Mini-review: Le Lotus Bleu Magic Wand

Le Lotus Bleu recently released its first soundset for Camel Audio’s Alchemy, a sample manipulation synthesizer plug-in for Windows and Mac.

Magic Wand is suitable for all kinds of musical genres, and offers a mix of pure synthesis, rompler like, and hybrid instruments. It proposes an hopefully pleasant mix between Bread and Butter and unique and never heard instruments.

All the instruments have been carefully designed to take advantage of the 8 variations Remix Pads of Alchemy, as well as its awesome real time control possibilities.

Magic Wand includes bass, keys, pads, leads, arps, chord sequences, some semi-real instruments and more. The soundset features a total of 158 instruments: 101 meta instruments, about 50 “Z presets” and a few “XV presets”.

Magic Wand features

• More than 300 distinct instruments, with the use of the Remix Pads.
• Highly expressive instruments, with many real time expression features.
• Integrated use of Macro Knobs : For example all FX automation will always be found on Macro Knobs 5/6.
• Fully compliant with any Camel Audio future Content Management and Database developments.
• A Pdf manual including preset list, with an individual comment for each instrument, installation procedure, tips and tricks for Alchemy.

Since Alchemy’s remix pads can contain different sounds for one and the same preset, Magic Wand includes “Z presets”.

These are basically duplicates of existing meta instruments, saved on alternate remix pads – which have a different type of sound than the initial sound (useful when browsing for a specific type of sound). A number of “XV presets” are included for the same reason. These are derivatives of meta instruments, with various modified parameters. You could say they are actually “new” instruments but Le Lotus Bleu chose to include them as bonus presets. They can be seen as tutorials on how to create these sounds from the initial presets so you can learn some sound design as well.

You can find a number of excellent audio demos on the Le Lotus Bleu site; a proper showcase by Magic Wand sound designer Laurent.

Note: Magic Wand is offered as part of the Fair Play Sales Program, a system which rewards early adopters with more than 50% free additional instruments in future updates. Currently it is available to purchase for 17 EUR until 21 January, 2010.

So what do I think?

Magic Wand aims to provide a mix of bread & butter sounds and unique sounds, and it delivers. The presets are very inspiring and musical. The remix pads do really provide many sounds that differ from the initial preset sound, so you get a lot more than 158 instruments.

In short, a great soundset with plenty of variety in sounds for a nice price.

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.