Anyway, Arturia's V Collection is on sale. In case anyone's not familiar with it, it's 22 vintage synth emulations, plus 1 pretty decent piano (disclaimer: I am not Glenn Gould
), plus 1 silly preset-only-machine that's sort of like a "sampler pack" for the rest of the collection.IMO the ARP 2600, Buchla Easel, and DX-7 are nearly worth the on-sale asking price right there. I know Dexed is free, and about as good sound-wise as Arturia's DX-7, but Dexed is a little bit ugly and the GUI isn't rescalable, which makes it a real pain to use on modern resolutions unless you put your eyes right on the monitor. All the Arturia synths are rescalable, and the basic UI elements are pretty great.
The B-3 is really good too, makes me wish I had the keyboarding skills to really make a Hammond sing. The Minimoog emulation seems decent enough (though Gforce's Minimonsta seems a tad bit more musical - some real girth to the bottom end, Arturia Mini is a wee bit fizzy even at 0% resonance) and obviously the 2600/Easel and Moog Modular and Synthi will appeal to anyone who uses Buzz, for obvious reasons. I'm not much of a CS-80 or Jupe-8 guy, but those seem good too. The Mellotron and Solina String Machine are fun, haven't been able to compare them to the Gforce offerings though. I will say that the "Mechanics" dial on the Mellotron is a bit goofy, almost mid-2000s free VST levels of low-effort. It's just a ten-second noise loop and two "clunk" samples on note-on, repeated in the same A/B/B pattern for infinity, plus a single "clunk" at note-off. Also a bit disappointing that the notes are insta-rewind - a real Mellotron would make you wait a little longer before getting another full eight seconds on a note.
Mellotron gripes aside, the only real disappointment for me is the SEM - on the one hand, it sounds beautiful (the SEM filter is my go-to filter in Arturia's Pigments synth), but the 8-voice mode is really hacky, it's nothing more than a step sequencer for parameters, no unison and it's just a blind round-robin even if you're holding notes. Still, at least they're billing it as "SEM" rather than "Oberheim 8-Voice".
All that having been said, I think it's definitely worth it considering the variety of sound designing systems it offers. Here's the full link: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... llection-7
(heads-up: I'm in the US and sometimes Plugin Boutique orders will "alert" my card processor ("Text YES if this purchase was authorized"), but they're a legit site and once you register your serial on the Arturia downloader it's just the same as if you purchased directly from Arturia themselves)