Arturia PRE V76 User Manual

USER MANUAL

Special Thanks

DIRECTION

Frédéric Brun Kevin Molcard

DEVELOPMENT

Vincent Travaglini

Nicolo Comin

DESIGN

Martin Dutasta Shaun Elwood Morgan Perrier

MANUAL

Fernando Rodrigues Morgan Perrier Florian Marin

BETA TESTERS

Fernando Rodrigues

Ben Eggehorn

Paolo Negri

www.arturia.com

Information contained in this manual is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Arturia. The software described in this manual is provided under the terms of a license agreement or non-disclosure agreement. The software license agreement specifies the terms and conditions for its lawful use. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any purpose other than purchaser’s personal use, without the express written permission of ARTURIA S.A.

All other products, logos or company names quoted in this manual are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Product version: 1.2

Revision date: 11 February 2020

François Reme

Raynald Dantigny

Terry Marsden

Peter Tomlinson

Marco Correia

Bapiste Aubry

Pierre Pfister

Jay Janssen

Luca Lefèvre

Chuck Zwicky

Matthieu Courouble

Ken Flux Pierce

Dwight Davies

Thank you for purchasing Pre V76!

This manual covers the features and operation of Pre V76.

Be sure to register your software as soon as possible! When you purchased Pre V76 you were sent a serial number and an unlock code by e-mail. These are required during the online registration process.

Special Messages

Specifications Subject to Change:

The information contained in this manual is believed to be correct at the time of printing. However, Arturia reserves the right to change or modify any of the specifications without notice or obligation to update the hardware that has been purchased.

IMPORTANT:

The software, when used in combination with an amplifier, headphones or speakers, may be able to produce sound levels that could cause permanent hearing loss. DO NOT operate for long periods of time at a high level or at a level that is uncomfortable.

If you encounter any hearing loss or ringing in the ears, you should consult an audiologist.

Introduction

Congratulations on your purchase of Arturia's Pre V76

Since the late 1990s, Arturia has received acclaim from players and reviewers alike for designing state-of-the art software emulations of the venerable analog synthesizers from the 1960s to the 1980s. From the Modular V, back in 2004, to Origin, a modular system that was introduced in 2010, to the Matrix 12 V (2015), the Synclavier V (2016), and most recently the Buchla Easel V, the DX7 V and the CMI V, Arturia's passion for synthesizers and sonic purity has given demanding musicians the best software instruments for professional audio production.

Arturia also has a growing expertise in the audio field, and in 2017 launched the AudioFuse, a pro studio quality audio interface that features two proprietary DiscretePRO® microphone preamplifiers and a set of top-notch AD/DA converters.

The Arturia Pre V76 is the culmination of over a decade of experience in recreating the most iconic tools of the past.

Arturia has a passion for excellence and accuracy. This led us to conduct an extensive analysis of every aspect of the V76 (and V612) hardware and its electrical circuits, even modeling the changes in behavior over the course of time. Not only have we faithfully modeled the sound and behavior of this unique preamp, we have added some features that were unimaginable in the days the Telefunken V76 was being manufactured.

Pre V76 runs as a plug-in in all major formats inside your DAW. It has easy MIDI learn functionality for hands-on control of most parameters, and as a plug-in also allows parameter automation for greater creative control.

DISCLAIMER: All manufacturer and product names mentioned in this manual are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Arturia. The trademarks of other manufacturers are used solely to identify the products of those manufacturers whose features and sound were studied during Pre V76 development. All names of equipment inventors and manufacturers have been included for illustrative and educational purposes only and do not suggest any affiliation or endorsement of Pre V76 by any equipment inventor or manufacturer.

The Arturia team

1. WELCOME ......................................................................................................................................................................... 2

1.1. Arturia's secret ingredient: TAE®................................................................................................................................... 3

1.2. Arturia's Pre V76..................................................................................................................................................................... 5

2. ACTIVATION AND FIRST START.......................................................................................................................... 6

2.1. Activate the Pre V76 License.......................................................................................................................................... 6

2.1.1. The Arturia Software Center (ASC).................................................................................................................................................................... 6

2.1.2. Pre V76 as a plug-in.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

2.2. QuickStart: A basic patch................................................................................................................................................ 8

3. USER INTERFACE ....................................................................................................................................................... 10

3.1. The Control Panel............................................................................................................................................................... 10

3.2. The Toolbar.............................................................................................................................................................................. 11

3.2.1. Save....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

3.2.2. Save As…............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 11

3.2.3. Import Preset................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11

3.2.4. Export Menu .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12

3.2.5. Resize Window options......................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

3.2.6. Preset Selection.......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12

3.3. The lower toolbar ............................................................................................................................................................... 13

3.3.1. Output LED Sensitivity............................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

3.3.2. Bypass.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

3.3.3. CPU meter ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

3.4. The Preset browser........................................................................................................................................................... 14

4. Pre V76 OVERVIEW .................................................................................................................................................. 15

4.1. What is a preamp? ............................................................................................................................................................ 15

4.2. What does a preamp do? ............................................................................................................................................ 16

4.3. What is an EQ?..................................................................................................................................................................... 17

4.4. What does equalization do?........................................................................................................................................ 17

4.5. A V76 preamp and a V612 EQ in a plug-in......................................................................................................... 18

4.5.1. Signal Flow ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

4.5.2. The preamp section................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19

4.5.3. The EQ section ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 19

4.5.4. Output and global controls ............................................................................................................................................................................... 20

4.5.5. Mid/Side mode............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 21

5. Pre V76 CONTROL PANEL .................................................................................................................................... 24

5.1. Single Channel (Mono).................................................................................................................................................... 24

5.1.1. Single Channel Preamp Section....................................................................................................................................................................... 24

5.1.2. Single Channel EQ Section.................................................................................................................................................................................. 25

5.1.3. Single Channel Output Section......................................................................................................................................................................... 26

5.2. Double Channel .................................................................................................................................................................. 27

5.2.1. Double Channel Preamp Section..................................................................................................................................................................... 27

5.2.2. Double Channel EQ Section .............................................................................................................................................................................. 29

5.2.3. Output Section............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 31

5.2.4. Some final words..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 32

6. Software License Agreement........................................................................................................................... 33

1. WELCOME

As part of the rebuilding effort after World War II, the Northwest German Radio (Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk or NWDR) was established in 1948, as a public corporation.

The NWDR faced the need to develop a complete new equipment standard for the German radio network. This was done in cooperation with the Institute of Broadcast Technology of Hamburg, and one of the results of their work was the V72, developed between 1949 and 1952 as a microphone and main studio amplifier, under the technical supervision of Professor Nestler. Nestler had previously been the head of R&D for the Telefunken Electro Acoustic Lab. Telefunken itself was a joint-venture of two other German companies, AEG and Siemens, and was established in 1903.

It should be mentioned that Telefunken was granted exclusive and unlimited access to scientific resources from state universities, private companies and all branches of the military regarding radio broadcast and audio production, and this led them holding almost all of the European patents relating to radio and audio electronic circuits up into the early 1960s.

Modeled after the pre-war V41 (created in 1928), the V72 had many circuits that were almost identical, but incorporated some modern advancements. After using EF40 tubes in the earlier models, manufacturers quickly changed to the sonically superior EF804 and EF804S. Early V72 models were built by a company called Maihak, and also by Telefunken. In 1954, Siemens and Tonographie Apparatebau (TAB) became sub-contractors and took over the manufacturing of the V72 line.

The V72 wasn't a single model. Actually, there was an entire family of V72 tube amplifiers, all built around the same V72 circuit: the V71, the V76, the V77 and the V78, and also many variations, as the V72a, the V72b, the V72s, the V74a, the V70 and the V77b.

Besides the German radio broadcast, the V72 was used by most of the European recording companies like EMI, Decca/Telefunken and others. Siemens designed the V72s to accommodate the specific needs of these recording studios. These units featured a fixed gain of 40dB and lower input impedance. Apparently, it was EMI who commissioned Siemens to build the special 40dB gain V72s modules ("s" stands for studio), opposed to the 34dB gain of the V72 which was the standard throughout the German broadcast industry. Around three-hundred V72s modules were manufactured in total.

The V76 was two V72 cascaded in series, with additional control features. The unit was capable of achieving 76dB of gain and driving a signal farther with little to no loss. More importantly, the unit came with a switchable input pad. This allowed the user to change the gain in 6dB steps across 12 positions - much more control than the original V72 had. Additionally, the V76 typically came with either an 80Hz or 120Hz High Pass filter allowing the user to get rid of rumble from the mic stand when recording voice. There was a special V76m version though that had no filters and a full frequency response from 20Hz to 20kHz. This version was regarded more as a reference amplifier.

The V76 was designed for applications where the "standard" V72 could not provide enough gain (like for example, dynamic mics) and where it was essential to have a switchable variety of gain steps plus some selectable high and low frequency pre-filtering. Although the high end frequencies sound muffled when compared to a V72, many engineers preferred the V76 due to the extra controls, increased gain and huge bass sound it was capable of delivering.

The main versions of the V76 available were:

2 Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - WELCOME

• V76/80, with a switchable High Pass Filter at 80Hz and 300Hz (and a third position with the two filters coupled), and a Low Pass Filter with a fixed frequency of 3kHz. Both filters could be turned Off. Besides these, they also had additional fixed input filters at 40Hz and 15kHz.

• V76/120, with a switchable High Pass Filter at 120Hz and 300Hz (and a third position with the two filters coupled), and a Low Pass Filter with a fixed frequency of 3kHz. Both filters could be turned Off. Besides these, they also had additional fixed input filters at 40Hz and 15kHz.

In 1960, a special V76s version was introduced. The "s" originally stood for "Schallplatte" (Vinyl Disk), indicating "Studio use", and in 1965 it was even officially changed to "Studio". The V76s version may be regarded as a successor to the V72s, and was quite different from the other V76 units, since both the High Pass and Low Pass filters featured multiple switchable frequencies. Filter inductors were made from a Nickel/Iron alloy, and allegedly offered a better sound performance than the standard ferrite cores in the 80/120 units.

There were also a few custom versions made over the years. We may consider the famous EMI REDD.47 as a V72s version with a few different options, but with the same transformers. This EMI made preamp equipped the famous REDD.51 consoles, used in all Beatles recordings from 1964 up to 1968. Remember that the previous REDD.17 and REDD.37 consoles were powered by Siemens V72s units, as we mentioned above. One of the EMI REDD.37 consoles was used in all Beatles recordings up to 1964, when they changed to the REDD.51.

Telefunken used the V72 units as standard preamplifiers for their broadcast division. The company (which became AEG-Telefunken in 1967) sold many units to radio stations in South America, Africa and the Middle-East, where most of them are still in use today, but despite that stopped the production of the V72 in 1966. Siemens had already stopped their production in 1964, but built the V72b version until 1966. TAB was the only company that built the V72a up into the 70s. In the second half of the sixties, vacuum tube devices were being replaced by transistor-based units everywhere, because the former were more expensive and difficult to maintain.

Arturia's version that is now presented to you is based on the V76/80. Since these units didn't have an EQ (just input filters), it is cou pled with another classic unit of the same period, the V612 EQ. This was a simple 2-band EQ, featuring High Shelf and Low Shelf bands with fixed frequencies.

1.1. Arturia's secret ingredient: TAE®

TAE® (True Analog Emulation) is Arturia's outstanding technology dedicated to the digital reproduction of analogue circuits used in vintage synthesizers.

Linear Frequency spectrum of a well known software synthesizer

TAE®’s software algorithms result in spot-on emulation of analogue hardware. This is why Pre V76 offers an un paralleled quality of sound, as do all of Arturia’s virtual synthesizers and plug-ins.

Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - WELCOME 3

Linear frequency spectrum of an oscillator modeled with TAE®

TAE® combines major advances in the domain of synthesis:

Temporal representation of the 'sawtooth'

waveform of a hardware synthesizer

Temporal representation of a 'sawtooth'

waveform reproduced by TAE®

4 Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - WELCOME

1.2. Arturia's Pre V76

So, what is and what do we get with the Pre V76 preamp and EQ plug-in?

The goal of Arturia was to model the sound of this famous vacuum tube preamp, which is still a sought-after piece of equipment, as well as add some new features that are helpful in a modern workflow. For example, an EQ unit of the same period was added, to round the package and to remain faithful to the approach followed in the other units of this line preamp and EQ. We also have a Phase Reverse switch, which didn't exist in the original.

Therefore, we have the amplification circuit, which features a vacuum tube emulation, capable of very nice and tolerant saturation, and the High Pass Filter, with three filter choices: 80Hz, 300Hz or both frequencies coupled (as was the case with the original V76/

80). The filter can also be turned Off, by selecting the Flat option. The EQ is a simple two band EQ with very broad, gentle Baxandall curves and fixed frequencies, around 100Hz for the Low Shelf, and around 5kHz for the High Shelf. It can be switched Off by clicking the EQ switch and changing it to the Off position.

Baxandall curves are named after Peter Baxandall, an English audio engineer who first came up with audio circuits featuring this kind of curve in the 1950s. These are soft sweeping curves in the bass and treble shelf EQs that give a broad yet musical adjustment. The slope is lower than usual, and that contributes to the curves' sweetness, since they sound smoother and more natural.

The plug-in has Single Channel and Double Channel versions. The Double Channel version can work in three different modes. The default mode is Stereo, which means the Stereo Link button is the Stereo position and the Stereo Mode switch is in the L/R (Left/Right) position. When we change this switch to the M/S position, the plug-in enters the Mid/Side mode. This automatically disables (turns Off) the Stereo Link button.

When the Stereo Link switch is Off, and the Stereo Mode button is in the L/R position, the plug-in is in Dual Mono mode. In this mode, each channel works independently, which means we can have the EQ switched On in one channel and Off in the other, for example, and the phase switched On in one and Off in the other.

Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - WELCOME 5

2. ACTIVATION AND FIRST START

Pre V76 works on computers equipped with Windows 7 or later and macOS 10.10 or later. You can use the Pre V76 as an Audio Unit, AAX, VST2 or VST3 plug-in.

Picture of the Arturia Pre V76

2.1. Activate the Pre V76 License

Once the software has been installed, the next step should be to activate your license,so that you can use it without limitations.

This is a simple process that involves a different software program: the Arturia Software Center.

2.1.1. The Arturia Software Center (ASC)

If you have not already installed the ASC, go to this web page:

https://www.arturia.com/support/updates&manuals

Look for the Arturia Software Center at the top of the page, and then download the version of the installer that you need for your system (macOS or Windows).

Follow the installation instructions and then:

• Launch the Arturia Software Center (ASC)

• Log into your Arturia account

• Scroll down to the My Products section of the ASC

• Click the Activate button

6 Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - ACTIVATION AND FIRST START

That's all there is to it!

2.1.2. Pre V76 as a plug-in

Pre V76 comes in VST, AU and AAX plug-in formats for use in all major DAW software such as Ableton, Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools and so on. You can load as many instances as you find useful, and you will also find some other useful features:

• You can automate numerous parameters using your DAW’s automation system;

• Your settings and current plug-in state will become recorded in your project, and you can pick up exactly where you left off the next time you open it.

Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - ACTIVATION AND FIRST START 7

2.2. QuickStart: A basic patch

The patch below is an ideal starting point for getting to know the Pre V76 plugin. We will use the sequencer to modulate some parameters of the plug-in. It illustrates how you can use Pre V76 to process sound. In the example below, we'll use Cubase, but it will work in a similar way in other DAWs.

Please load the default factory preset. This ensures that you have all knobs in the correct starting position.

Let's give it try:

• Load a four-beat clip into an audio track in your DAW (a drum track is ideal for testing the EQ and saturation).

• Load an instance of Pre V76 as an insert on that same track.

• Make the interface of the Pre V76 visible by clicking its name in the Mixer.

• Now start your DAW and play the loop. It will sound the way it was recorded. By default, all parameters are in a neutral position. There is still some minor harmonic distortion, but that's OK with our demonstration.

Pre V76 configured to add some "loudness" to the sound.

The High Pass filter is also switched to cut frequencies

below 80Hz

8 Arturia - User Manual Pre V76 - ACTIVATION AND FIRST START

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