Review: Farfisa V Virtual Organ by Arturia

Arturia‘s new Farfisa V virtual organ instrument emulates the classic Italian combo organ sound: the Farfisa Compact Deluxe, with of course some extras (quite a lot in fact).

It looks just like the original, with the set of black keys for bass, the grey keys that can be switched for bass or treble, and the regular keys for the treble section.

From left to right, the first thing you’ll find is a knob for bass manual volume, next, a tab, for switching if grey keys will play bass or treble section, bass on/off tab, soft/sharp bass tab, bass percussion on/off, long/short percussion release, then, a set of tabs for effects, three sky-blue tabs for vibrato, that’s on/off, light/heavy, slow/fast, a golden tab for switching reverb on/off, and a black tab for tremolo.

Next, there are some controls for tremolo rate -that can be sync’d to tempo- and the Repeat – percuss section, which controls the percussive envelope for the top section, and also be sync’d to tempo.

Next, the green tabs, lets you select which harmonics to boost, and finally, the voice section, which includes all bass, strings, flute, oboe and trumpet voices, which of course you can mix and match in any possible combination to create your sound.

Below the organ itself, you’ll find the volume pedal, the same five effect pedals than in the B3, the amp, and of course, the Knee lever. Under-the-hood, there’s even more! you can fine tune each note individually, you can design the bass sections, with controls for the wave shape and the tone (a LPF, actually), and resonance.

There’s a noise amount knob, an AR envelope, which can be set to polyphonic (each note with its own articulation) and paraphonic (no individual articulation when you play more than one note at a time).

One very cool feature is that you can actually create your own waveform and treat this like an additive synth.

On top, you’ll find knobs for volume, bass, treble, and reverb, and a list of reverb types to select from.

Finally, you can set the knee lever to control the MT Booster or a Wah Filter, and you can set the Lever to receive MIDI CC, aftertouch or a pedal. This is the sound of the sixties!!

Conclusions

This new virtual organ not only look great but sound awesome! It’s a faithful recreation of the original vintage instrument, and the extra features let you shape numerous sounds that are just impossible to create with the original!

Farfisa V virtual organ work as a Standalone and also like an audio plugin as VST 2.4 (32-bit and 64-bit), VST 3 (32-bit and 64-bit), AAX (32 bits with PT 10.3.8, 64 bits with PT 11), Audio Unit (32-bit and 64-bit).

More Details/Download: Farfisa V | V Collection 5

Update: We just reviewed the new Arturia V Collection 6

[author image=”https://www.producerspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/piggy-sounds-logo.jpg” ]Rafael Hofstadter is a recording and mixing engineer and sound designer with 10+ years experience in playing and programming synths, recording, mixing and producing pop/rock/folk albums. He also runs piggysounds.com.[/author]