Sample Libraries

Soniccouture breathe new life into some classic drum sounds.

This is most certainly not just another orchestral string library. Indeed, what’s perhaps most impressive with Dronar is just how far the playback engine can take its original sample source and in how many directions.

Subtitled ‘essential tuned percussion’, this Kontakt-hosted collection of instruments offers Marimba, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, Tubular Bells, Glass Marimba, Song Bells, Vibraphone and Crotales.

The latest release in the series is Twelve String Electric, which conjures the sound of late-’60s pop like almost no other instrument.

Subtitled ‘the other film orchestra’, the focus is once again on the jazzy film and TV scores of the ’60s, epitomised by the likes of Mancini, Schifrin, Barry and Goldsmith.

Adding strings to an arrangement is a great way to inject motion into your music.

New sound companies seem to spring up every day, each one bringing a fresh selection of sample library treats. One such...

Analog Strings is a Kontakt instrument based on a dual-layer playback engine fed from sound sources that include orchestral strings, vintage synths and other sound design elements.

The Vienna Symphonic team go forward into the past.

Grindhouse provides a collection of playable instruments that aim to capture the musical essence of some of the more popular sub-genres of the B movie/exploitation film soundtrack.

Ethno World is advertised as being the ultimate sample library for ethnic instruments and voices from all over the world...

RealiTone Fingerpick provides the user with a fingerpicked acoustic guitar within a compact Kontakt-based virtual instrument.

Timphonia is fairly conventional, focusing on the kind of timpani instruments that are typically used by classical orchestras. Nevertheless, the library does include some quite experimental patches...

As the title suggests, all the sound sources are guitar-based, but their treatment here is very much aimed at providing a further palette of pad, ambience and soundscape-style sounds...

Bringing together the samples from their previous three Thunder libraries, X3M adds some 6GB of new sample content and adds a new Kontakt front-end...

This latest Expansion for Toontrack’s EZdrummer was recorded by Steve Albini in his Electrical Audio studio and, through the kit pieces and the tunings used, offers something of his signature sound in bottled form.

Sonokinetic have been carving out a niche for themselves in phrase-based orchestral libraries, and with their latest offering, Maximo, that niche just got a whole lot bigger!