Great new synths, but with unfortunate problems

If you want my thoughts on the whole collection (for some reason) - please go seek out my V Collection 7 review. Everything that applies to V7 applies to the entirety of V8, this review will only focus on the new plugins. One complaint across the entire range of plugins, this time - the new interface is less intuitive (and oddly more suited to ultra-wide displays) than the old ones (seen in V7). Why move polyphony settings in a side menu? Now I have to make my plugins extremely tiny. It's not the biggest problem ever, I'll certainly live, but it was an odd choice. And the new macro settings - I certainly appreciate them, I wish they were renameable. You can pretty much assign them to anything (which is a process that's janky), but not rename them. I hope this gets fixed in a future update (and hopefully not relegated to V9 users)

If you can stomach that, then you'll be bound to enjoy half a dozen of new synths. My favourites in this update would have to be the Juno, Jupiter update, Rhodes update, OB-Xa and the Emulator. Basically, I like most of the new synths or updated synths or keyboards. Especially the Rhodes one, it actually sounds really close to a proper Rhodes EP (judging from what I hear in videos or other plugins sampling it, at least).

The Jupiter-8 one has been simplified, it's not at parity with the old version, however it's still usable and the improved emulation leads to much fuller-sounding patches and tones, while on the old V3 version it sounded more brittle, brighter, a tiny bit scratchy?

The OB-Xa one gave me a really good reason to ditch OB-Xd. It wasn't with compromises (OB-Xd's filter is actually a SEM filter, for instance), but there was a lot to gain in benefits, with built-in effects and automation. This one was released earlier last year as a treat, for those stuck at home because of a certain virus. It's great to see this actually made it as part of the collection rather than be the one-off it was.

And, honestly, my favourite is the Juno-60 one. Yeah, it's probably overrated, it's probably something everyone would say, but the amount of times I've pulled it up is impressive. And what's more, despite the additions being lacking, I really like them for that. It doesn't complicate an otherwise very simple synthesizer, and I really dig that. I can use it for leads (my most often use case, honestly), chord stabs, thick basses, and more.

As for the other 2 plugins - Emulator II is a nice sampling keyboard, I dig that it can import original .eii disks, however I find it a bit clunky to use so I pretty much just use it for presets if I need something quick. The Vocoder, as nice as it might be, I can't really use it properly at all. My DAW (FL Studio) doesn't support using my microphone (or other audio source really) within an instrument, it has to be an effect for that to work. When bringing up the help menu for this in Vocoder, they just outright say to use another DAW. 'Tis a shame, I would've liked to use it like it was probably meant to! Oh well.

A thing across all of the updated plugins here - they use substantially more CPU horsepower than previous incarnations (or other plugins in this collection). However, to counteract this, Arturia's made it so that they only use the CPU power when actually using voices, and the percentage increase is per voice. This means, you can freeze/bounce/consolidate your track and not worry about increased usage at all, which is really neat to see. I don't exactly like to see the improved usage to begin with, but I'm glad there's a workaround to make it palletable.

Overall: I like the new plugins a lot. I find myself using them quite a bit whenever applicable, and if you were to just give me those I'd be really really grateful with JUST those plugins! But, of course, V collection comes with a whooole lot more (again, read my V7 review to get my thoughts on that if you even care).

Overall excellent

some of the best sounding recreations i've heard. Definitely recommend.