April 20th, 2021 Terrence O'Brien / Engadget I haven't been shy about declaring Arturia's Pigments as my favorite soft synth out there right now. It was great when it was originally announced in 2018. And the free, massive upgrade to Pigments 2 in December of 2019 secured it a place on my must have list. Now Arturia is issuing another huge update — Pigments 3 — that adds a new synth engine, a new waveform for its virtual analog engine, 64 new wavetables, a new "utility" engine, four new effects and a bunch of other enhancements. And, just like Pigments 2, it's free for current owners. For the uninitiated, Pigments is basically Arturia's answer to super synths like Native Instruments Massive or Xfer's Serum. It features a virtual analog engine, a wavetable engine, sample playback with granular synthesis features and now a harmonic engine for additive synthesis. It allows you to combine any two of those, and then manipulate the result with an almost endless number of modulation options.