Recording - June 2017 - 40

Soundware Showcase

UVI Vintage Vault
By Mike Metlay

Vintage Vault is a massive soundware bundle from French
soundware maker UVI, bringing together no less than 14 UVI
products in one easy-to-install (if huge) package. It includes 36
synthesizers and over 80 drum machines, making Vintage Vault
an incredible value.
The Vintage Vault sounds are all played via the free UVI
Workstation sample player application, but can also be used
inside UVI's powerful new Falcon virtual instrument. We'll run
an in-depth review of Falcon in a future issue, but in the
meantime, to sharpen your appetite (and for those readers
who like the idea of having all these sounds without the
complexity of a high-end virtual synth), here's a look at what
you'll find in the Vault.

The UVI Workstation

The UVI Workstation is UVI's own presentation of the UVI
Engine, an under-the-hood sample manipulation package used
as the basis for a number of powerful sample-based virtual
instruments, most notably MOTU's MachFive software sampler.
Vintage Vault presses its capabilities into the service of recreating
dozens of famous synthesizers from the past 40-plus years.
If that sounds daunting, don't worry; the UVI Workstation
presents roughly the same architecture for every library. That
means that once you get past the look of each instrument's front
panel, which is designed in homage to the synthesizer that's
been sampled, the controls are familiar and consistent from
one instrument to the next. It doesn't matter if one keyboard
was based on analog synthesis, another on FM digital synthesis,
another on samples, and yet another on analog tape-the things
you can do to manipulate the sounds are effectively the same.
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RECORDING June 2017

As you can see in the screenshots, each instrument allows you
ADSR envelope control of filter and amplifier, a 3-mode filter, three
stereo play modes (mono, alternating L/R, and unison) with color,
spread, and detune control, and a syncable LFO with four waveforms and several possible destinations. There's also an arpeggiator,
a step sequencer, and a step-based modulator that allows for
patterns of changes to volume and filter modulation, selectable
modulation wheel control of vibrato, tremolo, and filter brightness,
and a built-in effects chain with modulation, delay, and reverb effects.
The number and controls on the oscillators depends on the
synthesizer being emulated; one model might only have a single
oscillator and sub oscillator, while another might have three
fully functional oscillators. There are also a couple of models
with dual filters under the hood when needed. Overall, this
presents enough tweakability so that sounds that are already
in the ballpark for what you need can be set to your precise
specifications, without overwhelming you with a lot of controls.
The UVI Workstation also allows you to layer these sound
sources and mix them, with each layer having its own MIDI
Channel assignment-up to 64 of them if you have a multiport
interface and a powerful enough DAW. A Multi can be stored
with two global Aux effects and a level mix so a full orchestration
can be called up with the touch of a button. The effects, by the
way, are topnotch, and include UVI's exceptionally smooth and
CPU-light Sparkverb reverb (which is also available as a plug-in
for use elsewhere in your DAW). There's even the ability to play
back loops and to slice up REX files to play back samples on an
equal footing with keyboard-based sounds.

Into the Vault

With that common platform available to us, now it's time to
have a listen to the sounds available in this package. I could easily

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - June 2017