Sample Libraries

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. VSL add two more collections to their impressive Synchron Duality Strings sample instrument.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars. Velvet Guitars leans towards cinematic textures by exploring a softer approach to the electric guitar, making it suitable for scoring for picture, ambient music production and sound design.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. While the interface may look familiar, with its four sample pads and separate windows for Main, Edit, Mod and FX, the new version can now be used with the free Kontakt Player and includes a completely new sample library.

Easy and quick orchestral arrangements are very much the order of the day as Sonuscore’s The Orchestra Complete reaches its fourth incarnation.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Ostinato Textures offers strings with specific articulations and rhythmic performance patterns, as opposed to the usual sustained bowed notes.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.5/5 Stars. Polarity Modular embraces Ian Boddy's expertise in the modular arena and is sampled and created from the ground up.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Refraction takes a multi‑mic recording of an upright piano, prepared using a very thin layer of felt, and then provides tools to process it.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. At its most basic level, Seeker is an instrument that acts somewhat like a wavetable synth, shipping with 1.9GB of sampled content, from the extraordinary mind of creative leader Pendle Poucher.

Spitfire’s collaboration with Mervyn Warren has produced a choral library that’s really very special indeed.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. British creative studio Song Athletics have collaborated with innovative pianist/composer Sarah Nicolls for Inside‑Out Piano, which is, quite literally, a deep dive into the instrument.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Sampled Steinway D‑274 grand pianos aren’t exactly in short supply, but this one’s a bit special...

Industry legend Sylvia Massy brings her expertise and creativity to Tootrack’s latest Superior Drummer expansion.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Designed for creating dark, tension‑filled, music meets sound‑design for modern sci‑fi, drama or horror set in a dystopian world.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Built by sampling a classic Les Paul‑style electric guitar, what does Electric Blue have to offer to give it an edge within a very competitive marketplace?

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. 

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Deep Felt is a beautiful Kontakt instrument for a specific piano timbre that continues to be very on‑trend, thanks to its usage by numerous electronic artists and soundtrack composers.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars. Sonora Cinematic Aethervox is a pack that provides, as the name suggests, vocals of an ethereal nature.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars. This Kontakt‑based instrument features a finger‑played mandolin recorded in parallel paths to both pristine digital and analogue tape recorders.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 5/5 Stars. Toontrack model a four‑string bass with two pairs of octave strings here and have used a Schecter model as the sound source for this library.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars. Sonora Cinematic Transfigured Orchestra Vol 2 delivers what are termed Hybrid Gestures, some of which have been treated using further processing or created from hybrids of other sounds.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 4/5 Stars. Pocket Strings places only very modest demands on system resources, the idea being to provide a portable string instrument which packs a creative punch.