EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 88) Soft Machines Q UA N T U M L E A P V O I C E S O F PA S S I O N SOUNDS a stereo spread. The Welsh vocal “phrase generator” is cool, too. Although initially it seems there are only a handful of presets, the “master” ones use keyswitching to access multiple articulations. There are also presets with individual articulations, and some with true legato. Print out the PDF manual—lots of options are hidden in those presets. While obviously geared for video and movies, the vocals are great for replacing that clichéd diva sound used in a lot of trance music, as well as for any kind of chill. Three words: evocative, fascinating, and unique. Oh, and add “wow, too. —Craig Anderton ” C O N TA C T: Quantum Leap, www.soundsonline.com F O R M AT: Virtual instrument with about 7 .3GB of 24-bit/44.1kHz samples; requires iLok (not included) for installation L I ST P R I C E : $495 Wow. Well, that’s the short-form review. To elaborate, these are superbly-recorded “ethnic” samples from Bulgaria, Syria, India, Wales (think Enya), and America (which tend toward more multisampled notes rather than idiosyncratic phrases). They play back through East West’s Play engine (32/64-bit, Windows/Mac, ASIO/Core Audio, VST/AU/RTAS) which itself is pretty cool, with convolution reverb, delay, artificial double tracking (chorus), amplitude envelope, and lowpass filter. There are also interesting tricks, like assigning mod wheel to sample start point—start anywhere within a phrase. Another is you can use the left, right, or both channels of a vocal (different channels use different mics) but if you use only one, you can synthesize B I G F I S H A U D I O R O C K STA R Actually I’d go more for “pop star, as this ” is more like a melodic strain of alternative rock than, say, punk or heavy metal. I could easily picture these loops behind a Hilary Duff single, which is not damning with faint praise, but telling it like it is: This is commercial, top 40, mainstream music that could easily slide into the soundtrack of a zillion TV shows. Instrumentation is drums, bass, guitar, acoustic guitar, and some piano; the recording quality is good (bass and guitar more so, drums less so), but not particularly exceptional. End of story? Not quite. Each construction kit typically has 30–50 files—much more than average, and they’re relatively short. These loops are like little micro-hooks, and you could cherry-pick a few files from several construction kits to provide a foundation for your own original material. Once you overdub some leads, percussion, voice, and some pads, you’ll end up with something no one would ever recognize as being inspired by a sample CD. While not incredibly original or unusual, I use sample CDs such as this quite a bit as they present a neutral canvas on which you can imprint your own personality, and work well in many contexts. And like other Big Fish construction kit CDs, they’re great when you have to put together something stylistically coherent under a tight deadline. —Craig Anderton C O N TA C T: Big Fish Audio, www.bigfishaudio.com F O R M AT: DVD-ROM with 25 construction kits duplicated as WAV, REX, RMX, and Apple Loops files; 24-bit/44.1kHz L I ST P R I C E : $99.95 S O N Y S E V E N M I N U T E S TO M I D N I G H T This is a construction kit with a twist: Each “kit” contains the loops used in a song from the Rondo Brothers’ album, Seven Minutes to Midnight. (Interestingly, I proposed this concept to Sony almost a decade ago, because I thought Acid would make a good multitrack music delivery/remix system.) We’re talking trip-hop, with a bit of funk thrown in too. Given the source, as you’d expect there’s a very wide variety of loops, including guitars, drum figures, bass, synths, piano, organ, various effects, and percussion. Furthermore, the oneshots contribute drum hits, stabs, scratches, and the like—even a few vocal elements. While it might seem like these loops would pigeonhole you into the Rondo Brothers’ sound (more specifically, that of their CD), actually the reverse is true. The acidization is up to Sony’s usual standards, so I would see this more as a source for mining loops to add to existing compositions. Even though it’s organized like a construction kit, I’d recommend treating this like a general-purpose sample library with a wide variety of samples rather than a “kit” sample CD. You might even want to group all the drums, basses, guitars, etc. into their own folders to encourage this type of approach. In any event, for trip-hop fans there are lots of solid loops—and that’s the bottom line for any sample library. —Craig Anderton C O N TA C T: Sony, www.sonycreativesoftware.com F O R M AT: CD-ROM with 455 Acidized WAV files and 136 oneshots; 16-bit/44.1kHz L I ST P R I C E : $59.95 88 EQ FEBRUARY 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.soundsonline.com http://www.bigfishaudio.com http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com http://www.eqmag.com
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