Sample Libraries

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Whether you are a busy media composer or producer of song‑based music, this library is great for designing complex evolving pad/drone‑type sounds.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars.  This lovely little library blends beautifully with the rest of the Big Bang Orchestra range.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. CAT's suite of six libraries is designed to provide sounds that fit in with cinematic soundtrack compositions, though there are applications in other musical genres such as chill, EDM and ambient.

A top‑tier film composer shares his coveted percussion collection. Is this the best cinematic drums library ever?

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. This Stefano Maccarelli production with vocals provided by the hugely versatile Clara Sorace, includes five multisampled Kontakt instruments, all with a Middle Eastern flavour.

Rating: **** 4.5/5 Stars. A mouthwatering library of samples from reputedly the largest modular setup in Europe, owned by media composer Lester Barnes.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Electric Vintage has been created around samples and performances from a vintage ’50s Fender Telecaster.

Toontrack go fretless with a new EZbass expansion.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Scoring Acoustic Guitars is most likely to appeal to media composers or more experimental musicians. The quality of the sounds is most certainly big budget, but the price of access is not.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. A new strings library from Vienna Symphonic Library comes as no great surprise, but this one’s a bit special.

Orange Tree Sample’s Famous E may be the best virtual Rhodes you can buy.

Sounds of voices and strings rise from the chilly shores of the Baltic.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Performance Samples’ description of Vista as a ‘larger‑than‑life’ chamber ensemble aptly describes this beautiful‑sounding string library.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars.Terracotta is based around samples taken from recordings of 25 different Terracotta pots, divided into four round‑robin and four velocity layers.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. These high-quality WAV samples would most certainly feel at home dropped into a high‑end blockbuster movie, action trailer, or AAA video game.

EastWest/Quantum Leap unveil their expanded orchestral masterwork and built‑in orchestrator.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Rhythmus is built from over 2.5GB of samples taken from a variety of ‘found’ percussion.

Audiobro faces the future with an all‑new divisi strings collection.

Rating **** 4/5 Stars. As promised at the time of release, Spitfire Audio are now following up Abbey Road One with a series of smaller, inexpensive mini‑libraries derived from the main collection.

Rating **** 4/5 Stars. As the title suggests, this is a collection of string‑based sound effects designed with horror or tension in mind.

Rating **** 4/5 Stars. The Cinesamples approach to granular synthesis is based on a library of samples taken from recordings of violinist Michael Levine, which are divided into textures, pulses, pads, one‑shots and sound design patches.