Arturia’s 49-key MiniFreak adds an XYZ touch matrix, costs €799
The larger MiniFreak gets aluminum wheels, a bigger OLED and 256 MB of sample memory alongside the new touch surface.
Arturia has put a multitouch grid on the MiniFreak. The new MiniFreak 49 is an upsized version of the hybrid synth with 49 keys, up from 37, and an XYZ touch matrix that handles performance, modulation and navigation. It is available now for €799.
The release follows the MiniFreak 5.0 update last month, which added support for importing your own samples and wavetables.
The matrix is a touch-sensitive surface with a light-up grid underneath. It also runs Freak Control, which has vertical touch macro faders plus dedicated controls for Gate, Spice (a general-purpose macro) and Hold. Keep a finger on the pad and press the Freak Control setting, and the position stays put. The grid can also show reactive visualizers that follow your playing.
Arturia developed the surface in-house, it told CDM. It is a multitouch capacitive pad, and the LEDs are only there for visual feedback. Besides X and Y, it reads finger pressure as the Z axis. It tracks up to eight touches, four in Freak Control mode, and recognizes gestures such as swipe and multi-tap, which move through presets. The LED display is 7×7 RGB.
CDM’s Peter Kirn, who tested the synth, says the pad “feels less like a KAOSS Pad or something and more like a long-lost Buchla or ARP interface.” The matrix works on sequences, oscillator parameters and effects. Presets can be reached from the matrix or from a new dedicated preset encoder.
“MiniFreak 49 puts the familiar and the unruly within reach, from rich polyphonic textures to fractured rhythms and abrasive harmonics,” Arturia says. “Play a chord, reach for a control, press into the matrix. Playing a patch is only the beginning.”
The 49 full-size keys are semi-weighted, with velocity sensitivity and mono aftertouch, on the same keybed as the KeyLab 49 mk3. Aluminum pitch and mod wheels sit on the left, and the larger body makes room for a bigger OLED. Engine 1 and Engine 2 each get dedicated controls, where the original used a push-button to switch between them. Selectable spread algorithms pan the six voices across the stereo field, a feature from the PolyBrute that arrives on a Freak for the first time. Audio-rate Filter Frequency Modulation adds harmonics and grit. Sample memory is 256 MB, against 32 MB on the base model.
The core is the MiniFreak’s: dual-engine architecture with analog filters and VCAs per voice, and 31 oscillator modes built on algorithms from Arturia, Mutable Instruments and Noise Engineering. Three FX slots draw on 13 algorithms, from chorus and reverb to distortion and vocoder. The 64-step sequencer has four modulation lanes and an arpeggiator. There are 350 factory presets and 162 slots for your own, and older MiniFreak presets load for backward compatibility.
Every MiniFreak 49 comes with a copy of Arturia’s MiniFreak V software synth for use in a DAW.
