Impact Soundworks has just launched its latest cinematic and electronic toolkit.
The Cosmos synth offers a collection of atmospheric pulses and ambiences inspired by outer space.
Comprising two Kontakt instruments – Phrases and Ambiences, the Cosmos library features nearly 8GB of synth recordings from film composer David St. Hill.
Each of the hundreds of unique ‘phrases’ (arpeggios, sequences, gates) and playable textures delivers a perfectly polished sound. Layer, tweak, and combine to create your perfect cosmic soundscape!
The sound sources included range from subtle bassy sequences and tonal pads, to harsh and bright arps in major/minor, trance-like layered synths, and ‘one note’ sonic evolutions. Whether you need harsh, smooth, noisy, or relaxing elements, COSMOS offers instant inspiration.
The Phrases patch includes over 250 rhythmic phrases, which can be tempo-synced to host bpm or manually. The engine used by this patch is similar to the one in the Allura vocal library featuring the beautiful performances of soprano Jillian Aversa.
A tag browser allows you to narrow down the phrases by filtering them by type (arps, pulses, gates), mode (major, minor or octave), and tone (soft, dark, bright, bassy and trance).
You can preview and assign phrases to a keyswitch from the browser, with three octaves available for keyswitches and 2 octaves make up the playable range. Using the keyswitches you can play and layer multiple phrases. Each phrase has individual volume and tone controls, while the filter controls affect all phrases.
The Ambiences patch includes 100 tonal and atonal textures with a cinematic feel and lots of movement.
Four sequencers with up to 32 steps each are available for volume, pitch and filter cutoff and resonance. Each sequencer has individual steps and rate controls so you can create some really wild rhythmic patterns.
The ambiences are quite long and a handy start offset lets you adjust sample playback. Filter and amp envelopes are also included, alongside velocity sensitivity. An Eco Playback Mode toggles between resampling and the more CPU intensive time stretching.
Both patches include Impact Soundworks’ familiar FX rack, with a bitcrusher, scream distortion, compressor, analog-modeled parametric EQ, chorus, delay, convolution reverb, and limiter.
The Cosmos library is priced at $49 USD and you will need the full version of Kontakt 5.5 or higher. The free Kontakt Player is not supported.
Check out the demo tracks below to get an idea of what Cosmos sounds like.
So what do I think?
While the Kontakt engine of Cosmos is solid and easy to use, it is of course the sound material in this library what makes or breaks this instrument. And Cosmos does not disappoint! David St. Hill has created a beautiful collection of sounds, which is truly perfect for providing movement and underscore.
The atmospheric pulses sound great and offer plenty of variety and I love the ambiences, which have such lovely tones and dynamics. The library has many evocative, inspiring sounds, and the Kontakt instruments provide just the right amount of controls to adjust the sounds without getting too complicated.
I reckon anyone looking for some quality cinematic sounds definitely check this out!
Make sure to visit the Impact Soundworks website for more information, or watch the walkthrough video below.
Hey there, I'm Ronnie and I run Rekkerd.org. I'm a bedroom music producer and guitar player, and I love chicken vindaloo & all things glitch.
