Arturia has just unleashed its take on the famous Elka Synthex. A whole lot of people will recognise the Synthex from a single preset that was used by a certain Monsieur Jarre ( a little known electronic musician) on his song Lazer Harp II from the Rendezvous album. Classic EM often helped by triggering a synthex (or similar) from a Lazer triggering system he called the Lazer Harp
The truth be told the Synthex was a great synth, yet a little to late to the party as the DX-7 was way cheaper and well could make sounds nothing else at the time could. This resulted in a meagre 1850 units being produced over a 4yr or thereabouts production run. Check out the wiki page below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elka_Synthex
Because of the small production run and high price, the Synthex is a favourite amongst plugin makers. Cherry Audio and a few other have released their takes so how does the Arturia stack up – well to be fair pretty well, although it is yet again another analogue synth reimagined as a plugin.
A 2-layer synth with added extras including decent fx and and nice new arpeggio which has 4 distinct arps makes it stand out from the crowd, yet it is still yet another analogue clone albeit a decent one. I do have another gripe as well, and that is the price. This has been priced by Arturia at €199 (I do get a customer into offer of €99) but this really doesn’t compare well with the Cherry Audio version which is currently on offer at $49. This really will harm the appeal for many with it really being difficult to overlook a price tag nearly 4 times its direct competitors price. Being late to the party certainly hasn’t helped Arturia either.
So how does it sound? Well it’s pretty good actually. I am just a tad fed up with yet another analogue synth. I’ve mentioned this a lot recently but emulating or reimagining old analogue beasts that cost lots of money is reaching the end of the line nowadays. I am much more excited by innovative instruments or FX. A computer is very good at making things that hardware can be expensive to make for just an instrument and run that a few times over. There are plenty of poly analogue options these days including decent free ones so this seems a bit, well, tiresome if I’m honest. This is only worth considering if you don’t have a Synthex plugin or something similar and if you can use the admittedly great FX and arpeggiator functions. For an idea of the sounds then please see the video below – this might or might not sway you from purchasing, and Arturia still do have a demo mode available that will help you see if it’s worth your hard earned cash
Arturia Synthx V

Arturia is a little late to the party with its take on the Elka Synthex and expensive to boot. It does sound great and the FX and interesting arpeggiator mean it is still worth considering.
Pros
Sounds great
Arpeggiator is truly wondrous!
Not too cpu heavy considering the FX quality and basically 2 x synths
Cons
Expensive even at the discounted price
Late to the party. Plenty of Synthex inspired plugins already out there
Yet again we have a plugin of a famous old analogue beast
[…] groundbreaking I think I’d rather have this than say Arturias recently released and reviewed HERE Synthx V – especially at a much more wallet friendly price! This review is based on the demo […]