In last month's SOS I waxed lyrical about EastWest's Beatles-homage sound library, Fab Four, and described the enjoyable ear-bashing I'd received courtesy of Quantum Leap's well 'eavy Ministry Of Rock. Both libraries run exclusively on EastWest's Play audio engine, which works in plug-in and stand-alone mode on Mac and PC. Accompanying Fab Four and MOR are three more Play-formatted sample collections created by EastWest's partner company Quantum Leap: QL Gypsy, QL Voices Of Passion and QL Stormdrum 2. These libraries were first announced in the spring of 2007, but would-be buyers had to wait until February 2008 to get their hands on Stormdrum 2. At the time of writing, a sixth Play title, QL Pianos, is still under construction.

QL Gypsy (shouldn't that be 'QL Person Of Romany Extraction'?) brings you the instruments and percussion associated with gypsy music. Given the ancient origins, complex migratory patterns and wide geographic dispersal of that particular ethnic group, you might suppose this library would have to cover an awful lot of musical territory, but Gypsy avoids excessive globe-trotting by focusing on a relatively limited instrumentation drawn from the gypsy musical traditions of Romania, Eastern Europe and Spanish flamenco.

If accordions are your thing, you're going to love this library. I used to vainly imagine that if push came to shove I could probably get a tune out of an accordion because it has a keyboard attached, but in the case of the bandoneon, that idea's a non-starter: this rectangular squeezebox is played with buttons that produce different pitches depending on whether the bellows are closed or open! Like certain ghastly war criminals, bandoneons originated in Germany and later appeared in Argentina, where (unlike the Nazi fugitives) they play a prominent role in tango orchestras. Thanks to an accomplished sampling job, we can enjoy the bandoneon's wide range and big, stately reedy tones from the comfort zone of our MIDI keyboards.

The library has three more accordions up its sleeve: the Italian Campana model has a smaller, more friendly sound and its wheezy, warbling 'Musette' stop immediately evokes clichéd images of beret-clad Parisian onion sellers. Another Italian make, Excelsior, sounds grander and has a more percussive attack, courtesy of an optional layer of key-click samples, while the American Silvestri model has the most intimate tone of all. These accordions don't just play single notes at one dynamic; the bandoneon has long (unlooped) notes, short notes, portatos, accents and sforzandos, while the other instruments have 'air in' and 'air out' variants. A set of basic major, minor and dominant 7th chords are provided in all keys for accompaniment.

Acoustic guitar is the other main weapon in...