The panel is graphite‑coloured plastic, but unlike the Micro the main housing is all metal. The MiniFreak is a similar size to Arturia’s KeyStep Pro (just an inch deeper) and appears to have the same 37‑key mini keyboard.
The other big change is that the Mini has six voices of full polyphony, including the analogue filter and all modulators. But now there are two oscillators that can work in parallel or interact serially. The heart of the Freak is the same: a multi‑mode digital oscillator offering diverse synthesis methods, including algorithms sourced from Mutable Instruments and Noise Engineering designs. They’ve done a lot more than that, taking the key ingredients and greatly expanding on them to make a new polysynth that can stand alongside new players on the scene like ASM’s Hydrasynth Explorer and Modal’s Argon8.
It would have been easy for Arturia to have simply repackaged the MicroFreak into a larger frame with a ‘normal’ keyboard and some effects. In the last three years it’s probably been my most‑used synth, so I was really excited to get my hands on its new big‑not‑big brother.
The Freak’s pressure‑pad keyboard and eclectic collection of digital sound generators lent it an experimental, modularish vibe. Much more than just a bigger MicroFreak, Arturia’s MiniFreak is a six‑voice polysynth with a character like nothing else.Īrturia’s MicroFreak was a breath of fresh air, something different at a time when you could barely move for small analogue monosynths.