Virtual Instrument

Two years on from its original release, Native's virtual drum module gets its first full upgrade. Is it all John Bonham tom mayhem, or is it limper than a Kraftwerk drum solo?

From the same team that brought you Virtual Guitarist, Groove Agent has had an impressive upgrade, and is now claimed to work better under non-Steinberg hosts. We put it through a proper multi-platform test.

Yamaha's CS80 was one of the finest analogue polysynths of all time. How close have Arturia come to modelling its classic sound in software? We put the software up against the hardware to find out...

If you pined for the innovative Neuron in 2003, but couldn't afford the £3500 price tag, check out Neuron VS; it packs most of the original synth engine into a £500 software instrument and throws in a distinctive hardware controller.

The latest instrument plug-in from IK Multimedia and Sonic Reality packages eight Gigabytes of samples, mostly from a huge range of classic synths, in IK's Sampletank front end.

Absynth has always dared to be somewhat different to other software synths, and version 3 continues the grand tradition, with new effects, built-in frequency-shifting, and surround processing options.

Arturia caught our attention with Storm, the virtual studio suite, but of late they have diversified into emulating classic hardware instruments. So how do they fare in their attempt to capture the mighty Minimoog in software?

Hot on the heels of FXpansion's colossal BFD comes another 30 Gigabyte sampled drum library with a software front-end. DFH Superior offers complete control over the spill between all the drums and mics in your virtual kit, as well as obsessive levels of multisampling!

Synthogy's Ivory goes where no virtual piano has gone before, sampling three full-size grand pianos to form a detailed library more than 30GB in size — and all-in-one £189 plug-in!

Featuring the performances of some of the world's best drummers, Drumcore is a software-based cross between a drum library and a custom loop-auditioning interface, allowing you to assemble rhythm tracks fast.

Sample and loop libraries have come a long way from being delivered on a humble audio CD — the most recent trend is to include a specific playback front-end for easy integration with your sequencer.

When it comes to drum sounds, BFD and its XFL expansion pack offer unprecedented levels of detail and flexibility, totalling over 30GB of sample data. Is it overkill, or the rhythm programmer's ultimate weapon?

It may share the same name, but Spectrasonics' new Stylus RMX is a very different software instrument from the original Stylus, with a completely reconstructed underlying sound engine and a ton of new features.

Rather than using modelling technology to emulate classic synths, Ultimate Sound Bank have created an eight-Gigabyte sample library and packaged it with an accessible virtual instrument front end.

Storm, the French software studio from virtual-instrument creators Arturia, keeps on improving. We check out version 3.

Miriam Stockley is the first well-known singer to undergo the Vocaloid sampling technique, allowing anyone with a PC to install her as a virtual instrument. But how well does it work in practice?

For years it was instantly associated with smooth late-70s productions, and now the sound of the electric piano is enjoying a comeback. But just how good is Native Instruments' sample-based virtual version?

Tassman is not the oldest 'virtual modular' software synth, but it's always been one of the better ones around. We check out the latest version...

Sampled tonewheel organ sounds have been around for many years, but more recently we have seen the arrival of modelled virtual tonewheel organs. Can a sample-based Hammond emulation still cut it?

It's been an unreserved thumbs-up for Korg's bundle of software synths so far... but will the Legacy Polysix and Legacy Cell scale the same heights in the final instalment of our three-part definitive review?

In the second part of our coverage of Korg's new collection of software instruments, we turn our attention to the virtual MS20, and the MS20-shaped hardware controller. Just how well do these renditions compare to the original?