Their Biggest & Best Yet? Arturia V Collection 11 – Review
The ultimate instrument suite goes into a trance!
4,6 / 5,0 | 
As Arturia’s V Collection 11 breaks cover, we check out the updates and new editions and see if it is a worthy upgrade on the previous iteration.
Arturia V Collection 11 Review
V Collection 11 Quick Facts
- Two brand new instruments
- JUP-8000 V
- Pure LoFi
- MiniBrute V, SynthX V, Augmented MALLETS and YANGTZEE added
- All Augmented Series instruments updated to 2.0
- MiniFreak V updated to V3
- New SEM V rebuilt from the ground up
What’s New?
One thing you can rely on with Artuiria’s flagship suite of virtual instruments is that there will always be something new. What those new things are will be exciting for some, less so for others. But I think with V Collection 11, many people are going to be jumping for joy over one particular addition.
JUP-8000 V
It really makes me feel old as I recall going to the launch of the Roland JP-8000 as the industry fully embraced virtual analogue. People now refer to that instrument as a vintage classic, but in my head, it’s not even reached that status. But at nearly 30 years old, I suppose I’m going to have to concede.
And if there has been one instrument that has been consistently requested as a plugin, it’s the JP-8000, especially in the Roland Cloud circles. So I fully expect large swathes of users jumping for joy when they see and hear this for the first time. I know I did!
Known for its pretty decent virtual analogue emulation and that legendary Supersaw oscillator, the JP-8000 became a modern classic almost overnight. Along with its rack-mounted sibling, the JP-8080, it defined an era and was a cornerstone of the Trance and Hardcore, and soon permeated wider pop music in the early 2000s.
Along with the Nord Lead and Yamaha’s AN1x, these synths ushered in virtual analogue hardware in an era where users rediscovered the beauty of knob per function and the rich, analogue sound. And now, over 25 years later, we can wallow in that anthemic sound all over again.
Arturia’s JUP-8000 V absolutely nails the sound of the original hardware. Dial up a patch like ‘Ascension Melody’ and you have a single-finger track-in-a-patch that would have the gathered, sweaty masses at Tresor on their feet in an instant.
Such patches are delivered not only by the faithful recreation of the JP-8000’s circuits, but also by the additional features that Arturia build in. There are sequencers, arpeggiators, and a wealth of FX alongside a raft of modulation routings that are all accessed in a Pigments-style Advanced interface that is incredibly simple to use.
Honestly, the JUP-8000 V is a time machine. The look, feel and sound instantly transport you back to those heady days of euphoria and chemical-fuelled hedonism. This addition alone makes V Collection an absolute must-have.
Pure LoFi
The second brand new instrument in V Collection 11 is something completely new and original, although I did see some similarities with something else out there at the moment. Read on to see if you can figure out what that is.
In the last couple of years, possibly more in other parts of the world, there has been an increasing penchant for all things LoFi, i.e. making things sound like they’ve been passed through an old 1930s radio. or similar. It’s a trend that has always been around but has recently become more of a ‘thing’.
Now Arturia give us their spin on it with a curious yet ultimately rewarding new instrument plugin called Pure LoFi. Essentially, you have two sound engines in which you can select from a ‘realistic instrument’, ‘creative sampler’ and ‘lo-fi oscillator’. Each of these contains a range of instruments or waveforms for you to choose from.
You can then select an Engine Hardware Mode, each of which will impart the characteristics of the selected hardware upon the sound you have selected. You can choose from options that include CMI, EMU, SK1, SP1200, Weary900 and MPC or some of Arturia’s own custom modes.
Next up, you have the noise selection, with two options, and then you have a huge number of filter options to choose from. You have the ability to shape your own amp and filter envelopes. Then there’s a large selection of FX to choose from, from which you can have four running simultaneously.
Finally, at the top of the plugin, you have a LoFi processor with six different modes; Golden Age, Velvet Frost, Vintage Glow, Dim Memories, Cathodic Tube and Fuzzy Line. You can dial in the amount that each of these affect your overall sound and each mode can be tweaked with individual setting for, amongst others, drive, wear, wobble and speaker.
What is most satisfying about this instrument is how quickly you can come up with something really pleasing to the ear. It’s simple, yet deep and a lot of fun to mess around with. And yes, did you spot the similarity with Sonicware’s LIVEN LoFi 12, especially the rounded “keys”? But this is a very welcome addition to the V Collection.
Augmented Series 2.0
I wasn’t too sure about the Augmented instruments when Arturia first debuted them, but I have increasingly become quite enamoured with them in recent months. The range now encompasses seven different instruments and all of these are now part of V Collection 11.
Not only that, but they’ve all been updated to 2.0 versions. This means that they all benefit from a cleaner, nicer UI and workflow as well as some new features, new sample content and new factory banks.
The Play pages have a much nicer look, and you can easily access all the sound engines at the top of the screen. The Layers, FX and Arp tabs all have that Pigments-esque look to them and are so easy to understand and visualise what is going on in your chosen patch.
Augmented instruments are a real joy to play with and manipulate, and I often find myself being really inspired just by spending half an hour on one of them, noodling around. They strike a very cool balance between samples and synthesis and can give you an edge you weren’t necessarily expecting.
Existing Individual Synths Added to V Collection 11
In addition to the V Collection X instruments, the Jup-8000 V and Pure LoFi, Arturia have added, as they always do, those individual instruments that they’ve released between Collection releases. V Collection 11 adds in the superb SynthX V, MiniBrute V, MiniFreak V 3 and Augmented MALLETS and YANGTZEE. They’ve also added a brand new version of their SEM V instrument.
This has been rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of all the new Arturia features, but also, I imagine, to keep it as up to date as possible in light of the competition from GForce Software, Cherry Audio and Brainworx.
The rest of V Collection 11 is “as you were”.
V Collection 11 – Your Choice
With this iteration of the Collection, Arturia have also released a new V Collection Intro. Designed to be a broad yet compact collection of V Collection Essentials, it contains the following instruments:
- Analog Lab Pro
- Mini V 4
- Jun-6 V
- Prophet-5 V
- DX7 V
- Pure LoFi
- MiniFreak V
- Stage-73 V
- Augmented GRAND PIANO
- Augmented STRINGS
That little lot covers a lot of bases and represents a very useful and affordable entry into the V Collection world. The full V Collection is now referred to as V Collection Pro and contains all 45 instruments.
Conclusion
V Collection has always been one of the very best, value-for-money collections of instrument plugins available. V Collection 11 is not breaking that tradition at all. It is a stunning collection of some of the finest instrument plugins available today and covers not only the classic vintage synth recreations, but adds new, inspiring and clever instruments that will really add to your sonic palette.
This time around, JUP-8000 V is almost worth the price of entry alone. It is so amazing to have that synth in my armoury now. When it first arrived here, I was lost for hours. It is a real boon for them to beat Roland to the punch on this one.
Pure LoFi is also an incredibly good addition and one that cannot help but inspire as you navigate through the myriad options with which you can degrade your sound into something really lovely. Along with the Augmented range, it brings a new element of sonic creation to the Collection.
Arturia’s own recreations of their own hardware are superb, especially the MiniFreak V, but to have the raw energy of the MiniBrute V is a superb way of getting their trademark analogue sound into your computer. I wonder if we’ll ever see a PolyBrute V?
The new Augmented range has been revitalised, and everything about that update has made these instruments even better and more satisfying than before. There was once a time when I couldn’t see a need for them in my studio. Now, I wouldn’t be without them.
It is worth mentioning that the integration of all of the V Collection 11 instruments into the world of Analog Lab and Arturia’s KeyLab controller range is flawless and superb, especially with the new Mk.3 KeyLabs. V Collection 11 and the KeyLabs represent one of the best one-stop-shops for virtual instruments ever.
And now, you can get into that world for a lot less if you go for V Collection Intro because not everyone wants the big package. Kudos to Arturia for thinking about that.
However, I do have a very particular quibble with V Collection. Ever since they dropped Spark, they have not created another drum machine, and for me, that is the one glaring omission in V Collection. Every time I get wind of an update, I hope for a drum machine to be included and every time I am left wanting. I’d even take a software version of their own DrumBrute or DrumBrute Impact!
C’mon Arturia… let’s have a beatbox!
Pros and Cons
Pros
- JUP-8000 V – Stunning recreation of a modern classic!
- Pure LoFi – Jumping on the LoFi bandwagon with aplomb!
- Revamped Augmented 2.0 Instruments
- KeyLab Integration
- V Collection Intro
Cons
- Hefty download, but can be done individually
- Still no drum machine plugin…
- Honestly, that’s all I can think of!
Price and Availability
Arturia’s V Collection 11 is available to buy now, either as Intro or Pro. Existing Arturia V Collection owners or owners of any of their instruments should log in to their Arturia account and check out their upgrade prices, which will be based on what they currently own.
More Information
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3 responses to “Their Biggest & Best Yet? Arturia V Collection 11 – Review”
I completely agree about being disappointed by the lack of a groovebox/drum machine. Arturia had a fantastic platform with Spark and its controllers and I can only dream how they could have evolved with the newer V Collections
I also think it’s a big mistake that they released Spark. I just put it down when problems started to appear with the new Ableton, but I’ve been using it with the Classic Drum Maschine controller until now.
I missed out on the 9th V Collection. I bought 1-2 things separately, e.g. Acid V., which is already part 10, Microfreak, Pigments.
I’m worried about the price of the update, even though I have the entire latest FX Collection, but it’s not very favorable for me anyway.
The Minibrute, which is exciting to me, the sound of JP in today’s world is not as good as it was in the early days. You can get the fat Trance sounds from almost anything else. But who needs this sound today?
To this day, I think that Pigments has everything in it that is in their other products. By the way, they didn’t write anywhere that Pigments was updated yesterday. Since the latest version was released, it has ceased to exist for me. I couldn’t use it because it was so taxing on my computer. Changing sounds took as long as reading a UVI sample pack. It froze and became unusable. Well, they’ve fixed it now. I’m glad!
And apart from a drum machine, my wishlist for V Collection 12:
1. Yamaha AN1X
2. Roland JX3P
3. Korg Z1