Arturia Analog Factory 2

I've been playing "on and off" since 1975. My first keyboards were a Rhodes 88, MicroMoog and an ARP Odyssey (White Faced). I'm currently using (3) Rolands (Fantom XR, and MC-505 which is linked to a JP-8080)and a Yamaha Motif ES Rack. Both the Fantom and the Motif are both expanded. I have fought the urge to use Soft-synths until now. I was longing for the Mini that graced my system for a few years one night and I downloaded a Demo of Minimoog V. I had fun but didn't put much thought into it until I saw Analog Factory at NAMM a few years back. When AF 2 came out I decided to give it a try. Like most articles will tell you, the name fits. I'm currently running it on a DELL E510 w/dual HD's and expanded memory... but don't make my mistake... don't buy DELL.

Ease of use. That is an understatement. I'm a dinosaur in musical tastes and computer evolution... so if I can make it work straight out of the box, anyone can. It does eat CPU space, but... their website is pretty honest about it... and Sound-On-Sound has great reviews of it. This one does NOT have the Synchrosoft "dongle" to deal with. Just register online. The Manual is OK, sort of... trial and error is faster.

The preprogrammed sounds run from "why did they bother" to "damn, that's great". But depending on your tastes and use(s)you may love the sounds that I don't. Anyone (and I do mean anyone) could find at least 500 sounds that they'd use straight out of the box. I bought this software with the understanding that it was a "greatest hits" of Arturia presets and not very user friendly as-far-as creating sounds. Baloney! On the rare occasion that I can't find "just the sound I'm looking for" in 3500 presets I just grab something in the neighborhood and "go to town". There are enough controls available (they vary on each preset) to create a huge new library. The quality of the sounds... well, read Arturias hype on TAE and you'd expect to hear identical sounds to the original... quite honestly, they're pretty close.

I bought this software to decide which Arturia products I wanted to load into Sonar 8. I never expected to be using it much. I'm taking a few classes at night so I got the academic version... but even if I had paid full retail it would be worth every penny. What a pleasant surprise this purchase has been.

Effects are limited, very limited.

I also wish they had an Oberheim Model... but hey, can't have everything.

There is no preset list available... and 2 years of trying (going back to AF version 1) to get Arturia to Email me one has been to no avail. As a matter of fact, that is the one major downfall of Arturia as-far-as I can tell... they are determined to be the Roland of the new millenium when it comes to non-responsive customer service. I compared this to IK's Sonik Synth 2. They both had their virtues and they both found their way into my system.