MusicRadar

Analog Factory Experience combines software and hardware to great effect.

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• Review

Quite simply, if the Analog Factory Experience doesn’t have the sounds that you need for your next project then you’re either impossibly hard to please or have completely misunderstood what an analogue synthesizer should sound like!

There are a few niggles, though. Although parameters such as cutoff and resonance and the ADSR envelope have dedicated knobs and sliders on the hardware, the four key parameters change functions depending on the selected patch. They’re always mapped to important, eminently tweakable things; the only problem is that it’s impossible to know what you’re changing without using a mouse.

If you move a knob using the software interface and a mouse, a small window pops up telling you which parameter you’re changing. But when you reach for the hardware controller knobs, it’s impossible to see what you’re about to adjust.

This means that to use the hardware controller effectively you have to use the mouse too, which kind of defeats the object of the controller.

The solution would be to label the knobs on the software interface – they could pop up as you selected each preset– so you could at least refer to your computer monitor before you started twiddling.

Another fundamental problem is that the universal MIDI controller can only output the 128 values that a standard MIDI controller can output; each knob outputs a MIDI control value. What this means in practice is that if you move, say, the cutoff knob on the controller, you can clearly hear the filter stepping through the values.

This is called ‘zipper noise’ and can sometimes be desirable, but here, it destroys the illusion that you’re working with an analogue filter, which gives a smooth transition between settings.

We’re hoping that both of these issues can be addressed in a software update from Arturia, and while it’s at it, maybe it could correct the spelling error on the Analog Factory 2.0’s screen – envelope is spelt with just one ‘p’.

Fortunately, these two design problems probably aren’t deal-breakers for most prospective purchasers. If you compare the Analog Factory 2.0 to any of the vast selection of sample libraries covering the same ground, it wins on almost every comparison.

And the ongoing debate about whether these soft synths really sound like the classic keyboards they’re emulating is redundant in 2008. The Analog Factory Experience is a superb synthesizer in its own right: it has almost all of the sonic character of an analogue synth, and with a price tag of £230 (software and MIDI controller), it’s a sound investment (pun intended).

An ideal product for anyone who’s more interested in playing than designing their own patches

For a more in-depth review of the Analog Factory Experience, check out issue 198 of Future Music.