SAMPLING SOUND SYSTEM VOLUME 4: HOUSE••••
(MIXED-MODE CD)

Sampling Sound System is a new series of discs, from Sounds Good, each of which retails for the budget price of £19.95 (dedicated Akai CD-ROM versions of the discs cost £39.95). Instead of reducing the quality of the sample material on offer at this very attractive price point, the producers present us with the same standard we've come to expect, but simply give us less material.

As with all the other releases in this series, currently comprising seven discs (which will be covered in future issues of SOS), volume 4, House, presents its sample material on a mixed-mode CD. This means that, in addition to providing 24 minutes of audio samples for you to pick and choose from, the disc can also be loaded directly into a PC or Mac CD-ROM drive, and all the sounds can be auditioned and accessed that way. For the PC, the samples come as WAV files, while for the Mac they're presented in the AIFF format.

House kicks off with a sublime and glorious collection of some of the coolest house loops I've heard all year. Divided into tempo categories starting at 110bpm, there are 48 individual 2-bar and 4-bar loops.At the more 'housey' tempos of 120 and 130bpm there's a kicking selection of about 180 further loops, with a handful also up in the 140bpm area. There's a vast amount of sonic depth to all of these loops and, instead of revisiting familiar 909 and 808 rhythmical styles, the drum patterns and grooves presented here create a real feel of experimentation.

Following the drum loops is a handful of 'melody loops' which, stuffed full of TB303-type phrases and piano riffs, also rate very highly. The sleeve notes are very helpful in listing all the tempos and key signatures, and Sounds Good have a history of making the loops and samples on all of their CD releases as interchangeable as possible, by working to tempo increments of 10bpm.

After the riffs, two tracks contain some large string multisamples (one very synth-style, the other more 'authentic' sounding), and these are followed up by some highly useable synth pads, in the form of both multisamples and single chords. A few squidgy bass noises and some single drum samples complete the line-up.

This is a good collection of samples that are not only relevant to the genre, but dare to push the boundaries just a little further than you might expect from a library of this price. On the downside, I noticed that some of the individual drums had a very slight click on the end of the samples -- nothing that couldn't be edited out when you sample the sounds, but a little disconcerting all the same. Apart from this and the relatively short length of the CD, what your 20 quid gets you here is a solid and contemporary set of highly useable, flexible and ultimately inspiring dancefloor sounds. Value for money? I think so! Paul Farrer

£ Audio CD £19.95; Akai CD-ROM £39.95. Prices include VAT; add £3 for delivery.

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LIQUID GROOVES•••••
(AUDIO CD/CD-ROM)

I've often wondered how Eric Persing, the man behind Liquid Grooves and several other fine sample CDs, finds the time to produce so much high-quality sample material, but at a recent NAMM show, I was let into his secret by his distributors -- apparently he has his sampler and computer set up at the end of his bed and he keeps working until he falls asleep. When he regains consciousness, he just sits up and picks up from where he left off. Every once in a while, somebody pushes a plate of food under the door, but most of it goes uneaten!

Liquid Grooves sees Eric at his creative best as he blends manually played acoustic, ethnic and electronic drum sounds (and the odd sampled whale 'drum'), then subjects them to heavy electronic processing using reverbs, delays, filters, vocoders, and whatever else he can get his hands on. The result is a collection of slow to medium-paced beats (some as slow as 52bpm), with a hugely atmospheric feel. Several versions of each groove are presented with different degrees of effect treatment or instrumentation.

Burning Grooves, reviewed in our December 1996 issue, and Liquid Grooves are very different collections, with Burning Grooves concentrating on a live kit sound. Liquid Grooves, on the other hand, really is a masterpiece of layering, effecting and processing. Furthermore, the CD-ROM version (which also comes with an audio CD version) includes over 450 hits that don't come with the CD-only version. Eric says this is a plot to persuade us stubborn Brits to buy the CD-ROM version! Personally, I think life is too short to sample from audio CDs anyway. If you can stretch to the CD-ROM version, all the elements of every full mix and remix are available individually, for maximum flexibility.

The Korg Wavedrum appears on several examples, as do clay drums and other ethnic sounds. I think I also heard some Lexicon resonant filter programs ticking away in the background of some of the examples, though this effect may have been achieved with a vocoder. Some examples have a pitched element to them, and in these cases the pitch is annotated, along with the bpm, though versions of the same loops are also available with the pitched elements removed. Resonant delays are used in some places to create metallic or aboriginal drones, and some sounds have been treated with distortion to give them a contemporary edge. Most of the rhythms are fairly straightforward, in terms of time signature, making them musically useful, and virtually all of them spark off compositional ideas. A few more laid-back rhythms would have been useful for old hippies like me but, given the breadth and quality of the material on offer here, I think Eric is long overdue for his full five stars. He's currently locked away doing a four-disc vocal and choral set. I await this with anticipation, having heard a few snatches at NAMM. Paul White

£ Audio CD £59.95; CD-ROM £119. Prices include VAT and UK p&p.

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DOUBLE PLATINUM DRUMS••••
(DOUBLE AUDIO CD/CD-ROM SET)

With seemingly every drum sample CD these days telling us that theirs is the ultimate, the one and only collection of samples we could ever possibly want, you could argue that the market for drum sample CDs is getting a touch crowded. However, a look at the sleeve notes of Double Platinum Drums from Ilio Entertainments (the people behind the acclaimed Synclavier library) might make you start to wonder if it's worth forking out on some extra memory upgrades for your sampler after all.

The producers of this four-CD-ROM set have taken the decision to make two copies of each sample and loop and present them both with and without ambience. The upshot of this is that discs 1&3 and discs 2&4 contain the exact same loops and samples, one disc with ambience and the other without. Disc 1 (and 3) is taken up with drum loops and grooves. Each volume within the eight partitions is given a bpm (ranging from 66 to 199) and its size is listed in Megabytes. The library has been designed with 32Mb of sample memory in mind, but whilst many
of the programmes are indeed very
memory-hungry, most will fit comfortably into 16Mb or less.

Loading up a volume is straightforward and relatively quick (depending on the speed of your CD-ROM drive, of course) and the layout of the loops and fills across the keys is both sensible and intuitive. Most volumes feature not only the main drum loop, but also deconstructed (or less busy) versions, plus fills, rolls and intro drumming. The playing is superb, and drummer Michael Botts clearly has a strong feel for contemporary rock and pop drumming. Constructing a full and authentic drum track using a sequencer takes only a matter of minutes. The playing styles move easily from funky 6/8 feels through to country music styles (I feel a line dancing album coming on!) and onto some truly excellent shuffle and frenetic bossa nova loops.

Discs 2 and 4 present a massive collection of the individual drum samples used in the recording of the loops. Again, disc 2 provides the samples with ambience and disc 4 features the same samples dry. Names like Tama, Gretsch and Remo feature heavily, and the samples are very good indeed. The supplied documentation goes into some depth about the drums used, and their background, and also includes a handy note-mapping diagram that corresponds to the drum samples' positions as they boot up. This adds to the overall feeling of user-friendly open-endedness that goes with almost every aspect of this release. The recording quality is fine throughout, with particular attention being paid to the 'thump' of the kick drum and the 'ting' of the bright and crisp cymbals.

In short, this is a true professional's product. Double Platinum Drums puts the emphasis firmly on quality, as opposed to simply bombarding the user with a huge quantity of mediocre loops. Of course, whether this 'doubling' of sample material represents a value-for-money, time-saving idea or simply an easy way of selling four CD-ROMs instead of just two, is entirely a matter of opinion. One thing that is clear, however, is that the quality of the playing and the intelligent way these samples are presented means that this powerful and rewarding collection is a real pleasure to use. Paul Farrer

£ Double audio CD £79.95; 4 CD-ROM set £199. Prices include VAT and UK p&p.

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PC DANCE TOOLS••••
(PC CD-ROM)

This collection, from the Best Service stable, is described as a 'Techno and Dance Production Tool', consisting of a total of over 1200 WAV files. Best Service have tried to take the drudgery out of sample making by providing sets of pre-looped and multisampled sounds which can be imported directly into the SoundBlaster AWE32, Turtle Beach Tropez, Maui and Rio cards, and Digidesign SampleCell, as well as universal WAV file versions for use with any other card. WAV file collections have often in the past been the poor relation of the sample CD -- a sort of junior cut-down version that picks up a few more pennies from people who don't have access to a 'real' sampler. Thankfully, as PC soundcards have come of age and their sound quality has improved, this attitude is disappearing and, judging by this CD-ROM, WAV files now equal other formats for sound quality, as well as providing a far more convenient source of sounds for people who rely mainly on soundcards with sample RAM on board. The only fly in the ointment is that, since the quality is more in line with other formats, so is the price -- no more bargain-basement WAV collections here!

The selection is comprehensive, carefully steering a sensible course between total specialisation (if you want 1200 bass drums, look elsewhere) and trying to be all things to all people. Sticking to dance sounds just narrows the subject matter enough to ensure that most will be relevant. Best Service provide a help file, including track listings, on the disc, but there's no manual or sleeve notes. Fortunately, the file names have been chosen sensibly, and most are self-explanatory.

In the general WAV folder, sounds are further divided into 37 sub-folders. To give you an idea of the depth and range on offer, the analogue bass folder contains 94 WAV files in total, with three or four samples per instrument. Other sounds include 24 drum loops (eight each at 130, 150 and 170bpm), kit sets for TR606, 808, 909 and CR78 (plus a good selection of general drum sounds), a wide range of special effects, vocal phrases (both male and female), metal guitars, pads, choirs (real and synth varieties), strings, pianos (with a nice Fender Rhodes)... need I go on? Sound quality and looping is generally very good -- the occasional hint of distortion, hum and noise creeps in, but always as part of the source material and not as a result of sloppy sampling.

I like the idea of these Production Tools -- if you want a wide basic selection of quality sounds to dip into in a particular style, here's a collection that's been neatly put together, with the hard work of looping and mapping already done so that you can achieve quick results. Check it out. Martin Walker

£ £49.95 inc VAT and UK p&p.

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XX-LARGE: THE KILLER 2
(AUDIO CD/CD-ROM)

With 1000 drum loops and 900 synth sounds on this CD-ROM, I had my suspicions that reviewing it would be something of a chore. I was wrong. While the title of this product may make it sound like a crummy B-movie sequel, hidden inside the packaging is a rip-roaring, bass-booming dance-floor filler of almost unparalleled delight.

First up there's drum loops, starting at the classic disco tempos of 123 and 125bpm, then moving steadily on up to frenetic and exciting jungle territory at 165bpm. In each of the disc's drum partitions are around eight programmes, and within those programmes are anything between seven and 28 different samples at the same tempo. The upshot of this is that once you've selected the tempo field you want to work in, you simply load up one of the matching programs and get 20 or so drum loops, deconstructed into
ready-to-use blocks of rhythm. The intelligent layout of the loops means that starting from C1 on the keyboard and moving up a semitone at a time makes you feel as though the rhythmical equivalent of Carl Cox or Junior Vasquez is living in your sampler and making all the creative drumming decisions, while you can get on and worry about the other elements of the music. It's that easy.

Sonically speaking, the bass drums really kick, and the excellent mix and effect levels of the various percussion parts within the loops mean that, no matter how complex and frantic the loops become, everything seems clear and bright. Most current 'cool' areas of dance music are covered in some way, from basic four-on-the-floor styles, through techno, right up to some of the more experimental areas of drum & bass programming.

The second half of the CD-ROM concentrates on synth and chord samples, generally stereo single-hit samples with 30 or 40 different programs in each volume. These are, for the most part, extremely useable and very contemporary. I found only a couple of really clichéd noises, and sometimes clichés are no bad thing anyway. After the single chords comes a set of wonderfully nasty rave synths and some gloriously cheesy organ samples. Good recording standards have been maintained throughout. Swirling pads and a small but interesting set of odd vocal bites are tucked away at the end of the CD, and the whole thing is topped off with a large and totally authentic collection of house bass samples (both multis and singles).

The emphasis of The Killer 2 is unmistakeably on powerful house sounds, and its vast number of swirling pads, tight synth chords, organs, pianos and basses will be a source of inspiration for a long while yet. The programming of the sounds and the partitioning and arrangement of the CD-ROM is superb and, although the sleeve notes omit to tell us each volume's size in Megabytes, even the most complex drum sets aren't as memory-hungry as you might think. Indeed, if I was forced to make one negative comment it would probably be that, with half a Gigabyte of samples, it sometimes seems as if there are almost too many sounds to choose from.

The CD-ROM version of The Killer 2 (Akai/Emu, Roland or SampleCell) is currently on sale for £99 and, in my opinion, it would be worth it for the drum loops alone. The producers of this CD have provided a near-faultless collection of contemporary dance music samples that producers and remixers should not miss. Paul Farrer.

£ Audio CD £59.95; CD-ROM £99. Prices include VAT and UK p&p.

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