Arturia MiniBrute
The monophonic Arturia MiniBrute was the first fully analog synthesizer released by the famous French company Arturia. Releasing virtual synthesizers that simulate the work of real analog prototypes and gaining sufficient popularity among musicians, the company eventually established its own production of first hybrid, and then fully hardware digital instruments. The appearance of the Arturia MiniBrute in 2012 was well received by the music community, and the combination of purely analog features with a large number of new features in this model set a high bar for the development of hardware synthesizers.
Combining the capabilities of legendary instruments from the 80's and 90's of the last century, from manufacturers such as Roland or Moog Music and more advanced technologies, Arturia MiniBrute has become a real link between the traditional world of synthesis and the constantly evolving modular principle. The new features have opened up the potential of Arturia MiniBrute and allowed advanced users to integrate it into the most incredible settings to get a unique sound.
The Arturia MiniBrute oscillator section resembles the circuit used in the Roland SH101 synthesizer and other devices, which played unforgettable electronic music of the past years. Arturia MiniBrute, can modify existing waveforms independently of each other and then mix them in a mixer. On Arturia MiniBrute, there is no mutual pitch detuning for different waveforms, for spectrum saturation, a different effective modulation is used here.
Arturia MiniBrute has six level sliders controls, three of which control sawtooth, triangular and rectangular pulse shapes, while the others regulate the noise level, external signal, and sub-oscillator level. Above each sliders, on the Arturia MiniBrute panel, there are two additional controls for custom waveforms. Installed the sub-oscillator can switch to a rectangular or sinusoidal pulse shape, and can work with a fall on one or two octaves relative to the main tone.
The generated signal in the mixer zone of the Arturia MiniBrute falls into the filter Steiner-Parker, with four switchable modes (LP, HP, BP and Notch), and in band and cut mode, the filter is single-pole and therefore works very softly, sometimes almost imperceptibly. The passing filter, is able to form a pronounced resonant peak, and in extreme values of resonance, the filter can go into self-excitation mode. The frequency range of auto-generation is not so large, but when using special parameter Brute Factor, it can be additionally expanded. The Arturia MiniBrute filter has its own ADSR type envelope generator and modulation depth control.
Both envelope's generator on Arturia MiniBrute have fast and slow modes of operation, which change the time range of the envelope sections adjustment. Available on Arturia MiniBrute, the LFO section allows you to modulate the oscillator, filter and amplifier, as well as the operation of modifiers of rectangular and triangular waveforms, and since there is only one modulating generator, the control is synchronous. The LFO has a built-in set of six waveforms, and the speed of the generator can be adjusted freely or in relation to the current tempo of the arpeggiator, which has four main modes of operation (up, down, up-down, and random), as well as a range of one to four octaves.
Despite its analog nature, Arturia MiniBrute has a software configuration editor that is responsible for global settings of the synthesizer, including selecting the desired MIDI channel, setting the basic sensitivity of the audio input, enabling the LFO restart mode, as well as selecting the priority of keys when playing, and many other useful functions. Arturia MiniBrute fully fulfills its tasks and is a great melodic instrument, which, thanks to its features and flexible control, gives a unique sound, with a good stock of timbre variety, and the use of "Metalizer" and "Brute factor", in its own way, provides the necessary saturation of the sound spectrum.
