MOTU's first soft sampler, MachFive, was released in 2004 as the 'Universal Sampler'. It was developed in conjunction with the French company Ultimate Sound Bank and used their 32-bit UVI audio engine. As a virtual instrument that could run on Mac or PC, it was available in all the major plug-in formats, and could load samples and patches in almost any current or legacy format. It also supported multi-channel surround as well as conventional mono and stereo audio, which was an impressive feature at the time. In short, there was a lot to like about MachFive, and it quite rightly attracted a lot of good reviews (not least from Sound On Sound) and loyal followers.

Four years is a long time in the world of music technology, though. It's still a useful tool, but the original MachFive looks less impressive now, compared with rivals like NI's Kontakt. MachFive 2, then, was eagerly awaited prior to its launch at the end of last year. As you'd expect, it works on Power PC Macs and Intel Macs, as well as Windows PCs, and offers a lot of new features, as well as an extensive sound library. Aside from broad GUI similarities between MachFive and MachFive 2, nearly everything is different or improved, so v2 can be pretty much regarded as a brand-new product.

To run MachFive 2 you need a Mac (Intel or Power PC, G4 1GHz or better if the latter) running OS 10.3.9 or later, or a PC (Pentium 4 1GHz or faster, or AMD equivalent) running Windows XP or 32- or 64-bit Vista. MachFive 2 will run as a plug-in inside any host application that supports MAS, AU, VST, RTAS or DXi formats, but it'll also run as a stand-alone application — a useful consideration for live use, amongst other things. A MachFive 2 Performance or Preset (of which more later) is cross-platform too, so Mac users can share sounds with their PC-based collaborators (and vice versa).

Copy protection relies on a Pace USB iLok dongle. When you buy MachFive 2 from new a pre-authorised iLok is included in the box, whereas upgrade copies get a little snap-off chip that is used to transfer a licence to your existing iLok. It seems people either love or loathe iLoks, so I won't waste time recording my personal feelings about them. However, it would be remiss of me not to report that the experience of using the MachFive's iLok for this review was 100 percent trouble free, and not having to jump through any internet authorisation or activation hoops was a refreshing treat. As they say, one man's treasure...

For many users, the main purpose of a software sampler will be the playback of sounds from commercial sample libraries. Not surprisingly, MOTU have realised that too, and this is reflected in a range of features in MachFive 2.

Perhaps most important of these is the software's ability to work with a broad range of proprietary formats. These include its software-based rivals (EXS24, Gigasampler/Gigastudio and Kontakt) alongside widespread 'legacy' disc-based formats (Akai S1000/3000, Emu EIII/EIV and the Kurzweil K2 series). For the full list, see the 'File Formats' box. Impressive stuff for sure, but there are one or two notable absences, including Steinberg's Halion and Reason's NNXT. The lack of compatibility with NNXT is a great shame, I think, as there's a lot of good, wide-ranging material in this format, and much of it is often very affordable. NNXT's architecture isn't that complicated either, so I hold out hope that support might be added somewhere along the line. It'll also be interesting to see if and when MOTU add support for more recent versions, like Kontakt 3.

Actually browsing and loading sounds is achieved in quite an ingenious way. After you double-click either the Preset pop-up menu at top...