Arturia has announced the MiniBrute SE, a ‘special edition’ of its analogue mono synthesizer.
Arturia’s red-hot MiniBrute Analog Synthesizer set the electronic musical instrument world alight immediately upon its introduction in 2012. Indeed, it rapidly reset the price/performance ratio benchmark when successfully soaring through the subtractive synthesis sound barrier while singlehandedly setting a new standard for what a hardware synthesizer should be.
Hot on its heels comes a ‘special edition’ that is very special indeed. MiniBrute SE shares the same physical footprint as the original MiniBrute, but builds upon this amazingly compact and bijou analogue monosynth in both looks and features.
Although a sturdy and stylish brushed aluminium casing with wooden sides surely make MiniBrute SE stand out from the analogue crowd, skin-deep good looks are not the be and end all here, however, as added functionality runs deeper still.
An all-new step SEQUENCER elegantly expands playing options with the MiniBrute SE — six Pattern sequences with up to 64 steps each to create multiple musical phrases, to be precise. Yet it is capable of so much more than simply replaying pre- programmed Pattern sequences ad infinitum. Users can create new musical phrases from existing ones by changing the playback Mode, Gate Len (timing), and Swing settings in realtime from the clearly labelled front panel — perfect for inspiring new musical ideas and creating exciting live performances on the fly.
MiniBrute SE is proof positive that the original MiniBrute was no fly-by-night success story. A pure analogue signal path and attractive features like a multi-wave OSCILLATOR and Sub Osc combined with a huge-sounding Steiner-Parker multimode FILTER (fittingly revised by Nyle Steiner himself) and wide-ranging modulation capabilities confirm that MiniBrute SE continues to innovate while breathing new life into recordings and stage performances.
Add fantastic features like Ultrasaw (generating shimmering sawtooth waveforms), Metalizer (adding extreme triangle waveform-induced harmonics), LFO (with sample and hold), and full USB/MIDI/CV connectivity into the musical mix, and what have you got? A killer-sounding, step sequencing-capable synth with looks to die for, that’s what!
MiniBrute SE will be available to purchase at the end of May, 2014, priced at 549 EUR / $599 USD.
More information: Arturia
