Steinberg Absolute 7

Groove Agent 6 now offers sample layering options within the Acoustic Agent.

Updated and improved, Steinberg’s virtual instrument collection offers more of, well, just about everything.

The concept of an all‑in‑one virtual instrument bundle from a single manufacturer is a familiar one. And, whether purchased as a perpetual licence or accessed via a subscription model, it’s also one with some obvious attractions to potential end users: you get to cover a huge span of your virtual instrument needs in a single, well‑integrated, suite and, quite often, at a considerable discount compared to buying similar items on an individual basis.

So, if the idea of potentially filling a whole swathe of your virtual instrument needs with a single purchase is something that might appeal, what does the nearly 200GB of Absolute’s content have to offer and what’s new in version 7?

Core Content

Absolute 7’s content consists of two main elements. The first element is supplied by a core collection of virtual instruments — HALion, Groove Agent, Retrologue, Padshop, The Grand 3 and Backbone — and each of these is supplied with their own ‘factory’ sound libraries. These instruments are then supplemented by the second element which consists of a broad selection of sound expansions that expand the source sounds and presets available for each of the core instruments.

HALion 7 is Steinberg’s flagship sampler instrument and, like NI’s Kontakt or EastWest’s Opus, provides a sophisticated multitimbral sound engine that, with suitable sonic source material, can offer an endless variety of virtual sound options. Both Retrologue 2 and Padshop 2 provide synthesis options, and between them their contrasting synthesis engines span a lot of sonic ground. The Grand 3 provides a deeply sampled suite of piano options but there are, of course, also extensive piano options available via HALion.

Groove Agent is Steinberg’s flagship drum and percussion tool, with its multiple ‘agents’ — Acoustic, Beat and Percussion — providing options for all the obvious categories of sounds. As Groove Agent itself has just received a substantial upgrade to v6, this is one of the obvious highlights of the new Absolute release. Backbone is also drum focused but the engine itself — which lets you blend multiple sample layers for DIY sound design — is also cable of generating some melodic instruments including bass sounds.

Of course, many of these core instruments have been explored before within the pages of SOS (for example, HALion 7 in the May 2023 issue). I’ll therefore focus here on the highlight new additions and improvements that arrive with Absolute 7.

Six For Seven

Groove Agent has always been a powerful virtual drum and percussion instrument and Steinberg have added to those capabilities in this latest release. However, for me at least, just as significant are the improvements made to the instrument’s usability. There are UI improvements all round, the most obvious being that the UI is now both resizable and scalable. There have always been places where GA’s powerful control set can get pretty dense; resizing and rescaling makes interacting with the UI considerably easier. The mixer has also undergone refinements, and for an even easier editing experience, it can now be undocked from the main UI if required for additional flexibility. The ability to see various subsets of your GA mixer channels alongside an effects editor section makes for a much slicker workflow.

GA6’s Beat Agent now offers a very creative Pattern Editor environment.

GA6 gets new technical capabilities also including improved pre‑listening within the browser, allowing you to audition new sounds in situ as your project plays before loading them, improved time and pitch adjustments thanks to a new spectral Warp Mode, and a pitch detection option for sample tuning. However, the two standout additions are the new integrated Pattern Editor (based upon that introduced into Cubase 14) and a very slick toolset for layering multiple samples within an Acoustic Agent kit. The former is brilliantly creative in terms of beat/pattern creation, while the latter takes GA’s DIY drum sound design up a significant notch. The ability to, for example, blend multiple kicks or snares (for example, reinforcing an acoustic kick with an electric one) into your own DIY Acoustic Agent kit is very cool.

Within Absolute 7, that sound‑design process is further enabled by the new Kit Pieces sound expansion, giving you a collection of additional kicks, snares and toms to explore. You also get the new Punch Kit (great for more aggressive styles) for Acoustic Agent and the Color Punch Kit for Beat Agent. Both of these bring new sounds and performance pattern options but, of course, the underlying sounds can also be accessed for your own sound‑design use.

Groove Agent 6 is something of a beast. Whether it’s acoustic drums, electronic drums or percussion sounds, it can get you started with presets and performance patterns to suit almost any musical genre but, equally, lets you customise and control both those sounds and performances in an infinite number of ways should you wish.

Back To The Bone

Given elements of GA6’s expanded feature set, it might be easy to overlook Backbone’s role in Absolute’s line‑up. It remains a great tool, though, and, for dedicated DIY designers of drum (and other) sounds, it’s a toolset well worth exploiting. It’s great for general sample‑based sound design of drums or percussion and provides powerful way to blend sample layers to create your own sounds.

It can do more than just drums, though; it can also provide some interesting options for melodic/harmonic sounds and risers, stings and transitions. In Absolute 7, those more experimental options are supplemented by the new Fractured expansion pack featuring more experimental drum sounds and sound effects suitable for modern electronic and cinematic applications.

Resynthesized Synths

Absolute 7 sees both Padshop (2.3.0) and Retrologue (2.5.0) get some UI polish and, as with HALion and Groove Agent, these instruments’ UIs are now fully resizable and rescalable. Again, both instruments include some excellent presets options, including those provided by the various expansions within Absolute 7. This includes the excellent Vintage Classics (old‑school analogue synth inspired) expansion for Retrologue and the Polarities (all sorts of unusual mysterious sound textures) expansion for Padshop.

The UIs for both Padshop (shown here) and Retrologue are now fully rescalable.

And, as with HALion 7 and Groove Agent 6, both pull no punches in terms of depth and features. Yes, the presets provide abundant easy‑access options, but if you are someone who likes to fully customise your own sounds, all of these instruments give you almost endless options on that front, albeit with a learning curve. On this front, those rescaling options are very welcome, making the deeper waters much easier to navigate.

Expanded Expansions

Absolute 7 also adds further sound expansions to its catalogue. Some of these are more recent expansions previously released as standalone products. Primarily for use within HALion, these include two additional piano options in Etude (a fabulous‑sounding library based upon detailed sampling of a Yamaha C3X grand) and Verve (a cool combination of piano‑meets‑textures). You also get Colors LoFi Tapes (all sorts of dusty, imperfect, sounds with plenty of character).

A further addition is Orchestral Colors from Sonuscore. Built from a selection of sounds from Sonuscore’s The Orchestra, this is a welcome addition to complement the existing HALion Symphonic Orchestra and Studio Strings libraries. There are probably dedicated orchestral libraries out there that offer more for orchestral film/TV scoring than Absolute 7 but, that said, there is still plenty to get your teeth into here and, combined with the wealth of other sounds, these orchestral options work perfectly well as part of a ‘hybrid’ palette.

Two further HALion expansions/instruments deserve special mention. As noted in the May 2023 review, an absolute highlight of HALion 7 was the new FM Lab, which brought Yamaha’s undoubted expertise in FM synthesis right into HALion’s feature set. It sounded (and still sounds) absolutely fantastic. Absolute 7 brings some new sonic inspiration for FM fans with the Carrier8 expansion. This offers a collection of rather wonderful presets for FM Lab created by Stéphane Garganigo. From brilliant basses, textural pads and fabulous leads, many of which make excellent use of HALion’s chord pad and arpeggiator pattern options, these made me fall in love with FM Lab all over again.

Absolute 7 includes the new Carrier8 expansion for HALion 7’s brilliant FM Lab.

Absolute already includes options for both guitar and bass for HALion (for example, Tales and Electric Bass). However, if you like your electric guitars heavy and down‑tuned, the second notable addition is the new Axe Machina instrument. This has been developed, adapted and updated by Soundiron for Steinberg from their existing Kontakt version of the same library. While the electric guitar is my usual weapon of choice, my skill set doesn’t stretch to modern seven‑string styles. With some clever scripting and multiple performance articulation options (with keyswitching included for real‑time performance) under the hood, Axe Machina can deliver those styles with some considerable class, either using its built‑in amp and effects modelling options or as a DI signal to feed your own choice of guitar rig simulation. It offers a neat dual guitar mode and the Arp section with pattern switching options. It might have been nice to have a bigger selection of ‘getting started’ preset patterns for the Arp section, but the tools do provide a straightforward workflow to roll your own. And, while it can do heavy, pair it with a suitable ambient amp sim and it sounds excellent in that role also.

Heavy seven‑string electric guitars come full‑force to Absolute 7 with the Axe Machina expansion for HALion.

All For One?

So, if you like the concept of a single bundle to deal with your core virtual instrument needs, is Absolute 7 a worthy contender? There are plenty of positives. With support for VST3, AU and AAX plug‑ins, it is compatible with the majority of popular DAWs and, while Cubase is my usual DAW, during the review period I also used the Absolute 7 instruments within Logic Pro 12 without any issues. For some potential users, the perpetual licence purchase format will also be welcome.

For me, Absolute 7’s primary attraction comes from the combination of HALion, Groove Agent, Retrologue and Padshop. There is no doubting the quality of the sounds they can produce. Each of these instruments offers impressive preset collections, providing a very broad palette of both acoustic and electronic instrument sounds capable of handling a diverse range of general compositional duties, as well as plenty of more specialised options. These include an excellent array of pianos. However, it’s the synth‑based sounds that are a real highlight, whether that’s HALion’s FM Lab, Retrologue’s analog‑style character, or Padshop’s evolving soundscapes. If I had to identify a ‘con’, it would be for those that are primarily looking for conventional orchestral sounds. Yes, Absolute 7 does offer those but, if that’s your compositional focus, there are probably more flexible options to be found elsewhere.

While the presets collection is impressive in size, diversity and quality, I think the real bang‑for‑buck value with Absolute 7 will be found by those users that are prepared to dig into the extensive sound‑design tools found in the core virtual instruments. There is a learning curve here, but the UI refinements now make this an easier task. And, as a reward for your investment, the sound‑design potential is undeniable.

If you are the kind of user who prefers your virtual instruments to be tools for your own sound design, then I do think Absolute 7 is well worth exploring.

Steinberg ought to have a ready market for Absolute 7 from their own Cubase user base. I suspect the real challenge may be in persuading users of other DAWs that Absolute 7 is also a contender for them. If you are the kind of user who prefers your virtual instruments to be tools for your own sound design, then I do think Absolute 7 is well worth exploring. And, on that front, 30‑day trial versions of a number of the core instruments — HALion 7, Groove Agent 6 and Backbone — are available for download from Steinberg’s website. Absolute 7’s presets are excellent in their own right but, if you like full control over your own sound creation process, this instrument collection is a powerful option for use with any VST3, AU or AAX host at a competitive bundle price.