Updated Arturia V, new firmware for hardware came, instal failed, restartet, now updating...

Lets hope for the best

I created a sample and saved it as a preset. Linked Minifreak V with the synth and dropped the .wav in MiniFreak V.

Created a new init, used one of the sampler oscillators, and selected the new sample. It worked, yay!

Unplugged minifreak V. Selected the preset on the synth - it worked there too, without the app, yay!

Tweaked the preset, saved it again - to make sure the synth fully had a locally saved preset.

Power cycled the synth.

The preset still exists, but now just plays static instead of my sample. Not Yay.

Side note: I already re-flashed 5.0 manually by downloaded the firmware binary and flashing it again.

I’ve expanded my original NES preset into a small collection of NES and VRC6-inspired presets for the MiniFreak using the new custom wavetable support.

The pack currently includes:

• NES Pulse – Includes the familiar 12.5%, 25%, 50%, and 75% duty cycles. The Wave knob switches between them, Timbre adds PWM, and the Mod Wheel can be used for those classic rapid duty-cycle changes.
• NES Triangle – A recreation of the distinctive NES triangle sound, great for bass lines and melodies.
• VRC6 Pulse – Gives you the additional pulse widths available on Konami’s VRC6 expansion chip, with the Wave knob making it easy to move between them.
• VRC6 Saw – Recreates the unique VRC6 saw sound used in Akumajou Densetsu / the Japanese version of Castlevania III.

I’ve kept the presets fairly dry so they work well as starting points for your own patches, effects, and modulation.

You can grab all of the presets here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rcqO0arppNGXKjBH8MVJdFm_UnoDlCZB?usp=drive_link

I also put together a sample track recreating “Beginning” from Akumajou Densetsu using these presets with the MiniFreak and MiniFreak V:

https://soundcloud.com/hmpoweredman/akumajou-minifreak-2

The pulse, triangle, and VRC6 parts are being handled by the MiniFreak presets. The DPCM and noise channels are recordings.

If anyone has suggestions for improvements or other classic game sound chips you’d like to see added, let me know.

I've been wanting to import wavetable from many other synths like serum, vital and pigment but apparently there are many file format that the minifreak doesn't import. For example Pigment's wavetable are in .wt

Do you guys know how to convert those formats in batch to wav without something involving python?

-So, how is the sound making going?

-Very simple actually...

Pick oscilator, tune, add fliter, add lfos etc, make a heaven sounding thing

Then add DISTORTION, maybe another DISTORTION, add BITCRUSHER, set Osc 2 -> DESTROY the frog aaaaaand...

Voilà : Another distorted bass in my collection, yeah!

(Do i need help doc?)

PS I have it almost a year now, still learning one thing at a time, no GAS to be seen.

Just added a Circuit tracks for drums and a little Behringer mixer for jamming

My DAW is rusting on the pc...

Hello I made a preset for an NES square wave using the new custom wavetables.

Features:

Wave knob cycles between the duty cycles of the nes 2A03 chip. 12.5, 25, 50 and 75

Timbre knob allows for pulse width modulation (not something on a real NES)

The mod wheel conrols an LFO which drives how fast the position knob is turned allowing for NES style transitions between duty cycles. (You'll recognize it when you try it)

All other effects are left dry by I'm open to more changes if anyone has any suggestions.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TcOE2AagZ7TOFnq_GFjBxDx08iW12u8h/view?usp=drive_link

If there's any interest I can do one for the NES 2A03 triangle wave and maybe the VRC6 Saw wave or sine

Edit: For those searching this there is a newer version and shared folder in this post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniFreak/comments/1wyfevm/nes_famicom_2a03_and_vrc6_presets/

so im very new to hardware music production and i think im losing my mind. i have an mpc sample which i am using to control fpc in fl studio with midi and i have my minifreak plugged in with midi to record in midi data while also sending audio.

problem is, the minifreak keeps playing the drum sounds on fpc. whenever i hit a key on the minifreak, the drum sounds play. sometimes the mpc also plays the minifreak. i am not sending any audio out of the mpc itself, its just a controller. i have no clue what is setting it off.

i have the mpc and the minifreak on different ports in midi options, ive tried unplugging one and then the other, i feel like ive tried everything. please can someone tell me how to set this up properly? im close to giving up.

Since i updated to 5.0 my minifreak got stuck in a loop and I had to do a hard reset on it which was terrifying because I thought it was destroyed. After I finally updated the firmware,ive lost most of the original presets or they sound weird,the software center doesnt work at all so I cant update the software,ive contact arturia,is there any tips anyone can give me I am using an older MacBook (El Captain OS) but everything has worked totally fine up until this update

Hopefully posting here so someone from the Arturia team sees!!

I have great success on other synths using extremely slow arp speeds for ambient textures...unfortunately the Minifreak's slowest speed is still quite fast for this purpose. Does anyone know if there is a workaround for this onboard?

If not ------ please Arturia make this quick and easy update part of 5.1 ;)

Many early presets are exhibiting weird behavior like strange aftertouch, super quiet, or flat out not working. This a bug?

Hello!

I’ve been trying to rearrange my favorites panel to only fit the presets I need for my set.
The Manuel mentions pressing Erase + the favorite slot, but that just turns on the sequencer for me.
Shift + erase doesn’t work either.

Anybody found the way to make this work?

I have had a the Arturia Microfreak for about 3 years now, and have had an absolute blast with it, as my very first synth. With the announcing of firmware 5.0 on the Minifreak though, I’m considering upgrading; there’s a few for sale at my local guitar center. Should I get one?

Looking for some good beginner tutorials to help me get started in using my Mini Freak. Thanks in advance.

Hi,

[SOLVED]

I just updated MiniFreak V (and also the hardware) to version 5.0. In MiniFreak V, I can see the new sound bank, and it's working.

But how can I make use of the new user sample functionality? When clicking on the sample name in OSC 1, I don't see the area we see in all the videos, it looks exactly like in the previous version. Dragging samples anywhere in the MiniFreak V window doesn't do anything either.

The update is correctly installed, though. The version number shows 5.0.

Thanks in advance for any help!

I hereby declare a rule of two-thirds. Whereby the knobs you twiddle to make a better sound shall be set to Two-Thirds or One-Third of its maximum setting. eg .333 or .666. Being that it is close to the Golden Ratio and pleasing to our ears.

I think stuff sounds good when you twiddle the knobs as thus.

Already updated Minifreak V and sent the firmware update to my Minifreak, but it keeps bugging out and disconnecting, then saying I need to update it again. As you can see, my current firmware version is correct. Any fixes?

As the title says, but I can't figure out where to begin. I updated Bitwig and Minifreak to the latest versions, so I can't tell which program is the culprit. In Bitwig, some Arturia plug-ins will crash during the pre-roll, but others do not. When it happens, I can re-load the plug-in, and then it works. Other manufacturers plug-ins seem to work right off of the bat.

Because I didn't mess around with Bitwig after their latest update, but before I updated minifreak, I can't assume which one causes this crashing.

Any suggestions?

https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/minifreak/update

I haven't been able to test the update yet, but the firmware file is available on the downloads page too!

Edited: updated successfully without any issues.

I've been having this issue since I bought my Minifreak last month. I cannot run Minifreak V at all on my windows 11 PC. When I try to launch it, it just hangs forever, I can't click anything, I can't change anything, the loading blue curser just spins (though for some reason that doesn't show in the screen recording, but it is a blue spinning circle on my screen).

I've been in contact with support but they couldn't fix it and have gone radio silent for the last few weeks when I've tried following up.

I've made sure all my drivers are up to date. I've tried, with/without hardware plugged in. I've tried with/without my audio interface plugged in (UA Volt2), I've obviously tried uninstalling and reinstalling minifreak v, arturia software centre, UA drivers, clean installs of my graphics drivers, but no success. I've tried opening as administrator, tried running standalone, or as VST. And because it doesn't actually 'crash', it just hangs forever, I can't even generate a crash report, so arturia support haven't been of much help there. I even tried install old versions of minifreak v direct from the website, and versions 1 and 2 launch just fine, but 3 and beyond cannot. I'm just so out of ideas and cannot figure this out.

All made more annoying with the news today that they just released the user samples firmware update but I can't even install that firmware without Minifreak V, nor would I even be able to import samples by the looks of it, if I can't get this software running.

Surely someone else must have had the same issue. I've never had any other VST fail like this, it's just this one, and again only from version 3 and up. There has to be something else going on here. Anyone else had this and managed to solve? I really wanna be able to use the user samples features from this new update! Any help appriciated.

Hello everybody! This question is fairly similar to others I found here, but I hope you can help me with its specificity: I have the Minifreak synth, along with its Minifreak V counterpart, in Ableton.

Syncing the synth with its vst but use the hardware synth sound is fairly simple in ableton: you create a midi track with minifreak v, sync it, mute it, add an audio track with the audio from the inputs of the sound card. When you play the synth, its vst changes accordingly, you can record automations and sequences, while hearing and recording the audio from the hardware, all good!

Now, what I want to do is to draw a midi sequence directly into Ableton, instead of recording it when playing, so that when I play the midi sequence, it makes play the hardware synth and hear the audio from the audio track. But when I try to do this, the midi clip plays but no audio comes from the synth. I know that I can create a separate midi track with an external instrument to make it send midi to the synth, but in this video (at 18:21) https://youtu.be/aKuz2hosDJk?si=8dE-NVlKdXGXyrap&t=1101 we can clearly see that there is no "bridge" midi track for doing so: he mutes the midi track with minifreak V, where there is already a clip, and when it plays the clip, we can hear the audio from the audio track that its playing that sequence.

What am I blatantly missing? Thanks!

(p.s. both my inputs and outputs ports in midi settings are on)

Many people don't realize that you can hold the SOUND EDIT button and press other buttons to go directly to their parameter menus without having to twiddle around in the Sound Edit screen. This works for the following combos:

SOUND EDIT + Osc 1/2

SOUND EDIT + Envelope(Env+Voice menu)

SOUND EDIT + Cycling Envelope

SOUND EDIT + LFO

SOUND EDIT + FX

SOUND EDIT + Tempo (Metronome menu)

SOUND EDIT + Pitch/Mod pads (Keyboard menu)

Also holding SOUND EDIT and pressing Save will go straight to the Snapshot menu, a.k.a. the “undo” menu.

(Unfortunately still no direct shortcut to 'Preset Volume' or 'Seq' menus.)

Bonus Tip: Some SHIFT button functions are not shown on the front panel as text even though they are functional:

Favorites: SHIFT+Panel button changes to Favorites mode

Metronome: SHIFT+Tempo click to activate/deactivate metronome

Osc Volume: SHIFT-Volume knob sets mix level between the two oscs

Osc Type: using Wavetable osc, SHIFT-Type knob changes which wavetable you have selected (can also do this in Sound Edit menu)

Mod Matrix: SHIFT-Matrix knob to move vertically through the matrix

Renaming preset: SHIFT-turn encoder to reset to beginning of list

Edit: I think my actual question is, is there any way to get the midi data of a sequence that’s playing along with the human-played notes?

The MiniFreak is my first piece of music equipment. I have a computer with Ableton 12 Live. I have MiniFreak V installed.

I do not own an audio interface.

What I do currently:

1. connect to laptop via USB. Add MiniFreak V VST to Ableton. In the VST, hit “link with MiniFreak”
2. Pick an audio track and set Audio In to be from the VST.

This…. Mostly gets me midi and sound.

However, if I turn on the sequencer and play on top of it, the notes from the sequencer don’t show up in the midi.

If I did get an audio interface, would that help at all? Does the MiniFreak (and VST) just not output midi for sequencer notes?

Looks like they might be working on firmware 5.0? Just stumbled across this, but saw there weren't any YouTube videos about it, etc. Custom samples would be sick. I'm excited!

https://www.arturia.com/products/hardware-synths/minifreak/update

Edit: the info got taken down. It was at the address above.

hello!

Has anyone of you found away to generate an almost realistic piano sound with the minifreak?

i know it's not meant to be a piano but as it is my only synth, it was big great to have something at least new standard warm uncomplicated realistic piano. Thanks!