New Gear Review: MicroFreak by Arturia

Arturia’s MicroFreak may be compact and lightweight, but this analog/digital combo mini synth packs a big punch.

Those who have been introduced Arturia in recent times may be surprised to discover that the French audio company originally started out by making software instruments that emulated analog synths.

Arturia has become well-known as a pioneer of modern synth hardware since the second wave of the analog hardware renaissance that we saw in the early oughts, and their V Collection suite of VST instruments has been evolving for over fifteen years now.

While Korg’s volca series grabbed a lot of attention right from the get-go, Arturia actually beat them to the punch in 2012 with the original MiniBrute—the first all-analog instrument that many new producers ever laid their hands on. What followed was bigger (see: MatrixBrute) and rowdier (see: MiniBrute 2S), but Arturia has never been content to follow just one path.

So the announcement of Arturia’s latest offering, the digital/analog combo MicroFreak, turned as many heads for its rich feature set as it did for its price—just $299, brand new. Right away, that placed the MicroFreak in a price bracket that made it accessible to synth experts and novices alike, and fortunately, it’s an instrument that comes with a lot of character and uniqueness.

Features

One of the first things you’ll notice when playing the MicroFreak is how light it is! At 2.3 pounds, I had to make sure it was in my backpack several times before leaving for the day, as I couldn’t believe I had already packed it. The synth itself sports a lightweight plastic case with an interesting touch-sensitive, flat keyboard that will be familiar to you if you’ve had the rare honor to play a Buchla touch panel.

The rear of the unit sports a USB connection, which can also act as a power source for the instrument. A real power supply is included as well, along with two MIDI adapters, as the MicroFreak uses mini jacks for its MIDI connections. There’s a dedicated 1/8” headphone jack, as well as the 1/4” main output. For those looking to interface with other modular gear, the MicroFreak comes equipped with both clock in and out jacks, as well as outputs for CV, gate, and “pressure”, though this should really be called “surface area”, as it’s defined by how much of your finger is covering the PCB key.

In terms of architecture, the MicroFreak is a four-voice synth that can either run in Mono mode or Paraphonic mode. I found running it in Paraphonic mode made it a much more capable studio tool. There are 12 oscillator modes to choose from, with a few options supplied via open-source coding from fellow Francs Mutable Instruments. Each mode has its own parameters to edit via the Wave, Shape, and Timbre knobs—more about each mode later.

The digital oscillator is paired with an analog multi-mode two-pole filter inspired by the 12dB SEM filter. The filter sounds great at high or low resonance, and given that it has low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass modes and can self-oscillate, it adds a lot to the tonal variety already inherent with so many oscillator sources.

Further down the signal path reveals two envelopes, one of which can be set to loop via the press of a button. Shape can be modified in any mode, and there are further controls for the slopes of the attack and release decay curves via a shift control, which is a nice touch. The second envelope is of the standard ADSR variety and can be applied directly to the Amp Mod with the touch of a button. There’s an LFO with six shapes; it can be synced to the tempo of the sequencer of the MicroFreak, or it can be free-running.

Two octave buttons on the left-hand side of the instrument, as well as a glide knob, populate the rest of the array of controls, though at the top of the machine is where things get interesting. The MicroFreak features a nice, crisp OLED screen that shows parameter changes, making any tweaks visually-assisted. The OLED also allows for editing a plethora of options in the menu, both globally and per preset.

To the left of the screen is the Mod Matrix, which is going to be the biggest selling point to many potential MicroFreak users. This matrix features five destination sources that can be “virtually wired” to seven destinations, three of which are user-defined. Programming a patch from scratch and making a few connections in the Mod Matrix can quickly transform something vanilla into something modular-esque, and using these connections creatively is where much of the power of the MicroFreak lies.

In Use

While it’s of course possible to play the MicroFreak via your MIDI controller of choice, the bespoke PCB keyboard makes a more unique playing experience. This is partially because of the “Spice and Dice” controls that Arturia has integrated into the thin control strip above the keybed. Both of these parameters work in tandem with the built-in 64-step sequencer, which has both A and B sequences and includes four automation lanes for any knobs that you tweak while the record button is lit. If you aren’t making use of the sequencer, there’s also an arpeggiator with Up, Down, Random, and Pattern Play modes. While it’s nice to have both of these features here, I found that there was so much to dig into with the sound engines that I didn’t find myself relying on them quite as heavily.

A closer look at the controls (particularly, the touch-sensitive, flat keyboard) offered on the MicroFreak.

This brings us to the those twelve modes—they offer so much timbral variation that it almost feels like using different instruments when switching modes. This can be great for when you’re looking for sound design inspiration, but can also make it quite complex to retrace your steps if you’re moving quickly! Luckily there are 256 preset slots, 160 of which come as factory presets (these can be overridden if you wish). It’s worth mentioning that Arturia hasn’t finished with the MicroFreak, and additional modes might still be forthcoming.

There are five oscillator modes from Arturia themselves—Superwave, which features the usual suspects of waveforms with detune options; Harmo, which features 32 sine waves that are added up by partial; Karplus, a string emulation mode; Wavetable, which allows for scanning through a broad range of wavetable sounds; and finally BasicWaves, which focuses on just square and sawtooth shapes but with a bit more tweakability.

The seven additional modes, as mentioned, come from Mutable Instruments and they offer a few more unique sounds. There are Virtual Analog, Waveshaper, Two Op FM, Formant, a lovely Chord mode, a Speech mode that synthesizes an array of words, and Modal, which simulates a hollow resonant structure. I found the Waveshaper mode especially adept at making translucent pads when paired with the band-pass filter, while the Karplus and Formant modes offer sounds that are hard to find on synthesizers ten times the cost of the MicroFreak! The fact that they are paired to an intuitive sequencer or arpeggiator makes it very easy to get into experimental rhythmic shapes quickly. That said, the synth isn’t just aimed at the experimental set—it was also easy to program classic lead and bass sounds with the MicroFreak.

Arturia has said they are committed to updating the MicroFreak’s firmware, and they recently announced a new 2.0 version at NAMM 2020. This updated firmware adds a new Noise mode, a Chord mode in which user-defined notes for the chord can be chosen while holding down the Paraphonic button, new scale quantization options, as well as several enhancements to the sequencer functionality.

To Be Critical

After having the MicroFreak in my studio for a few months, there were a few minor qualms worth mentioning, though none that should stop you if this is your first or even second or third synth purchase. Having MIDI jacks on mini ports means extra dongles to carry around and potentially lose. I still haven’t met a single producer who prefers mini jacks over full size MIDI ports!

The PCB keyboard does take a bit of getting used to given the lack of touch feedback. I also was at times frustrated with the fact that there’s no way to transpose many of the oscillators other than transposing the keyboard itself. Finally, the factory presets aren’t terribly well-organized, and sorting through them doesn’t quite show the range of the MicroFreak.

Summing it Up

Those minor issues aside, Arturia’s MicroFreak is an undoubtedly fun and expressive synthesizer, both live and in the studio. Its diverse sonic engine inspired ideas at every knob turn; so many in fact that it became hard to keep track of them! The fact that it’s so fully-featured, can slide into a backpack with ease, and comes with a price tag of under $300 makes it a no-brainer. Props to Arturia for taking the lead and designing an instrument with a lot of personality—we’re very likely to be seeing MicroFreaks in setups to come!

Leo Maymind is a producer, DJ, and writer living in Los Angeles, CA. He is obsessed with sound, and you can reach him at lmaymind@gmail.com.

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