Sonora Cinematic’s latest release has been made in a collaboration with SwishSwoosh, and is dedicated to creating dark, spine-chilling sounds aimed at those composing horror scores. AMBER comes loaded with a wide variety of ready-to-use sounds housed in an intuitive interface, and is being released alongside LITTLE AMBER, a compact version which is being made available for free.
The instrument features two sound layers that are equipped with Volume and Pan parameters, and are placed either side of an X/Y pad. Using the pad, it is possible to blend between the two sound sources and control their intensity, offering a fast and intuitive way to create continually evolving soundscapes and textures. There is also a One-Shot section that is dedicated to creating single hits or ‘riser’ effects.
A built-in effects section offers plenty of opportunity for processing the samples and creating everything from subtle to dramatic variations. Each of the two sound layers is equipped with Drive, Rotator, Flanger and Phaser effects, the parameters of which can be linked or adjusted independently. There is also a global effects section that allows the overall sound to be processed further using Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Lo-Fi, Dist (distortion) and Comp (compressor) sections, along with an EQ that boasts low- and high-pass filters, high- and low-frequency shelf filters and a pair of parametric mid bands.
LITTLE AMBER then provides a free version of the instrument that retains the X/Y and One-Shot sections, but with fixed Broken Cello and Shockwave sounds loaded into the two layers, and a single drone in the One-Shot mode. The built-in effects are also disabled, although there is access to a single reverb in the instrument’s Scenes menu.
"This Halloween, we’re excited to collaborate with Sonora Cinematic to introduce AMBER and the free LITTLE AMBER to those sound designers who need a quick and easy solution for creating dark soundscapes and spine-tingling horror sounds. We can’t wait to hear what you create with it!" - Feridun Emre Dursun, SwishSwoosh co-founder
Compatibility
Amber and Little Amber both run in Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player version 7 and above, which is supported on PCs running Windows 10 or 11, and Macs running macOS 11 and higher. VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available, and there is also a standalone application.
Pricing & Availability
Amber is available now, and is being offered for an introductory price of £48 including VAT until 6 December 2023, after which it will cost £72 including VAT. Little Amber is also available now, and is free to download.
