Performance Review: Arturia MicroFreak

Perhaps it was fate. The Arturia MicroFreak was released right around the time I got back into music making, early in 2019. As I started watching gear videos to catch up on what was new since my last foray into music making, I was seeing it everywhere and the marketing worked on me: I wanted one! I managed to hold off for about four or five months before I scored a sweet deal on Reverb and got one. That was six years ago, and it’s still in heavy use today. Let’s give it a performance review, shall we?

What Is It?

The Arturia MicroFreak is a paraphonic digital-analog hybrid synth. The oscillator and controls are digital; the filter is pure analog. Further, the digital oscillator section offers far more than just a selection of basic waveshapes, or wavetable playback, like most synths. Instead, the 22 “oscillator” types (perhaps more properly thought of as synthesis engines) offer a wide variety of approaches to creating sound, from basic virtual analog waveshapes thru simple FM and wavetables, all the way to esoteric stuff like physical modeling and speech synthesis (a la the Speak and Spell)!

Those engines go thru an analog, SEM-style filter with lowpass, highpass and bandpass modes. Unlike an actual SEM filter, this one will self-oscillate! To control everything, you get an ADSR envelope (decay/release share a single setting), a syncable LFO, and a function generator/cycling envelope with adjustable rise/fall times and curve. There’s also an arpeggiator, a sequencer (64 steps, with A & B banks for two independent, switchable sequences per voice), and a unique touch-capacitive “keyboard” that senses how much skin is touching it and allows you to use polyphonic aftertouch. Tying everything together is a modulation matrix that allows you to assign any of the five modulation sources to nearly any destination.

It offers a single mono audio output; USB and MIDI I/O (MIDI via 3.5mm TRS); CV outputs for pitch, gate and aftertouch; sync I/O; and a headphone jack that doubles as a vocoder input when used with a headset.

Primarily a mono synth, it does offer a paraphonic mode, with four independent notes sharing the one filter, as well as a unison mode that offers up to four variably detuned voices for maximum phattitude. It also offers a chord engine as one of its 22 synthesis types!

What I Like!

Everything? I don’t mean to sound like a fanboy, but I think that this little synth is a nearly perfect design. The number of different oscillator engines offers incredible depth; the fact that each one offers just three simple controls (with a very few exceptions, such as samples, that have an extra option or two) keeps things manageable and prevents you from disappearing into the land of endless twiddles. The filter, to my ears, sounds great and is an ideal choice. It isn’t a particularly characterful filter, but that’s likely for the best – given the depth in the oscillator section, what you want is a filter that can work with ALL of them, not impose its will on any of them.

The modulation options are limited, but well chosen. They can all be assigned to multiple destinations, at varying depths, and they can even modulate each other – for example, using the aftertouch to control the amount of vibrato. The mod matrix makes it easy to assign modulation to sources, and makes it very clear what’s modulating what, with a touch of the knob revealing the depth of modulation. 

The sequencer is shockingly deep, and offers some very cool controlled randomization features, if that’s your bag. The arpeggiator is solid and offers a pretty typical set of options in terms of range, playback directions, etc. And that keyboard? I love it. I know some people (actual keyboard players LOL) HATE it, but it’s fantastic for me. The synth plays just fine via MIDI with a traditional keyboard, so if/when one wants a more traditional playing surface, it’s an option. 

The two most important things with ANY synth are the sound and programmability, and for me, the MicroFreak shines in both areas. Some have dismissed it as digital or thin sounding, but I have not found that to be true, at all. It’s fully capable of thick, gnarly basses, screaming leads and sweet pads, not to mention varying forms of synthesized insanity. And it’s a dream to program – all of the engines are useful to some degree, and most offer tremendous depth. 

What really sets it apart is the limited but complete option set, and incredibly useful mod matrix. It’s nearly knob-per-function, with a couple Shift options (screenprinted on the synth for easy reference!) and a handful of secondary settings in a utility menu. Essentially, the synth has exactly what you need and nothing more, and it’s almost all directly accessible by hand or modulator. Once it sounds good and you’ve set each modulator to one or more parameters, and verified that with a glance at the matrix, you know you’re done!

What Don’t I Like?

There’s not much I don’t like, to be honest. Early on, I had some significant but inconsistent issues with jumpy encoders (they’d sometimes change values without being touched, and make huge jumps at the slightest touch) but that seemed to largely resolve itself with one of the firmware updates. At this point, I will occasionally notice minor jitter on an encoder while adjusting it, but nothing that affects the sound. 

Otherwise… I guess it would be neat if it had effects? Oh, and it would be great if I could assign the pitch strip/sequencer ribbon controller as a modulator. That’s it. That’s all I got!

Other Factors?

If I recall correctly, the synth cost $300 at launch, rising to $350 after a few years, and again to $400 in the past couple years. The thing is, in that time the capabilities of the synth have nearly doubled! It launched with 12 oscillator types; that’s nearly doubled to 22, including sample playback and granular synthesis options, a vocoder mode and more. Also added are options like the vocoder mode, unison, and additional preset slots. All of those upgrades were free! 

One “issue” is that it offers so many oscillator options it can be difficult to decide what to use if you are exploring, or not sure how to approach creating the sound you are after. Hard to see this as a problem precisely, but it’s worth noting. I frequently use a 20-sided die to decide what oscillator type to use (omitting Vocoder, and treating the two wavetable options as one entry). I bet you’ll figure out a method that works for you, too.

Some folks hate the looks and design; I like it, but don’t really care that much either way. Same with the size – some feel like it’s toylike, but I think of it as conveniently portable. In other words, in the areas where this synth gets somewhat legit criticisms, it happens to align with my personal preferences, or at least areas I don’t care much about. No wonder it’s one of my favorites.

Conclusion

This is my favorite synthesizer of all time. I am more likely to buy a second one than I am to get rid of it. I can honestly say the $235 I spent to buy this used was the best money I ever spent on music production. Used you can still get them for around $300 (cheaper occasionally!) and even at $400, this has to be one of the best bang-for-buck synthesizers ever made. If you are after a versatile, deep and easy to use hardware synthesizer, the MicroFreak (and its big brother, the MiniFreak) are worth a long look.

Bonus Feature!

Here’s a playlist of me programming and talking about the MicroFreak, in case you want to see it in action!