TeamDNR has recently released Ace.Animated, its second set of sounds for the virtual semi-modular synthesizer ACE (Any Cable Everywhere) by u-he.
The library features no less than 225 patches, designed by TeamDNR’s Reason Lahalla and Josiah Christensen.
Ace.Animated is a new sound library for u-he Ace synthesizer which combines 225 cutting edge dance, trance, club and IDM sounds with solid workhorse patches to give producers, musicians and sound designers an ultra-wide range of sonic possibilities.
Also included in the package is a group of template sounds which can help users create their own patches with minimal effort. These templates include a variety of popular lead, bass, pad and sequenced sounds.
Ace.Animated features
- 20 Atmospheric and Textures
- 39 Bass sounds
- 6 Sound FX sounds
- 23 Keys / Organ sounds
- 31 Leads, mono/poly
- 28 Pads and Swells
- 9 Percussive sounds
- 30 Plucked /Decayed sounds
- 17 Sequences & Rhythmic sounds
- 25 Templates
Many of the patches have parameters mapped to the modwheel and velocity controls, providing more dynamics to the sounds. Lots of patches have some kind of movement/modulation going on already, something I really enjoy.
About 30 patches in the collection are tagged “Alt”, indicating they are derived from a patch with the same title. A few of these sound quite similar to the original patch indeed, others could easily have been added as completely new patches.
Ace.Animated includes sounds that are useful for many electronic music genres. From evocative atmospheres that would do well in sound tracks to heavy duty dubstep bass sounds, uplifting trance leads to chords for deep house.
I made a number of audio clips to demonstrate some of the sounds of Ace.Animated.
The loops are 100% Ace.Animated, with a tiny bit of EQ and compression courtesy of FabFilter. Some of the preset sounds were slightly tweaked and I recorded modwheel and filter automation.
You can download the 24bit wav files from the SoundCloud player above or all 15 in a pack (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license).
Rekkerd ACE Animated — Download size: 54.26 MB
So what do I think?
Format: ACE patches (.h2p)
Price: $19 USD until 31 December, 2010 (reg. $24 USD)
Like: large amount of well programmed sounds
Don’t like: —
Verdict: 9/10
ACE is one of my favorite synthesizer plugins. It just sounds so fat and analog-like to me.
With Ace.Animated TeamDNR shows that this virtual instrument does not only sound amazing, but it is also capable of producing a great variety of sounds. Highlights for me are the atmospheric patches, the pads and the keys. There’s hardly a dud to be found in this set of 225 patches. Excellent sound design.
Actually, the Ace.Animated set has a “constant update products” label, which means that more patches will be added to it in future updates. And it so happens that TeamDNR just updated to set to v1.05, including 6 additional patches, some minor changes like descriptions and usage notes, and a few gain changes. Excellent value for money.
