Virtual Instrument

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Built around a virtual eight-string guitar, Carbon offers a stylistic take on modern metal and rock.

Arturia's latest instrument is a software recreation of Oberheim's pinstriped polysynth.

G-Sonique's Technol HN1 offers bread-and-butter techno sounds in an easy to use format and at a bargain price.

Soniccouture deliver a powerful drum sampler engine where you provide the samples.

XILS Lab have recreated a classic Roland string synth, and made a few improvements to boot.

Does Modartt's Organteq do for the pipe organ what Pianoteq did for the piano?

Is Native Instruments' virtual picked acoustic guitar better than the real thing?

Toontrack's virtual bass player should have its human counterparts very worried indeed.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. From a damaged, poorly-maintained Soviet-era monosynth that suffers from crackles, frequency drift and other problems, RR saw an opportunity to create an unusual polysynth...

Is it a drum loop player? Is it a drum sampler? Auddict try to do both, and more...

If you are looking for a source of instant drum parts for your latest electronic music production, UJAM's Beatmaker 2 collection might be just what you need.

Bassynth is all about big and meaty bass sounds. Its 11GB sample library comprises over 800 multi-samples of 'real' instruments such as brass, winds and bass guitar, plus synthetic sounds.

IK Multimedia follow up their highly acclaimed MODO Bass with a percussive counterpart.

Hyperrealism is the order of the day with Waves' new virtual bass instrument.

Prominy's bass instrument comes of age with a major version 2 overhaul.

Rating: ***** 4/5 Stars. This ROMpler-based instrument for Kontakt offers some fairly classic-sounding pianos and keyboards.

Soniccouture's fabled loft yields further synth treasure...