Sample Libraries

Orchestral Tools get up close and personal with some intimate soundscapes.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. The second instalment in Spitfire’s new modular series is a direct continuation of the first.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Sandstorm provides an easy‑to‑use platform for creating evolving soundscapes and sonic textures.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars. The instrument allows users to pick any two clarinet textures from a library of 15 available textures, blending and shaping them with onboard tools.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. If you have a passion for composing for film/TV contexts, or for more experimental song‑based production, then Void & Vista Strands may be worth auditioning.

Fracture Sounds serve up a trio of intimate piano sample libraries: Woodchester Piano, Midnight Grand and Glacier Keys.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Vintage Country is a collection of both playable instruments and performance loops designed to capture the authentic sound used in, well, vintage country recordings.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Sound Dust’s Felt Dulcitone is a rather oddball instrument created by abusing a dulcitone portable keyboard.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. This library is a collection of drum samples from seven‑time Grammy‑winning recording/mixing engineer John ‘Yosh’ Jaszcz, whose credits include George Clinton and Bootsy Collins.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars. A huge 362GB collection of complex, playable, largely chromatic long drones created by Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Spitfire’s new symphonic double‑bill combines two complete orchestras and a host of extras.

Chris Hein’s OCTA instrument is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Rating ***** 5/5 Stars. Harmonic Bloom uses a series of eight keyboard tracking filters based on the harmonic series in order to extract musical sounds from harmonically rich or noise‑like sound sources.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Toska is a collection of carefully crafted evolving atmosphere and textural sounds that will let music producers or film composers evoke moods of melancholy.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Heavyocity’s Avant Modern Keys samples a classic Mark II electric piano.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Sample Logic's new library, Genesis — Pads In Motion, is likely to appeal to film or TV composers.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. A Copenhagen WWII bunker came to be a home from home for violist/composer Nikolaj Moeller Nielsen.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars. Play a chord and Pathfinder Violin will react to the notes that you play, corresponding to selected patterns or shapes.

Rating: 5/5 Stars. There can be few instruments with a simpler interface than Sound Dust’s Drift 001, but then that was the design ethos behind its creation.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. Built in collaboration with Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Music collective, Fractured Strings is a compelling library full of personality.

EastWest give the classic string machine sound a modern twist.