These are four new instruments: the Buchla Easel, V, Clavinet V, CMI (Fairlight) V and DX7 V. We haven’t reviewed V Collection as a complete package before – but have covered several of the instruments or their iOS versions separately – so I’ll take this opportunity to detail some of the rest of the collection as well as the new additions for version 6. And it was Arturia which led the way back in the soft day with its V-Collection, the sixth incarnation of which is on test here.

There are stacks of freebie vintage synths – DX, OB, Minis and more – and iOS devices are spoilt rotten with some incredible titles from Korg, IK and Arturia. Yet for many of us, software was – and still is – the only way to get those vintage sounds and luckily, there are many, many soft ways to do just that.

Of course, hardware has since ‘resumed play’, coming back with something of a vengeance as some of those classic companies get rebooted for the 21st century – think Moog, Oberheim, Sequential/DSI and ARP by Korg – and some are reborn in the fantastic yet complex world of the Eurorack/modular synth. The Yamaha CS-80 is arguably the most coveted, but Minimoogs, ARPs, Prophets, Rolands and Korgs all still have grown men drooling and wobbling at the knees for their lush – or tearing – analogue sounds.

We were – and still are – talking tens of thousands of pounds for some examples of the real thing. When the music-production world went software bonkers – that is, everyone and his dog (including me) thought that we should all be making music with laptops and nothing else – one of the first targets for emulation in the software environment was the vintage synth. Price €499 Contact Arturia | Source Distribution | 02 V Collection 6 key features:

Analog lab v collection 7