Recording - December 2011 - 31

Simply put, the Virtual Console Collection does something very intriguing to your audio, something you’ll want to hear for yourself if you’re wondering where to take your in-the-box mixes next. Try the demo for yourself; just remember you’ll need an iLok2 USB key first... and if you don’t have one yet, this is a good time to grab one, with the money you can save on the reduced-price intro of the RC-Tube console. A cynic would say that it’s all magic pixie dust, but you know what? It’s hard to argue with magic pixie dust that works.

CPU load is light, as is expected for a sample playback engine, but some legato instruments can cause CPU spikes and momentary dropouts, so be prepared to increase your buffer size if you’re running on an older computer. Forest Kingdom is an instant fantasy trip, and the 24-bit samples are of pristine quality throughout. You can try a small selection for free with ENGINE 2, and hear the magic for yourself.

RealSamples Luthéal Piano
$269.95; www.realsamples.net

Best Service Forest Kingdom
$199.95; www.bestservice.de; dist. in the USA by EastWest, www.soundsonline.com Forest Kingdom is a virtual instrument from German sound library company Best Service; it runs standalone and as a plug-in using Best Service’s proprietary ENGINE 2 sample playback platform, developed for Best Service by Yellow Tools, whose Independence software sampler is well-established in Europe but not as well known in the USA. If you’re not familiar with ENGINE 2, you should be. It’s a very powerful and flexible sample playback engine, offering a lot of tools for key mapping, articulation switching (using low keys on your MIDI keyboard, for example), envelope control, splits, layers, round robin and legato control, effects processing, and so forth. Best of all, it’s free—at least to get started. Best Service offers ENGINE 2 as a free download with a selection of sounds from several of its virtual instruments, in the hope that you’ll like what you hear enough to buy one or more libraries in their full form. In the case of Forest Kingdom, that full form is a dual-layer DVD with about 7.4 GB of audio content: over 7000 samples in carefully prepared layers and patches, easily assembled into multilayer Projects. Created by sound designer Eduardo Tarilonte, Forest Kingdom offers a selection of instruments and soundscapes intended for fantasy film soundtracks, special effects, or New Age or ambient genres. As the name suggests, it provides elements of an audio journey into a magical forest far from civilization. Instruments include Celtic harps, a wide variety of flutes and pan pipes from all around the world (the Bulgarian Double Flute is a treat despite having only a handful of available notes), percussion instruments of all kinds from shakers and chimes to udu drum and taiko, a selection of solo voices and shamanic phrases, and animal sounds (some real, some synthesized and treated) collected in a folder called Fantasy Creatures. My personal favorites, though, are the Pads, a set of 80 amazing soundscapes with easily mixable sonic elements. The library takes full advantage of the ENGINE layout, with lots of articulations, switchable sound elements, and built-in effects (including a heavy, dark reverb to complete the fantasy-movie vibe).

We had a ton of fun in our November 2010 issue with a variety of keyboard sample libraries from RealSamples, multisampled recordings of extremely rare keyboards from the collection of Andreas Beurmann. With this new RealSamples library, our attention shifts to the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels (www.mim.be), home of the Luthéal Piano, a Pleyel grand piano from 1919 (or 1911, according to the MIM website) that was modified by Georges Cloetens in 1922 to add a Luthéal mechanism. A who what? The Luthéal mechanism was Cloetens’ patented early attempt to give pianos a wider choice of timbres; it was, in some sense, a forerunner of John Cage’s experiments with prepared pianos, but offered a more controllable and predictable playing experience than the objects Cage placed inside the piano’s soundboard and on its strings. By pulling one or more of the metal rods (stops) installed on the piano, the player could drop nails on the strings for a harpsichordlike sound (“Clavichord” or “Clavecin”), or place felt dampers for a vaguely harp-like timbre (“Harp Tirée”), or both at once for a percussive, harmonics-heavy sound (called “Cimbalom”). Maurice Ravel wrote for the Luthéal Piano, and the one remaining working instrument in the world is at the MIM and is in a lot of demand. It was the hope of RealSamples’ Nicolay Ketterer that a proper sample set for Kontakt, EXS24, and HALion would allow the repertoire for the Luthéal Piano to be performed all over the world without putting the last real Luthéal Piano at risk. This library is a blast! It offers some unique variations on the traditional early-20th-century piano sound, with a number of stop combinations available. My personal favorite is the Clavecin, which really does sound like a very organic cross between a piano and a clavichord with a little bit of harpsichord mixed in... and a charming bit of rattle (the nails against the strings, I assume) on notes in the very lowest octave! The Harp Tirée isn’t much like a harp to my ears; it’s more like a cross between a piano and plucking harmonics on a guitar... very cool in its own right. The harmonic character is even more evident in the Cimbalom. The library (22 GB on 5 DVDs) includes keyboard splits for wider timbral variety, pedal and release samples, and a large number of velocity layers: 16 each for Clavecin, Harp Tirée, and Cimbalom, and 32 for the Pleyel piano by itself. By the way, the piano sound even without the Luthéal stops is worth the cost of admission. It’s a lovely-sounding instrument, with a rich mellow
RECORDING DECEMBER 2011

http://www.realsamples.net http://www.bestservice.de http://www.soundsonline.com http://www.mim.be

Recording - December 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2011