Semi-weighted keys, extra panel controls and a pressure-sensitive XYZ touch matrix turn Arturia’s six-voice hybrid into a bigger performance synth.
The MiniFreak, Arturia’s six-voice hybrid synthesizer, now comes in a version with 49 full-size semi-weighted keys. Along with the bigger keybed, the new model keeps the original’s sound engine and adds more hands-on control, including an XYZ touch matrix the 37-key model never had. It’s in stock now.
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Founded in Grenoble, France, in 1999, Arturia built its reputation on software emulations of vintage synths before moving into hardware with the MiniBrute and the rest of the Brute range. The Freak line started with the MicroFreak in 2019, and the MiniFreak followed in 2022 as a bigger six-voice step up from it.
The keys respond to velocity and mono aftertouch, and aluminium pitch and mod wheels replace the original’s touch strips. Each oscillator now has its own Type, Wave, Timbre and Shape controls on the panel, so changing an engine’s character no longer means scrolling through the screen.
Most of the new ideas are packed into the touch matrix. It reads X and Y position as well as pressure, so a single finger can move several parameters at once. It’s also where you assign modulation, swipe through presets, draw custom LFO shapes and run Freak Control’s macros. The pad shows the sound moving as you play, which helps when a patch has a lot of modulation going on.
Two digital engines offer more than 30 oscillator modes covering virtual analogue, FM, wavetable, granular, sample-based and physical modelling synthesis, with algorithms from Arturia, Mutable Instruments and Noise Engineering. Each voice runs through its own analogue state-variable filter, and the new audio-rate Filter FM lets either engine modulate the cutoff for extra harmonics and grit. Voice Panning spreads the six voices across the stereo field from one control, with a choice of spread algorithms. The three effects slots draw on 13 algorithms, including a vocoder that can process the synth’s own sound or an external input.
MiniFreak V, Arturia’s software version of the synth, is included, though the MiniFreak 49-compatible edition is reserved for registered owners of the hardware. It runs the same engines inside a DAW, shares presets with the keyboard and controls it in both directions, so a patch started on the hardware can be finished in the session.
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