The Distortion Module combines 16 modes of distortion covering things like germanium fuzz to jagged wave folding as well as soft saturation and warmth. This creates the opportunity for some pretty crazy stuff-into-stuff modulating modulation, which is great for getting deeper into sound design. You can now switch this section from Modulator to the other Sound Engine feeding in whatever waveforms you’re generating in one space into the FM inputs on the other. Previously there’s been a Modulator section of the sound engine where you can feed waveforms into various bits of the oscillator(s) for a bit of FM action. You can layer the two together and add in noise or a sub-oscillator from the Utility Engine which came with version 3. Pigments uses two sound engines which can be wavetables, samples, harmonic or analogue oscillators. The big new thing is the ability to cross modulate between the sound engines.

I enjoyed the new harmonic oscillator and Jupiter filter that came with version 3 and now we have some new ways to shape and destroy sound in version 3.5. But existing owners will get the update for free.Arturia continues to build on the impressive Pigments Polychrome Software Synthesizer. Pigment 2 is on a special of €99 or €69 if you already own Arturia products. I enjoyed Pigment very much and this upgrade looks like it brings in some interesting possibilities without ruining everything that made it good in the first place. Otherwise, the modulation engine and joyfully animated interface are the same, and that’s a really good thing! Oh, and they’ve added support for MPE control. They’ve added the Buchla Easel low pass gate and a space-age tape delay which will give it a nicely organic and wobbly edge. The sequencer has also had a rethink and now has non-destructive randomness so that you can dial in some chaos and then dial it back again if you start losing the plot. And when in doubt just hit the Random button. Or you can push them through the granular engine to find beauty in the smallest grains of your samples. You can import your own samples and load them into 6 slots and have them playback in all sorts of exciting ways. But what is new is the sample and granular engine. On first glance it looks largely the same so there’s no radical departure in workflow.

The original Pigment was excellent and so I am very much looking forward to what version 2 may offer.

Arturia pigments 2.