Arturia V Collection - All Versions Compared

 

In May of 2005, French music software developer Arturia announced a limited-time bundle they called the Vintage Collection pack. It featured four emulations of classic synthesizers: Moog Modular V, CS-80V, ARP 2600 V, and minimoog V- all for the low, low price of $649USD (€555). This collection was only available for purchase during the month of June that year. Five years later, they released another bundle, the newly-dubbed V Collection 2.0; adding two new instruments that emulated three vintage synthesizers (Jupiter-8V emulated the Roland Jupiter-8 and Prophet V emulated both the Prophet 5 and the Prophet VS). Ever since then, Arturia has blessed us with a new V Collection about every two years.

I collected all the information I could gather on the various iterations of Arturia's trademark series to build a worksheet that compares the contents of every version. There's also a tab with quick details on each version of the collection (release date, intro price, total # of products), etc.

Some random Arturia V Collection trivia

• V Collection 2.0 and 3.0 used the Syncrosoft USB licenser for copy protection (the same thing as the Steinberg USB eLicenser), while V Collection 4 was the first version distributed with and activated by the Arturia Software Center (ASC). (They originally called it the Arturia Software Centre.)

• Arturia's drum sampler plugin, Spark 2, was included in V Collection 4, but it was dropped from subsequent V Collection releases, although it's still an actively supported product.

• V Collection 7 was the first to include a sound bank (a collection of presets called Synthopedia) in addition to the variety of virtual instruments. V Collection 8 added the PatchWorks sound bank. Owners of these bundles could install the sound banks from their respective collections in the Arturia Software Center.

• V Collection 9 introduced 14 new sound banks to the collection, but instead of installing these from ASC, the banks are now available on the Store tab of Analog Lab V. (You can click the "Owned Banks" control to display only the sound banks included with your collections.) NOTE: As of this writing I am unsure whether PatchWorks and Synthopedia are still included with V Collection 9; the details page currently up says there are "14 exclusive sound banks" but if PatchWorks and Synthopedia were included I think the number would be 16.

• Not every version of every Arturia emulation is included in a V Collection release. For example Modular V was already at 2.0 by the time of the original Vintage Collection pack, and Jupiter-8 had already seen two releases before its introduction in V Collection 2.0.

• Some of the instrument names have changed over the years. To keep my chart readable, I opted for the more recent/modern names of these plugins. Some examples of changed names: Jupiter-8 V to Jup-8 V, Moog Modular V to Modular V, minimoog V to MiniMg to Mini V, Wurlitzer V to Wurli V, OB-Xa V to OP-Xa V.

• Spark Vintage Drum Machine was included in the original release of V Collection 3, however that product is not listed as an installable option under V Collection 3 in the Arturia Software Center.