Zero-G Phaedra

Zero-G has announced Phaedra, a Kontakt Player 2 virtual instrument featuring over 4 gigabytes of sounds.

Phaedra producer Sam Spacey writes:

Phaedra was primarily born out of two of my frustrations…..

  1. The lack of raw sonic power in virtual emulations of analog synths
  2. Sloppy MIDI timing of external analog synths under modern computer operating systems (all is forgiven Atari ST1040)

Phaedra features 20,000+ individual samples samples and 720 presets!

Over the course of 12 months, Sam hand looped and hand edited each sample he recorded from the following synths:

  • Mini Moog D – Was very hard work to sample due to the fact that if you looked at it, it went out of tune.
  • Welsh Moog – A prototype Re-issue Moog made in Wales, but had a unique PWM mod done to it.
  • Yamaha CS5 – Very snappy and fast attack and surprisingly bass-y oscillators.
  • Yamaha CS-15 – This one was delivered in a terrible and broken state, but sounded great for it.
  • Yamaha CS-30 – Sometimes I stacked all 3 Yamahas up over CV voltage for a huge sound.
  • Korg Monopoly – Still getting to grips with this 4-osc howling beast.
  • Korg MS-20 – Very quirky with a great filter.
  • Studio Electronics SE-1 – Modern rack-mounted Moog that could store presets and stay relatively in tune – hurray!!!!
  • Studio Electronics SE-1 – as above but with filter input. I stacked these two a lot, as the sound combinations were awesome.
  • Roland SH-101 – Wet and squelchy, a really good little workhorse.
  • Crumar Multiman – 70’s string synth with Arp filters, surprisingly interesting palette of sounds.
  • Akai AX-73 – Cheap and nasty but I love it for that fact; evil filter.
  • Analog Phaser – Home-made, based on the Small Stone that was modded and used by Jarre on everything he did :)
  • Roland analog chorus pedal – Subtle but lovely.
  • Ensoniq Esq-1 – 8-bit grungy samples going through complete Curtis analog circuitry – I love this synth (The only thing digital used).

Phaedra for Windows PC and Mac OSX will be available early January for a suggested retail price of $199.95 USD (169 EUR / 114.95 GBP).

Visit Zero-G more information, audio demos and a list of instruments in Phaedra (.pdf)