Buying Arturia Software Synths

[IanF]

Greetings all,

TL;DR Is it sensible to wait for sales and does buying a single instrument allow an upgrade path to the V Collection?

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I'm currently looking at buying the Prophet V3 but tbh, the price is way over the top, in my rarely humble opinion.

I'm not greatly interested in the VS as I'm more into analogue but it has a few nice sounds and so, as a package I can justify it to myself to pay a little extra for something that I don't actually want, but may be nice to have from time to time.

In terms of making music that's all I need. I'm a hobbyist these days (I'm 56) although I might pop out and do a gig again just for the hell of it at some point in the future. For that reason, call me a skinflint but I don't want to start dropping hundreds on products that aren't essential which, brings me to the V Collection.

I grew up with the synths in the V collection although most of them were beyond my means, leaving me with my nose pressed up against music store windows, drooling. I don't need them and I wouldn't want to get into the habit of writing songs with them (I prefer a minimalist approach), but it'd be great to play some of them and hear the sounds again every once in a while when I'm feeling nostalgic and telling everyone "It was better in my day!". But, again, the price is way over the top for my needs.

Which brings me to the question (at last) that is, what is the best way to buy Arturia VST's? Do they have sales often enough that it makes sense to await the next one and if so, are they proper sales or the "you can have 10% off and we'll throw in something else for free that we're struggling to sell and you don't actually want", type?

Also, if you do buy, what is the upgrade path like? If I bought the Pro 5 now and 6 months down the line decided to go for the V Collection, is that money wasted because the Pro 5 is in the V Collection, or is there an option that recognises I already have the Pro 5 and discounts the V Collection accordingly? I should add that I already have plenty of other VST's that cover some of the V Collection synths so I'd really only be buying it to play around with things like the Emulator, Synclavier, or CS-80.

TIA, and well done for getting this far!

[MajorFubar]

Welcome.

I would recommend downloading the trial version of Analog Lab to see if this is something that sparks interest in you.

[IanF]

Thanks for the welcome!

In all honesty, it's not so much the sounds themselves that interest me, it's the actual synths, although of course the sounds are part of that. Without wanting to pimp other companies on an Arturia board, my primary VST's are a Polymoog, Rhodes, Oberheim, Juno 106, and a Hammond B3. Percussion and bass are again from another company.

On a recent search through my software for a kick drum preset, I think the result came back with in excess of 2-3000 possibilities. If Lennon & McCartney had used a different kick drum on every song they'd ever wrote, they still wouldn't have got through that lot! It's too much, so now I try to restrict myself to a few instruments and no more.

With the synths I use, the Prophet would make a good addition that I can justify, I just can't justify the £130 and although I'd maybe one day like to have a play around with some of the V Collection just for s... and giggles, again I can't justify the £400.

I know that ultimately the price of things is the price of things and if you want to play you have to pay, I'm just hoping I can try and find a way for it to make a bit more sense.