author: Clayton Brown
date: march 6th 2024
topic: music equipment instruments
Last July 2023 I purchased the minibrute 2s. After seeing all the exotic synthesizer options to choose from and most of those options being out of my price range back then and now for some reason I purchased the Arturia Minibrute 2s. For many years I wondered what owning an Arturia analog synth would be like. As soon as I got the synth I played the some music that to me sounded deep, bassy, and kind of weird.
At first glance and touch the synthesizer didn’t pose any problems for me or the way I like to produce music. I had previously purchased the Arturia DrumBrute before the time of owning the Minibrute 2s so I knew that sequencer was not at all like what I would think a sequencer should be or act like. My hopes was to buy the Arturia Minibrute 2s and that because the Minibrute is a synthesizer not a drum machine the sequencer would be far more adaptive to play and produce music.
Essentially, I owned the semi modular analog synthesizer for a few days and while owning the machine after the first day I began to realize the tuning was all jacked up, wrong. When I contacted the company about this the tech support mentioned the allure of analog synthesizers is their ability to sound different and offer the player the ability to manipulate tuning. I wasn’t buying that story and insisted the tuning was wrong. The tech support person sent me instructions to tune the synthesizer using a tiny flat head screw driver. On the back of the synth is two tiny holes where a tiny screw driver will fit and that is how the semi modular arturia minibrute 2/2s is tuned. I’ve never owned a synthesizer that the owner can tune or untune whenever they want to. In my personal opinion the analog oscillator master tuning feature is one of the best features the synthesizer offers, as long as the customer can figure out how to get the tuning right. I eventually did realize the best and most perfect way to tune the semi modular minibrute 2s which I will reveal to you later in this post but for now I want to mention some more details about my experience using the surface features of the device.
My biggest problem with the minibrute 2s is simply this; there is a double resonant feature knob that makes the worst sounds ever. In addition to the fact that the synthesizer is designed to have a filter knob, resonant knob, there is a secondary knob for the resonance knob that acts as another resonance knob to dip or peak the resonance of the resonance. It’s such a stupid feature and is the main reason for why I would not keep the synthesizer. In future designs of –brute products by Arturia I hope they never use the double resonance feature ever again. Not only is the double resonance knob 1 knob 2 a problem the pre patched internal LFO is also permanently layered to the secondary resonance knob. By default the LFO is patched to that location. If I were involved in the designing of the Arturia Minibrute 2s I would have kept the LFOs separated by default and patchable by design on the main patch bay. The Patch unto itself I felt lacked enough patching options for the LFOs being that they are very important to creating spectacular sounds. When not using the patch bay whatsoever the LFO is clocked in a way that is forced into time increments, or free running. To change this setting the synth needs to be connected to the computer to modify this, and other micro settings no adjustable from the synthesizer. In the future it might be best to add somewhat of a digital interface to the Arturia analog synths to be able to adjust those digital parameters that control analog parts without a computer because I found that if I did want to change those settings in the moment it would offer more in the moment sound creation that expands the complete lineup of offerings by the synthesizer. The shrill sound of the LFO modulating the secondary resonance control basically ruined what most people think of as a good amount of cool resonance into a filter. That being said, whatever it was that Arturia thought was possible with this synth I wasn’t vibing with it as much as the research and designers.
The patch bay became a dissappointment for me when I realized I could not pull the different features from the four waveform oscillators and control oscillators by overlapping the parts. I wanted to use pulse wave modulation with the saw wave. I wanted to use the super saw effect with the triangle but for me the patch bay would not work when I chose to do this. I watched a video of Loopop using the synth and from what I saw he made it seem like it was possible to use any of the oscillator features on any of the other oscillators built into the synthesizer but it never worked for me and left me feeling like the synthesizer was broken not to mention at this point I still had no clue the tuning was so bad.
While I was using the sequencer I noticed I could not edit the second page of a sequence while the synth was playing. As long as the synth was playing a sequence whenever I would go to the second page to play the synth the sequence would force me to see the first page preventing any editing of the second page while playing. I could of course edit the first or second page of the sequence while the track was stopped but I could not edit the second page of the sequence while the sequence was playing and that really irritated me slowing down my workflow and leading to being another reason why I have to return the instrument.
When I finally decided I must return the synth I first remembered my guitar tuning feature in my audio interface and decided to test the tuning of the synth since to my ears the synth sounded really more like a kids toy from WalMart than a professional synth. My idea of a cool synth is one that feels and acts and kind of reminds me of a toy but retains the professional tuning of a real music instrument for professionals. When I tested the tuning it was so bad my driver for my audio interface would crash whenever I would plug in my synth to my audio interface with the tuning setting turned on. My computer crashed multiple times on me while I was attempting to test and tune the synthesizer after gaining the instructions on how to properly tune the machine. Following the instructions to tune the minibrute 2s did not exactly work. The tuning would stay in pitch for the first and second octave but would gradually go out of whack. I did finally figure out how to perfectly tune the Arturia Minibrute 2s using a perfect system right before I sent the synthesizer back to Compton, CA. Also, something to point out, when I purchased the synth on a deal the store was based in a place in Compton, CA and at the time I wondered why. Once I had my hands on the synth playing the synth it made sense. The Arturia Minibrute 2s works and sounds to me like a tone that resembles lots of rap music.
How to tune the Arturia Minibrute 2s; The best way I found to tune the minibrute 2s analog synthesizer is to do it like this:
There is a right oscillator and a left oscillator on the synth. Behind those oscillators are two tiny holes where the tuning can be done. To best fix the synth it needs to be done like this. Set the keyboard to the standard middle C position where neither the upper or lower octave button is selected on the synthesizer. Play the middle C, with the sound volume off, and turn the main tuning screw as far and as high in pitch as it will go until you get the to highest A or G, whatever is closer. You’ll know which screw is the major and which one is the minor by how fast the movement of pitch is when turning the screw. The major moves really quick and the minor is more finite. The synth should go slightly higher than the pitch of A/G notes but you want to have the pitch set to closest perfect pitch note of either A or G, not the highest literal pitch, when tuning. A and G are the only two notes that have the most perfect sinous tone therefore it makes sense to tune a synth using the mathematically most perfect notes. This information is important to know and my wisdom because I came up with this concept seeing how the information given to me by Arturia did not tell me to do this and I chose to do this on my own.
It’s been more than half a year since I did this but if I remember correctly you might need to turn the minor screw knob all the way up until nothing moves or not, I don’t quite remember I just recall the pitch placement and how it must be stepped down to the perfect pitch.
Now what you are going to do is step the pitch down one note at a time like this;
Turn the major tuning screw down one whole step to the next note down. After you do that tune the other note down one whole step. Repeat this process all the way down until you get to the note C. The whole time you are doing this tuning process you should be holding down the Lower C of the keyboard in the default setting of the keyboard. As you step the tuning down you should eventually get to the point where each oscillator is in sync. You need to do this for the second oscillator as well. You need to turn the larger tuning screw followed by the minor tuning screw and step the tuning of the synthesizer down from the highest standard note possible all the way down to the C note. Once this is done the synthesizer should practically be perfectly tuned for each and every octave with the most extreme octaves slightly off pitch. After your done and your mind is relieved because you toy synthesizer now has perfect pitch you can smile be happy and make techno.
I will always give arturia a chance in the future but at the time the synthesizer was not for me. The workflow is something that takes time and the patch bay seemed a bit cheap. I wished for the patch bay with all it’s options to be much more and when I only owned the synth for a couple days and I was already looking online for more tiny patch cables I felt that was a problem. If you want to get the most out of patching the arturia you will want to own the double stacker patch cables that make it possible to stick two different cables into the same spot.
I told myself I would eventually reveal to people how I came up with getting the synth to be perfectly in tune and I guess that time is now.
© 2024 music office blot, clayton brown
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