Virtual Instrument

Eleven years is a long time in software, so the new version of SampleTank ought to be pretty impressive.

Of all the record producers and engineers I’ve interviewed over the years, few impressed me as much as Joey Sturgis, so when I heard that he was the Executive Producer of Drumforge I was very keen to take a look at the product.

Vintage Strings is a Kontakt library intended to sit alongside Vintage Vibe and Vintage Horns and, like those products, uses original samples recorded in a fashion intended to replicate how it might have been done in Motown.

The fifth of MusicLab’s ‘Real’ virtual guitar instruments, RealEight is modelled on an eight-string guitar, currently popular for metal, prog metal, epic rock and all things dark and demonic.

As it reaches its second incarnation, we ask: is Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere the world’s best soft synth?

These files accompany the Sample Shop articles in the August 2015 issue of SOS.

With The Hammersmith, a conventionally played acoustic grand piano, Soniccouture have released one of their most mainstream and potentially important libraries yet.

Serum’s slick interface belies an extremely flexible wavetable synthesizer.

Arturia have revived a classic string synth in software, and the result is the Solina V.

The quality and variety of orchestral string libraries continues to grow. Which one best suits your needs?

One of rock music’s most celebrated recording venues wasn’t a studio but a house in Hampshire, and no music has been recorded there for almost 40 years — until now...

Why take three virtual rhythm plug-ins into the studio when you can just take one? Steinberg’s Groove Agent 4 attempts to do it all.

More collections of drums, guitars and basses in the Indie genre.

MusicLab have turned their guitar-modelling attentions to the legendary Rickenbacker.

Despite enormous popularity in the 1980s, Casio’s CZ range has never been made into a soft synth, until now.

Over almost a decade, Pianoteq has gone from strength to strength. Version 5 offers astonishing realism with remarkably low CPU and hard-drive requirements.

The Mellotron is not lacking in software emulations, so what does EZkeys Mellotoon have to offer?

U–he’s Bazille is a complex synth capable of an astonishing variety of sounds.

If you want to create convincing keyboard parts but don’t have the playing chops, AutoTheory might save your bacon.

It’s been a long time coming, but the follow up to XLN’s Addictive Drums was worth the wait.

Garritan’s latest library raises the bar for virtual piano instruments.