Arturia V Collection & Patch Selections

[mintjamman]

I thought many of you would be both interested and disappointed to learn that Arturia have now confirmed that Patch Selection is unavailable using industry standard Program and Bank select commands, so for those who may be spending time chasing this its a non starter although Arturia have this on their to do list with no date set currently when these functions will be available.

Having no control of Patch selection is woefully inadequate and makes the use of the V Collection in a live setting pretty much useless, this may also have implications for prospective purchasers who like myself assumed that such a basic set of functions would be available.

How soon this will be implemented will I fear be down to us as users raising common thread support requests, I have also been advised that as regards both customer and technical support efforts are to be seriously made to improve response times and quality of support and again I am sure many will welcome this, the proof of the pudding will of course be in the eating so lets see how this all pans out:

[waltcollins]

I'm not sure what lack of functionality you are referring to in your post.

I just tested the Solina V, as a VSTI, inside my DAW, which is Cakewalk Sonar X3 Producer.  I was able to use the MIDI Learn function and quickly assign a button on my keyboard controller to the "Prev Preset" and "Next Preset" buttons on the top bar of the Solina interface.

I also tested the Solina V as a standalone application (i.e. not in any DAW), and the MIDI Learn function worked the same way there, successfully.

Couldn't you set up a custom bank of presets to navigate through easily with a slider/knob or buttons on your controller, for live use as you mentioned?

EDIT:

On further review, I tested this out using the Prophet V2 and apparently the prev/next preset buttons in the top bar (the small up/down arrows) are NOT available for MIDI assignment, nor are the bank and program select buttons down near the bottom of the interface.  So this seems to be a problem for some synths but not others.

Notably, the ones that seem to work are the newly released synths, i.e. the Solina V, Matrix-12 V, Vox V.  Although apparently the new Spark doesn't actually have a MIDI Learn button, and requires you to Control-click on a pad to assign it.  I wasn't able to figure out how to do program changes in the Spark.

Also, the Oberheim SEM V and Wurlitzer V do offer program changes in their top bar.  I think these were updated more recently than some of the other older synths.

So the list of synths in the V Collection that DO allow program changes to be assigned to a controller appears to be as follows:

Matrix-12 V
Oberheim SEM V
Solina V
Vox V
Wurlitzer V

The remaining ones do NOT allow program changes via MIDI, as far as I can tell:

Analog Lab (doesn't seem to have next/prev program buttons anywhere on the interface)
ARP 2600 V2
CS-80 V2
Jupiter-8 V2
Modular V2
Prophet V2
Spark (doesn't seem to have a MIDI Learn button anywhere on the interface)

Anyway, hopefully the top bar on the newer synths is the "new way", and the older ones will be migrated to that system over time.

[mintjamman]

Yes this is exactly the issue I was highlighting, all the synths should offer this functionality even if some of them did not as originals, to have a situation where some can and some cannot is less than useful for a collection, the midi learn function is one thing, the real way most performers on stage would want to operate patch changes is by using a master controller, for instance I use a Yamaha S90ES 88 Note weighted synth with advanced midi controller functions as does my Korg Triton Pro 76 Key, by setting up Master Patches the S90ES like a lot of other synths and dedicated Midi Controlllers such as those from Kurzweil and Roland offer the tools to set up Master Combinations, so for example you might have a internal sound layered with a external sound from say a hardware module or another keyboard and by setting up Patch numbers inside the Midi Master Configuration you can then send multiple patch changes out and where any patch lies outside the normal GM/GS numerical system you then use MSB and LSB commands in addition to select the desired sounds. The Result that you have complete control over all sounds internal and external which can be used individually or in combination with other sounds on other modules, boards or softsynths, all pretty simple stuff normally PROVIDING that the external synth understands these commands which Arturia seems to have omitted !!!

See here:
Any MIDI message that includes a variable value (such as MIDI note number or controller information) comprises, in addition to the MIDI channel address, two parts: one to say what sort of message it is, and the other to say what value is being transmitted. Because MIDI is an 8-bit system where seven of the eight bits are used to carry data values, the maximum range of a conventional MIDI message is from 0 to 127. This limit also applies to musical notes, which means MIDI can address a maximum of 128 different notes. Similarly, you can only address 128 different patches directly over MIDI, but with modern synths coming packed with more and more sounds, MIDI Bank Change messages are often used to access multiple sound banks, each containing up to 128 patches, However, some modern synths use both MSB and LSB Controllers to provide Bank Change commands.

As regards the Arturia way of doing things in the V Collection not having this standard functionality casts the collection into the realms of the home studio or hobbyist in the bedroom and in my view makes it less valuable as a product which can be used on stage live, maybe the intention of Arturia was the former who knows ?