Sample Libraries

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Covering electric rather than orchestral basses, as well as three playable electric bass guitars, this 6GB library includes a whole range of useful bass-rich content.

Sonuscore bundle an awful lot of orchestra into a very modest amount of disk space to deliver immense scoring power.

Audio Modeling's SWAM range delivers a complete suite of virtual solo woodwinds and strings.

EastWest set themselves a technical challenge and a half with this solo operatic vocal instrument.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Noire is the result of composer and pianist Nils Frahm's quest to recreate his signature piano sound as a virtual instrument.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Modern Animated Percussion represents a collaboration between two well-established sample library/virtual instrument developers: Sample Logic and Soundiron.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. British Drama Toolkit consists of eight solo string and woodwind instruments separately recorded from two mic positions in a purpose-built dry stage at Spitfire's HQ.

Spitfire's Ambient Guitars takes the humble six-string into new and uncharted sonic territory.

Spitfire Audio get intimate with their new studio-recorded orchestral sample libraries.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. This large metallophone is presented as a single patch containing a collection of preset 'snapshots' divided into percussive and sound–design categories...

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. This instrument comprises all of the electric and acoustic guitar libraries that Sonic Zest have made for the Kontakt platform over the last six years.

Rating: **** 5/5 Stars. Spitfire have taken a series of common instruments (such as strings, percussion and classical singers) and combined them in ethereal fashion with less commonly encountered sound sources...

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Soundiron managed to get hold of a 61-key example of this 1970s Panda synthesizer and sampled its seven core voices to produce this library.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. A Psaltered Zither should make it much easier for musicians to include zither playing in their compositions...

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Pop Strings UK (6.4GB installed) is a collection of 48kHz WAV audio files — no sampler required, you just drag the WAVs into your DAW, set the song tempo and off you go.

Rating: **** 5/5 Stars. This library delivers big, bad (in a good way) drum and percussion sounds designed for epic TV and film music creation.

VSL push out the boat with hall-recorded rock power drums and two top of the range grand pianos.

If your thunderous cinematic percussion is getting out of control, you need Taiko Creator.

Two new libraries see Orchestral Tools extend their Metropolis series and take a bold leap into the world of big band jazz.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Producer Eduardo Tarilonte's library provides a collection of instruments and soundscapes inspired by the sounds of Vikings and the dark ages.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. What Toontrack are presenting us with here is more a collection of atmospheric sound-design patches than a virtual Bösendorfer.