Product Review - Arturia MiniBrute
Article Preview :: Analogue Monosynth
Reviews : Keyboard
Arturia have broken away from their soft-synth roots with the MiniBrute, a 100 percent analogue monosynth. We put it to the test in our world-exclusive review.
If you’re a keyboard player of a certain age, the release of a new analogue monosynth — especially if it has a keyboard sticking out of the front of it — is something to get excited about. Sometimes that excitement is justified, and sometimes it isn’t. However, there seems to be something a bit special about the Arturia MiniBrute. Obviously, it’s not the name, which sounds like an aftershave for 14-year-olds. It’s the company’s statement that they have gambled that the MiniBrute will be a commercial success and have geared up production accordingly, producing it in volume and passing the economies of scale on to the end user. Consequently, the MiniBrute lies bang in the middle of the price band that includes second-hand Roland SH09s and SH101s, as well as ARP Axxes and Explorers, and it’s cheaper than a second-hand Roland SH1, ARP ProSoloist, or even something as modest as a Korg MS10. The fact that it hails from a plug-in manufacturer moving into analogue hardware (rather than the other way around) just adds to the intrigue. Are you excited yet?
Architecture
Arturia have never released an analogue product before this, and are very aware that, in their own words, “reproducing analogue circuitry [using DSPs] is not the same as designing great-sounding analogue circuits”. In developing the MiniBrute, therefore, they have entered into a partnership with Yves Usson of YuSynth, whom they call their analogue synthesizer guru. So maybe the second question to ask of this review is: does the MiniBrute suggest that the company is feeling its way into a strange new market, or have they come up with a mature analogue synthesizer at the first attempt?
Even before news of the MiniBrute was leaked on the day before the NAMM show began, a production prototype had arrived at the SOS office. The unit was complete except for a few final calibration tweaks, and near enough finished to conduct this review.
The first thing that I noticed about the MiniBrute was its size. It’s tiny. Nonetheless, it feels solid and robust, the battleship-grey coating on the aluminium chassis looks professional, and the selection of knobs for most functions but sliders where sliders are more appropriate has allowed Arturia to cram a lot of features into the small space without anything feeling cramped or fiddly. Internally, it boasts a signal path in which a single analogue voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) feeds a voltage-controlled multi-mode filter (VCF) and amplifier (VCA), with two analogue contour generators and two analogue modulators. However, it isn’t entirely devoid of digital wotsits. There’s a software-controlled arpeggiator, and the MiniBrute sends and receives MIDI as well as control voltage and gate signals.
Sound Sources
The MiniBrute’s back panel includes CV and Gate I/O on 3.5mm jack sockets, headphone out, audio out and audio in on quarter-inch jack sockets, a Gate Source switch, MIDI I/O ports, a USB port and an input for the external 12V power supply.
I chose the vintage synths listed in the introduction because they all share one important attribute with the MiniBrute: a single oscillator. However, the MiniBrute’s may be the most advanced analogue oscillator that I have ever seen on a non-modular monosynth.
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Wed 23 May 2012
Sound On Sound : Est. 1985