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Arturia Pigments Play is a free version of one of the best soft synths around.

Arturia has released Pigments Play, a free version of Pigments, its flagship multi-engine software synth.

Pigments Play follows the same approach the company took with Analog Lab Play, which arrived in 2023 as a free, stripped-down edition of Analog Lab, built around a simplified Play View and a curated set of 100 presets.

The instrument is based on the updated Play View that Arturia introduced with Pigments 7 last December, which features an audio-reactive visualiser and an interface designed for browsing presets and making quick adjustments rather than getting into the weeds with complex sound design.

Pigments Play’s 100 presets cover a variety of genres, including modern pop, R&B, garage, house, drum and bass, trap and ambient.

It features the same six synthesis engines as the full version, spanning virtual analogue, wavetable, sample-based, granular, harmonic and modal, and is equipped with the same 68 filter modes and 20 effect algorithms.

Each Pigments Play preset has four macros for immediate sound-shaping that are unique to each preset, and you can find simplified oscillator, filter and envelope controls at the bottom of the interface for both of its dual sound engines, which can both be swapped out to customize each preset. Alongside these, there’s a Utility engine that can be used to add a noise generator or sub-oscillator.

Pigments Play’s effects section has two slots, giving you access to all of the same effects you’ll get in the paid-for version, covering various flavours of delay, reverb, distortion, dynamics and modulation effects.

Sounds can be filtered by type and instrument in the browser, and the plugin is linked up to Arturia’s Sound Store, where you can find 200 additional sound banks organised by artist and genre, both free and paid-for. And if you own an Arturia controller or keyboard, it’ll be mapped to Pigments Play’s main controls automatically.

Pigments 7 was released last December, bringing three new filter modes (Rage, Ripple and Reverb), a new Corroder distortion effect, refined envelopes and a bundle of new content. It also redesigned Pigments’ Play View (the same one you’ll find in Pigments Play) introducing a visualiser that represents the sonic character of each preset, reacting graphically to both sound and parameter changes.

Features:

• Number of presets 100
• Audio-reactive play view ✓
• Synthesis types 6
• Filter modes 68 68
• Effect algorithms 20
• Parameter control limited

Arturia Pigments Play is available now as a free download for macOS and Windows in VST/AU/AAX formats or as a standalone app.

Find out more on Arturia website.

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Synthesist and producer William Orbit has died at the age of 69.

William Mark Wainwright (December 15, 1956 – July 23, 2026), known professionally as William Orbit, was a Grammy Award-winning British musician, composer and producer.

He is best known for his collaboration with Madonna on the 1998 album Ray of Light, which is considered by many to be her best album and one of the outstanding releases of the ’90s.

Orbit also left his mark on recordings by Blur, U2, Britney Spears, Pink, British girl band All Saints and many others.

His solo electronic music albums include the Strange Cargo series, and Pieces in a Modern Style, which yielded a massive hit in the remixed take (with Ferry Corsten) of Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

His most recent release was The Painter (2022), an album that features collaborations with a variety of vocalists.

Orbit’s productions, and his approach to electronic music, have inspired countless musicians and leave a legacy that continues to shape modern pop and electronic music.

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The very first VST plug-ins, re-released in one collection.

Steinberg is celebrating 30 years of its VST standard by telling us that ‘the ’90s are back’ and releasing the Classics Collection. This is a new free bundle which have been updated to the latest VST3 standard, features five fondly-remembered plugins from the ‘90s and early ‘00s, one of which was the first VST instrument ever released — Neon, CS-40, Karlette, VB1, and LM7 — in the free Steinberg Classics Collection.

This was and is a simple two-oscillator synth known as Neon polyphonic software synthesizer, arrived in 1999 as part of the Cubase VST 3.7 DAW update, and it did a fine job of proving that the ‘software instrument’ concept – which many still doubted – was credible.

Indeed, it set the tone for what was to come, both sonically and with its vintage-style ‘wooden’ end panels, which became ubiquitous as emulations of hardware synths flooded the market.

The VB-1 was one of the original virtual bass instruments, and made it clear that the VST market wasn’t only going to be about synthetic sounds.

Fast forward to the early 2000s and Steinberg released the CS-40 polysynth, and that’s resurrected here, too. The sample-based LM7 drum machine also gets another airing, and the bundle is capped off by Karlette, a classic ‘90s tape delay plugin.

As you’d expect, these plugins aren’t as powerful or refined as many of their contemporary counterparts, but trying them again, they hold up surprisingly well, and it could be a fun creative exercise to go back and try and make a track with the same kind of software sounds that producers had access to 25 years ago.

Get these free VSTS and go back to the VST future!

It’s also worth saying that, while some of the plugins have been re-released before, these versions are compatible with the latest Mac and Windows operating and are VST 3 compatible.

You can download the Steinberg Classics Collection now from the Steinberg website.

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