Each bank has 150 presets for you to explore. Think retro lo-fi beats, colossal basses (farewell to your speakers), and ambient sounds that will make Brian Eno intrigued. If all this wasn’t enough, there’s 3 new sound banks Wavelengths Lo-fi, Wavelengths Neuro Bass and Wavelengths Cinematic. It’ll give you ultra-wide ensemble timbres with its 8 voices and stereo-width control. As well as this there’s a new effect -Super Unison. On top of all this, there’s now more Unison options - you can control unison in all the engines and there’s unison phase control for Wavetable and Sample voices. And for those that didn’t know, you can load up and edit your own samples too. I added some noise to it as well to give the sound some tops - there’s 36 new noise types to choose from btw. Moving over to the sample engine I loaded up one of the 67 new samples - I wanted to see what the new 808 samples could do. Hitting up one of the 63 new wavetables I chose ‘Dumb Soup’ and it killed with its crunchy goodness and I added even more vibe when I automated the Wavetable position.

The Modulator Oscillator now has an extended hertz range from 0.100 to 20,000 - deep diving ahead! The Harmonic Engine - which I personally think has the coolest graphics ever with a cross between a lie detector test and an old studio console X and Y display - has new harmonic discoveries for you and pitch variations. The engines have been enhanced too, the Wavetable engine has a new Ring Mod feature and Phase Transformation section. There’s new sync modes so you can get create some rhythmic ideas you may have never thought about - finding spaces between straight, triplet and dotted rhythms, and speaking of going in between, Pigments 4 is now compatible with ODDSound’s micro tuning software MTS-ESP, designed in conjunction with Aphex Twin.

For example, it’s much easier to bypass the FX in the Synth and new Play modes. And for those that find some of Arturia’s emulation of modular synths overwhelming, Pigments 4 feels like a much easier interface to move around without the questions of ‘how did I do that?’. Speaking of that, Arturia has updated the theme to offer light mode as well as its classic dark mode.

Pigments 3 update