Recording - April 2011 - 63

Puremagnetik: Another Look
By Mike Metlay

RECORDING'S

SHOWCASE OF SOUNDS

Puremagnetik is a web-based content provider for users of Ableton Live, Native Instruments Kontakt, and Apple Logic; a lot has been added to its catalog since we first mentioned it in our December 2009 Gift Guide. Its sound libraries, called MicroPaks, are designed so that the content is fully usable inside the chosen software platform without any extra plug-ins. Each MicroPak’s requirements are listed on its webpage; for example, the newest MicroPaks may require Ableton Live 8.2.1 (the newest version) while older ones work fine with version 7. Every month, Puremagnetik adds a new MicroPak to its growing collection, and that new MicroPak plus the previous month’s offering are the two “current titles”. You can subscribe to the site and download the current offerings for $5.75/month or $60/year; a $299 “All Access Pass” gives you one full year’s free run of the site’s old and new titles. If you’re not interested in subscribing, you can get individual MicroPaks for $12, choose from a selection of bundles ranging from $35 to $50, or purchase exclusive new products (often released in partnership with Ableton). While most of the Puremagnetik catalog consists of sample libraries and audio loops or Live Clips, a few titles offer special presets for plug-ins like Ableton Operator or Max For Live. As of our last report, the Puremagnetik catalog had 40 titles; that number has hit 58 as of now, and a lot of the new titles are spectacular. There are sounds from Richard Lainhart’s Buchla 200e modular synthesizer, carefully multisampled 1960s Ludwig drums, a string bass library called Upright, and all kinds of twisted and broken and circuit-bent electronics in libraries with names like Artifact, ToyBox, and HackShop. Here’s my admittedly biased choice of five new MicroPaks, described in more detail. PM-70 is the newest MicroPak, a multisampled Yamaha CP-70 electric grand piano with added effects to simulate this classic rock keyboard’s built-in tremolo and tube amp. While there’s a great set of Delivery: Web download recorded sounds from the instrument’s pickups, Puremagnetik also Format: Sounds for Ableton Live, Native Instruments miked the CP-70’s acoustic sound, adding an interesting character Kontakt, or Apple Logic that the original designers never meant to be heard. Licensing: all sounds royalty-free for original compositions Vespine collects sounds from the EDP Wasp, a cheap but lovable Documentation: a global 1-page PDF installation guide analog/digital hybrid synth that made its appearance in a variety (also available as a text file) of New Wave bands way back when. Its touchplate keyboard Prices: $12 each or by subscription (see above) wasn’t very easy to play reliably, so a multisampled sound set that’s More from: Puremagnetik, www.puremagnetik.com. presented in a variety of instrument presets is a nice way to get the Wasp sound in a modern context.
RECORDING APRIL 2011

LadyVox is a fun multisampled female voice library (of vocalist Sara Azriel) with sung vowels, doo-wop syllables, and an assortment of effects and layers that give you everything from easy-to-blend choral sounds to bizarre synthetic textures and even a fuzzed-out guitar made entirely from a vocal sample. The samples are clean and beautiful, the creative potential is broad, and I love the results. Waveframe is as much a public service as it is a MicroPak. It’s a huge and lovingly sampled collection of sounds from the Ensoniq FIZMO, a digital keyboard synth from the 1990s that was as famous for its horrifically stupid user interface as it was for its rich, lovely tone based on constantly morphing waveforms called Transwaves. Now these waveforms can be played back and blended inside the much more reliable framework of Live or Logic or Kontakt, with a modular design that allows users to easily build their own Transwaves. And last but not least, there’s the love/bane of my musical life, the Mellotron. This tape-playback keyboard (responsible for the flutes on “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Stairway To Heaven”, among many others) is well represented in Puremagnetik’s MicroTron Tapes, each of which collects a set of three famous Tron sounds into very playable instruments, with timbral crossfading and added effects. MicroTron Tape 3 includes a clarinet, a french horn, and a wonderfully awful big-band sustained-note recording called Glenn Miller (is it really?)... complete with a gagging tape-transport pitch-glitch on the low A! In all the MicroPaks I tried out, I found only one genuine headscratcher: a keymap in MicroTron Tape 3 (the clarinet sound) that was offset from the other maps by an octave, supposedly for more interesting harmonic blends with other MicroTron sounds but which I found annoying to work with. Still, it’s easy enough to edit to taste; all of these instruments can be opened and tweaked in Live, to mix and match sound layers, alter tunings, add MIDI effects or audio effects, etc. There is really only one general caveat to working with these products. If you’re a Live Intro user, be aware of the fact that inside every MicroPak, some presets require features that are implemented in the full version of Live but not in Live Intro (especially track grouping, used for things like mixing DI and miked sounds in PM-70). Normally this is all under the hood, but users of Live Intro will discover that some of the instrument racks in some MicroPaks won’t work properly (or at all), and Live Intro doesn’t offer the ability to open and edit them. Kontakt and Logic users should have no issues. If you’re looking for interesting, carefully assembled, and creatively executed content that works well within your DAW, Puremagnetik provides you with lots of choices for a very reasonable price. Check out the audio demos on the Puremagnetik website and be inspired!

http://www.puremagnetik.com

Recording - April 2011

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