Four years on, the remarkable Arturia MiniFreak get a new update with the long-awaited addition of user sample and wavetable uploads. plus a bunch of new presets to show them off!
[UPDATE: 15th September, 2026] If ever there was a synth that punched way above its weight (and size), it’s the Arturia MiniFreak. It’s an incredibly powerful combination of analogue filters and digital oscillators, with some added craziness thrown in for good measure. And now it gets its fifth update!
This time around, it gets a feature that has long been requested and that is the ability for users to upload their own samples and wavetables into those respective engines within the synth. This now makes it even more powerful and customisable. And to show off these new features, there are 20+ new patches that use these features.
One very unique thing about the MiniFreak, certainly when it was launched, was the fact that Arturia also created a 1:1 software plugin recreation of the hardware that allowed users to implement MiniFreak in their DAW, but also to use it as an editor and librarian for the hardware.
The 5.0 update is available for free to all owners of the hardware and software. Arturia highly recommends that you back up your sounds, then update the plugin first, connect your hardware and update it via the application directly. One word of caution: when I carried out my update this afternoon, it seemed to corrupt my presets, something easily cured by restoring the backup.
[December 18th, 2024] Arturia update their brilliant MiniFreak hybrid synthesizer to version 3.0 and give us regular and granular sampling in both the hardware and software versions. They’re obviously getting into the Xmas spirit down in Grenoble because Arturia has just announced a free major firmware update for these brilliant hardware and software synthesizers!
Building on what is already a formidable suite of sound shaping tools, Arturia have added eight brand new engines to both the hardware and software versions that focus mainly on granular synthesis. And to show off these great new engines, they’ve thrown in 64 brand new presets!
What’s New in 3.0?
The eight new engines are as follows…
- Sample
- Cloud Grains
- Hit Grains
- Frozen
- Skan
- Particles
- Lick
- Raster
Sample is a simple sample player with loop features, but the other seven granular-based engines deliver some deep, creative ways of taking your samples and making them something completely unique. These new engines now ramp up the oscillator modes in MiniFreak and MiniFreak V to 30!
There’s no word yet on when these new engines will be added to the MiniFreak support for Astrolab, but it can’t be too far away. This new update makes the Minifreak and MiniFreak V even more compelling than before and hnads down one of the most versatile and powerful little hybrid synths available today!
More 3.0 Information
Update your MiniFreak V app first, using the Arturia Software Center, then update your MiniFreak hardware from the app. Downloads also available from the Arturia website.
[December 11th, 2023] A little over a year since its launch, the synth and its identical software twin, MiniFreak V, have been given a nice, juicy firmware update. This brings a bunch of cool new features to play with and makes this brilliant synth even better than before!
What’s New?
Well, quite a bit actually. First up, we have Wavetables! When Arturia shoe-horned these into the MicroFreak, MiniFreak owners began crying out for this in their keyboards. Arturia have delivered with 32 factory wavetables built into the v2 firmware. There’s a new Super Unison effect that stacks up to six copies of the patch on top of the dry signal. This can give your patch incredible width. The Noise Engineering oscillator can now have Osc Freerun applied to it, another feature that the community asked for a lot. Users can now choose an LFO Shaper Rate. This allows the user to apply the rate corresponding to a single step or the entire Shaper Curve.
There are some tweaks to the Macro settings that make them a lot more expressive and users can now choose to send clock on/off or transport on/off via the Sync output. Finally, for MiniFreak hardware owners, there is a new Favourites section so that they can store up to 64 of their favourite presets. MiniFreak V users will also notice a new ‘Store’ option that allows them to buy new patch banks. These banks will work on both hardware and software versions. From today, there are three free banks of 32 patches each and two paid-for banks of 64 patches available to buy.
Ahhhh, Freak Out!
[October 18th, 2022] If you thought that Arturia’s MicroFreak was a slightly mad, but hugely unique synthesizer, then buckle up for the MiniFreak! Building on the incredibly successful Micro, the MiniFreak expands all of those superb sound-shaping features and throws in a lot more.
For starters, gone is the unique touch keyboard of the MicroFreak, replaced by a full action 37-note ‘slim keys’ example. Sporting velocity sensitivity and aftertouch, this will appeal much more to the keyboard players amongst you. The most obvious change is that the MiniFreak is now a 6-voice polysynth.
It also delivers 12-voice Paraphony, Unison and Monophonic modes. As with its miniature predecessor, the MiniFreak uses digital oscillators pushed through analogue filters for some truly wild and big sounds. 20 different modes allow you to process each sound engine’s output with the other, as well as allowing you to stack them.
Modulation
As you would expect from Arturia, it includes a wealth of customisable modulation and manipulation tools. These are all accessible via an expanded modulation matrix featuring FM, ring modulation and customisable multi-segment LFO shapes.
It also features polyphonic ADSR envelopes, as well as retaining the Spice and Dice randomisation from the original MicroFreak. It comes with stereo outputs and 3 digital FX slots. Each of those slots can be filled with one of 10 built-in Arturia FX that include rich choruses, 3-band EQ and distortion.
MiniFreak Goes Virtual!
In a first for an Arturia hardware synth, owners will receive a dedicated VST plugin version of the synth! The plugin is a complete replication in software of the MiniFreak’s sound engines, filters and presets. It will also allow you to control your MiniFreak from your DAW. Truly the best of both worlds!
MiniFreak will undoubtedly appeal to those who didn’t get on with its smaller sibling’s lack of real keys. It will also broaden the appeal of the Freak’s way of doing things. What remains to be seen is if Arturia has hidden any features to be revealed later. Remember when they surprised us all with the MicroFreak’s vocoder functionality?
Arturia’s MiniFreak is on sale now.
UPDATE: MiniFreak V is now available for all MiniFreak hardware owners. Check out Robin’s thoughts here
More Information
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