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| 08-30-05 / 10:35 PM : Garritan Jazz & Big Band (cjed) |
 Garritan, famous editor of the Garritan Personnal Orchestra, ships Jazz & Big Band, a 4 Go library for Kontakt, aimed at Jazz (299$). We find here a huge collection of saxes and brass, with the addition of piano, bass, guitars, drums and percussions. Some demos are available on the site. Except brass and some sax, these instruments do not sound so punchy. However, the included Steinway B cannot be worse than the Steinway D from Kontatk 2 library... An amazing link, at the end of the demos page. |
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| 08-17-05 / 11:05 PM : Miroslav Philharmonik : another orchestra ! (cjed) |
 This is definitively the "Symphonic libraries" year, IK Multimedia ships Miroslav Philharmonik, a library of 1300 instruments (7 Go total), including the usual orchestral instruments families, plus choirs samples. The patchs list shows their memory usage, that is lower than in Symphonic Orchestra Gold (hence the higher instruments count. Perhaps the sampling is not chromatic).Miroslav Vitous, famous jazz bass player, is the creator of the original orchestral samples bank of the same name, that was the best in this area for years. These samples are well known for their warmth, despites a lower memory size. When listening to the demos, it is obvious that the sounds have personnality and are fat, especially the strings ensembles (famous). Moreover the virtual instrument (derived from IK SampleTank) includes a specific reverb (Classik Studio Reverb), that leads to an incredible depth, in fact better than SO Gold's reverb trails. For now it is difficult to judge of the overall quality, as it would imply listening to demos from the same songs. Until end september the introduction price allows a substantial save (from 499 down to 419 euros) ... however i won't be able to buy all of them !s |
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| 08-17-05 / 12:50 AM : Zero G's Nostalgia : 40 years of synths (cjed) |
 The famous samples editor Zero G announced Nostalgia, a 1300 patchs library containing synth sounds from the past 40 years (in only 1,3 Go space). Besides most classics, we find here sounds from the D50, M1, SY85, Korg Wavestation and Prophecy, Kawai K5000, organs (B3, Farfisa), drumboxes samples (HR16, nostalgia...), synth strings, and finally special effects and atmospheric sounds.The number of instruments covered is huge and the patchs list can be downloaded. I wonder how all of these sounds can fit on so less space. I have doubt concerning the number of multisamples, and when you know how horrible sampled synth can sound (i remember the synth sounds on the Roland's Techno card)... However the two demos provided on the site deserved the library for a punchy and warm sound (notably the drums, FM bass, Vangelis analog bass from Blade Runner's theme, ... and the wonderful shakuachi used in the Ushuaïa gingle). After all Zero G pioneered in that domain and its products always had positive reviews. As usual the soft operates as a specific Kompakt virtual instrument. |
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| 08-11-05 / 04:53 PM : History of the DXs (cjed) |
 In an article from Soundonsound published in 2001, we discover the whole story of the Yamaha DXs FM synthesizers. In particular we find pictures of the less known DX1 and DX5. As for the TX81Z and other last 4OPs models (YS200/TQ5/V50), it is said that they were 16 bits (14 bits converters in the first DX 6OPs). |
| 1 comment |
| 08-04-05 / 10:41 PM : NI Kontakt 2 upgrade promo : big deal (cjed) |
| Native Insruments made a promo for the upgrade to Kontakt 2 (from a NI product, such as Kompakt or player included with samples libraries like SO Gold). As we can save up to 50% (250 euros final) I decided to catch up. Moreover Kontakt 2 management of Dfd is better than Kompakt's one (unusable), and it has not the annoying bug when releasing the sustain pedal (no reverb trails in Kompakt there, resulting in dry sound). Furthermore Kontakt 2 comes with 2 DVDs (15 Go), including a nice Steinway D as some said (will compensate its absence in Gold in regard to Silver, and will allow to compare it with the Roland Complete Piano card), Vienna Symphonic Library Strings (to check rumor saying they have a warmer sound than the SO Gold's ones), a church organ, a famous Rhodes, cool electric guitars, drums and a convolution reverb. All the infos |
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| 08-04-05 / 09:34 PM : MOTU Symphonic Instrument (cjed) |
 The MSI samples library, announced some weeks ago, is making on stores. It gathers 8 Go of orchestral samples (also organ, choirs and piano) and a convolution reverb. It is there for the demos. Some sounds are original compared with SO Gold's ones, but finally they are missing dynamic, and also render much more synthetic, notably strings and brass. However it's cheaper (300 $). |
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| 08-03-05 / 01:20 AM : Synclavier : the legende sampled (cjed) |
 The Synclavier is a legendary synthesizer, that paved the way in seventies for modern workstations, based on multiple synthesis (FM, additive, sampling up to 100khz in 16 bits, DtD, graphical display for editing, OS, magneto-optical disks). Made famous by Michael Jackson and is work on sound (Thriller bell sound, deep strinfs), it costed no less than 1,5 MF first, and average 100 000$ later.ILIO company sells a CD-Rom of Synclavier strings sounds (Akai, Roland, Kurzweil, SampleCell). There is a demo and the included sounds list is available. All infos on the Synclavier line Complete description in french and photo Reviews at harmony-central |
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