Archive for March 7th, 2012

Best Service Nitron

Five years in the making, Nitron is a 3.3GB Kontakt library of 1040 patches, built on samples of over 50 of “the best-known and most interesting hardware and software synthesisers”. Any annoyance over the vague description evaporates as soon as you start playing the thing. Sound designer Urban Riedo has created a truly inspirational synth [...]

UltimateSoundBank Emulation II

E-MU’s Emulator was the sampler of choice for many big-name electronic musicians in the ’80s. Here UltimateSoundBank has painstakingly multisampled one to create “the ultimate digital version”, packaged in a custom version of the company’s proprietary UVI Workstation interface and weighing in at 5GB. Also included is Drumulation – a ROMpler made from samples of [...]

IK Multimedia SampleTank iOS

Recently updated to Universal app status, SampleTank for iOS is IK Multimedia’s take on the ‘pocket DAW’ concept. It’s entirely sample-based, with no synthesis functionality onboard beyond a simple resonant filter. It also lacks sequencing, so it’s not quite in the same arena as NanoStudio, BeatMaker 2 and GarageBand. Four instruments can be loaded at [...]

ProjectSAM Orchestral Essentials

This 12GB Kontakt instrument is derived from other ProjectSAM libraries, such as the renowned (and rather pricey) Symphobia 1 & 2. The intention is to cover more ground, albeit in a less detailed manner. The interface is easy, with handy controls like attack/decay and reverb level. You get patches covering full orchestra articulations (eg, Action uses [...]

VirSyn iVoxel

Essentially a streamlined vocoder, synthesiser and sequencer, iVoxel is built on the technology behind VirSyn’s powerful Matrix vocoder plug-in and intended as both a serious studio tool and a freaky live performance device. iVoxel resynthesises the input or imported audio signal and converts it to ‘voxels’ – segments of sound that can be manipulated to a [...]