned the Microfreak into a performance-oriented tool where a large portion of the job is done by the more-or-less conscious movements of your hands, as opposed to the standardized thought-processes of your head.

Well, the Minifreak changes the game and in some respect becomes the opposite of the Microfreak. The bigger freaky sister is designed in a more traditional way – the most striking and important change being the “normal” keybed (with mono aftertouch). In Minifreak there’s less room for freaky physicality and more space for creative brainwork. Some part of Microfreak’s expressiveness is taken away in order to give us a lot more freedom in sound design and a lot more flexibility. After all these changes the Minifreak has become a synth which is more similar to Hydra or Modwave than the Microfreak. These are deep, multi-filter wavetable synths with a lot of things under the hood where almost everything is modulatable, and it’s hard to imagine a point where one would stop coming up with new sounds. And even if I have a personal problem with the UI on the Minifreak, objectively speaking I think it might be the easiest to use out of all three, and the fastest one to come up with good-sounding bread & butter patches.

On the other hand I feel like the Minifreak is just a second rendition of the Microfreak. You could argue it’s only natural, or even logical. But IMO it’s just a die-hard continuation of the “legacy” dictated by the philosophy / department of marketing & economics. The new Minifreak retains many of the old Microfreak’s downsides (UI) without offering a lot more benefits (aside from FX / polyphony). It could have been built as a completely new package that keeps what’s good (the poly AT keybed, for example) yet transforms the original limited interface into something authentically comfortable where the expanded engine potential is easily utilized.

If you’re looking for other synths that are structurally similar to the Minifreak (flexible wavetable platform) yet offer a different type of timbre or workflow, I suggest you have a look at the Hydrasynth, the Korg Modwave or the Roland Gaia-2.

The Hydra is in a class of its own, although one has to hear it in person to judge whether it sounds okay (Minifreak will sound MUCH warmer / smoother in certain areas). The user experience is also pretty different with Hydra’s multi-purpose knobs, under-the-surface mod matrix and virtually no opportunity for happy accidents.

The Korg Modwave seems more versatile than the Minifreak and sounds more agreeable / thinner (in a good way), but the low-end is practically non-existent in comparison and the UI is pretty terrible. Try the software editor if you care.

The Roland Gaia-2 doesn’t have aftertouch or a mod matrix, but it’s more playable, more fun to use and more track-ready / mix-friendly than the Minifreak, if only you’re willing to accept its “VST-ish” sound quality.

Speaking of Gaia-2, I feel like it has been consciously stripped of the “positive nerd” / “je ne sais quoi” aspect by the Roland team to keep it “mainstream”, and while the Minifreak does have that elusive quality, it’s lacking in other areas that are as important to me. Minifreak does sound amazing and like nothing I’ve heard before (the part I love), but it does so with some amount of mini-size wheeling & dealing on my part (the part I hate). I’m looking forward to a “big freak” / “mega freak”. If Arturia equips it with a revised UI and expands the engine a little bit in the vein of classic synths (independent envelopes, filters, etc), I’m all in.

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