Arturia MiniFreak

The instrument sounds great, and is capable of a wide palette of sounds ranging from typical FM sounds, experimental FX, D-50'esque pads, and much more. The synth is quite small but really packs a punch. One of the best (if not THE best) sound design synths I have ever tried. The minikeys are great and among the best of their kind. This synth is a major upgrade over the microfreak - better keys, polyphony, more hands-on control, awesome effects section. There are some controls which are accompanied by a toggle switch to change the function, which I am not a huge fan of, but I guess I will become used to it.

I got my synth very shortly after release, and the firmware has some minor quirks which will probably get fixed. If the microfreak development is anything to go by, we can probably expect more features to arrive over time, perhaps a vocoder, which paints a bright future for a synth that is already pretty awesome.

What is absolutely NOT awesome is that firmware updates are locked behind DRM. To update the synth, you must register it on Arturias website and download a minifreak VST which has only 5 activations. If you already have Arturia digital products, then the minifreak hardware becomes locked to your personal account.

This is downright terrible, and Arturia should change this practice immediately.
Do not lock our hardware behind DRM!