Product reviews

Sonic Fiction is Jeremiah Savage’s second sound library for Native Instruments’ Kore and Kore Player.

Similar to Acoustic Refractions, in Sonic Fiction Jeremiah takes sampled material and shapes it into completely new and playable instruments with the help of the advanced synthesis and sound processing capabilities of Absynth, Kontakt and Kore.

Expanding on sound design paradigms established with Jeremiah Savage’s previous ACOUSTIC REFRACTIONS collection, the sounds in SONIC FICTION are inspired by imaginative Science Fiction scenarios and concepts.

Jeremiah’s passion for the philosophical hypotheses in the best of sci-fi literature and film translates into 100 evocative, otherworldly and yet always highly-playable instruments, with 800 individual sound variations.

I am not too big on science fiction but I do enjoy sci-fi sounds and since I enjoyed Jeremiah’s Acoustic Refractions much I had high expectations for Sonic Fiction.

The introduction video on the Native Instruments website shows the ways Jeremiah created the sounds of Sonic Fiction; turning non-musical objects into flexible instruments.

Sonic Fiction uses Kontakt, Absynth and Kore FX engines for processing the sampled sources. You get a total of 100 Kore presets, with the usual 8 variations per preset for a total of 800 sounds.

I went through these presets and picked a few personal favorites to show you.

Note: The 5 star rating doesn’t mean anything more than a way for me to remember which ones I wanted to play in the video, so don’t think I disliked the other ones.

So what do I think?

Sonic Fiction is exactly what I hoped for; another collection of unique and well designed sounds. Although the sounds in Sonic Fiction are all sci-fi inspired, they are more versatile than you would think. Many sound variations offer radically different sounds. Soundscapes, massive percussive hits, pads, bells, glitchy effects, and lots more.

I find Sonic Fiction one of the most inspiring SoundPacks to date. I truly liked every single sound in the pack. You can find some great musical audio demos on the Sonic Fiction product page. Although Sonic Fiction will probably appeal mostly to those who are into sound design, the audio demos demonstrate that these sounds can be used in any all kinds of electronic music.

More information: Native Instruments / Sonic Fiction

Wave Alchemy has recently released another drum sample library, Drum Tools 01.

Drum Tools 01 by Wave Alchemy offers over 1950 exquisitely produced electronic drum samples. All sounds in the collection have been built from the ground up using a jawdropping array of analogue circuitry and exclusive highend outboard gear.

Great care has been taken to capture the tone / vibe and warmth of the equipment used and all sample editing and file naming has been done by hand for maximum precision.

The drum samples in Drum Tools 01 have been created by the creative layering and processing of drum machines, exotic synthesizers / modulars, field recordings and the recording of live drum and percussive instruments.

Ah… just what I need: More creatively layered and processed drum machine, exotic sound sources and field recordings.

Of course I don’t really need another drum sample library… ToneBuilder’s Driven Machine Drums, various Goldbaby Productions titles, and Wave Alchemy’s own Drum Machines 01 already provide me with thousands of high quality samples.

So why Drum Tools 01? The beauty of sample libraries like the ones I just mentioned is that they feature sampled material from a unique combination of analog sound sources processed with high end outboard gear, so Drum Tools still sounds “different” from everything else I already have.

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D16 Group has just released an update of Phoscyon, a virtual bass line synthesizer plug-in for Windows and Mac.

Phoscyon is an emulation of Roland’s classic TB-303, the squelchy bass synth from the early 80’s. Originally designed as a bass companion for practicing guitarists, this little monophonic synthesizer would play a big role in the development of various genres of house music a few years later. Almost three decades after it was introduced, the TB-303 is now one of the most sought after vintage synths.

Phoscyon isn’t exactly new. Its first official release was in February 2006 and it received a few updates since then. The long awaited (almost 2 years) version 1.8 update brings some new features like new shuffle/swing parameters, oscillator tuning settings, updated preset management and MIDI learn (similar to other D16 plug-ins), accent velocity level settings and lots more. It also marks the first official release of an AudioUnit version.

The interface screenshot shows that Phoscyon offers quite a number of additional features to the original TB-303.

Phoscyon in detail

In the top of the screen you can set the sequencer mode to either internal or external (when internal LED is off). When using the internal sequencer it can be synced to the internal clock —30-300 bpm, or to your host tempo. Phoscyon has 96 patterns which can be triggered by MIDI notes in Host mode; great for performing live. With the new MIDI learn system it’s dead simple to link Phoscyon’s parameters to your external controller. Click the MIDI learn button, adjust a control on Phoscyon and on your controller and voila, all done. You can save your custom MIDI CC maps as well.

Moving on to the next section we find the presets section. Presets store information about the sound, arpeggiator, distortion, and volume parameters. Phoscyon can store up to 128 presets per bank, which you can of course save and load. The built-in preset manager can store presets in groups, a handy little feature to assist you in finding the sound you’re after with ease.

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A little over 3 years ago de la Mancha started releasing free VST instrument and effect plug-ins for Windows. Quite prolifically too.

After releasing many freebies — lots of great random/probability-based FSU type stuff, early 2008 de la Mancha released Octav8r, its first commercial plug-in; a 7 band pitch shifter collaboration with Singing Crane.

Currently de la Mancha’s collection of plug-ins spans more than 50 freeware and commercial plug-ins including 4-operator FM synth FMMF (3^rd place winner of KVR’s Developer Challenge 2009), and drum sample player ballistic, released as a charity fund raiser for Cancer Research UK (over £1,000 GBP donated already!)

bassbomb is dlM’s latest effort, a monophonic bass “monster”.

bassbomb is a monophonic, bass synthesizer focused on creating a wide range of bass sounds from punchy to chunky via squelchy and fat with a sprinkling of dirt on top. It does everything from dubstep wobble, electro house dirt, funky bounce, breakbeat dirt, hiphop boom, acid squelch and more besides. As well as bass lines it’s also happy banging out kick drums and bass drops, with a pure sine sub osc to really nail that low end.

de la Mancha bassbomb, a monophonic bass monster

bassbomb features 2 (syncable) oscillators with 7 custom waveforms. They have detune and pulse width controls, and adjustable Unison with spread for each. There’s a sub oscillator (sine) to fatten things up.

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SoundsDivine has recently released The Joy Of Sound, its first collection of sounds for ACE, the virtual modular synthesizer plug-in by U-He.

This bank contains 130 new sounds for U-He’s ACE, featuring punchy basses, overdriven analogue style sequences, modular mayhem, oriental instruments and deep rich pads. Most patches use modwheel and velocity assignments to make the sounds as expressive as possible.

Here’s a video of me running through the presets.

So what do I think?

I think I know why Simon of SoudsDivine named this soundset The Joy Of Sound. With its wonderful set of features and exceptional sound quality ACE is a true joy to work with. I can only imagine that it must be a delight for sound designers to create patches with this modular synth.

These 130 patches for ACE include many well designed creative and unique sounds. Great use of modwheel as well (documented in the info panel of each patch).

The range of sounds is quite varied; I’d say there should be something for everyone. I wasn’t too fond of the bass section as some of those sounds were too experimental for my taste. The pads on the other hand are just my cup of tea, very inspiring.

Check out the sound demos on the Joy Of Sound product page and see what you think.

More information: SoundsDivine / The Joy Of Sound / ACE

I got hooked on music from the Ninja Tune record label back in the mid nineties. DJ Food, Funki Porcini, Amon Tobin, Vadim… Just a few of the artists that got me excited about music in ways I hadn’t experienced before.

Ninja Tune was founded by Jonathan More and Matt Black, the guys behind the most excellent Solid Steel radio show. As electronic music duo Coldcut they have hundreds of releases and remixes on their name.

If you’ve never heard of Coldcut you can read up on Jon and Matt on their wiki page.

With Sound Science Coldcut offers a collection of quality sounds similar to the ones found in their own recordings.

This exclusive sample pack produced for Loopmasters by Matt and Jon themselves features a huge collection of previously unheard and unreleased material which is sure to grace many future hit records through genres such as Hip Hop, Breaks, House and Drum and Bass. A true skeleton key of sound, the loops and samples are a must for every serious music producers collection.

I’m not sure how to best describe the Coldcut sound, but I know it has to do with head bobbing. Funky breakbeats, jazzy bass, high energy synth stabs, groovy melodic samples… mix it all up in a blender and you know it will sound delicious.

What do you get?

Sound Science includes over 350 loops in both Wav and Rex formats, almost 300 single shot sounds, and 45 patches in various popular sampler formats.

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