A few things that I have run across or picked up lately that I think are well worth checking out.

Braunschweig Upright Piano from imperfectsamples.com – Ohmigod I love this piano. It is not without its “flaws”, but these flaws introduce character and help to make the instrument inspirational for me. (I’ll provide more detail in a follow up.)

apulSoft apEQ

apulSoft’s apEQ – This has been around for a while, but it is very versatile and allows extreme almost surgical sound shaping via EQ. A great interface. Demos available at the website.

NI Acoustic Refractions

NI Kore2 Acoustic Refractions – If you are into Absynth, this gives you some very cool sounds. The strength of the programming really comes through when morphing between the sound variations.

SampleLogic’s WaterHarp – This is one helluva deal at $49.95. 300 instruments, 1.8GB of samples for some “film ready” waterharp sounds, ambiences, stings, transitions. If anything, it’s a bit TOO film ready IMHO. Seems like an entire episode of CSI in a box. Still, there’s a lot here that can be worked with. And did I mention it’s only 50 bucks?

Tonehammer’s WaterPhone – Not as many instruments as SampleLogic’s and more expensive at $99.

Yet another Voice of Passion?

A couple of days ago I came across information on a small outfit called Tonehammer. From their site:

Tonehammer is owned by Academy Award Winning Composer, Troels Folmann and TEC Award Winning Sound Designer, Mike Peaslee. Tonehammer is specialized in creating unique- and powerful virtual instruments for feature, tv- and video games composers.

In particular I came across their latest product Forgotten Voices: Francesca. It’s damn good.

I don’t want to recreate information you can find on their site. Suffice to say that it’s a female vocal library of phrases arranged in categories that have names like Slow Chanting, Playful Chanting, Flute Singing, Lullaby, Powerful/Forte, Slow/Dark, etc. By adjusting the mod-wheel and pitch bend you can control sample start points and time-stretch/compress the phrases. There is also a bonus set of vocal ambiences that for me cinched the deal. Overall, the programming is quite evocative and usable and I really like those ambiances quite a bit.

According to Tonehammer:

The combination between sample off-set control and time-stretch/compression allows users to seamlessly morph different phrases together, which brings endless possibilities for creating new phrases.

Perhaps in theory. In practice, well, it takes practice to make the above happen. From the “happy mistakes” I made this weekend, I think there is promise.

FabFilter has released FabFilter Twin 2, the next version of its Twin synthesizer plug-in. Featuring more oscillators, ring modulation, a new delay effects section and extensive modulation possibilities it’s a heck of update to the original.

FFTwin2 has a beautiful interactive interface design...

A really great feature is the approach to the interface:

• First, only the elements actually used in the patch are represented in the interface. So if you are just using a single oscillator+filter+envelope in your sound, that’s all you will see. Add more elements and they will appear.
• Second, hovering over any element with your mouse shows a couple of parameters that you can change quickly by dragging the mouse. For example, hover over the filter icon and you can quickly change cutoff and resonance. Click on the filter icon and a panel slides away revealing more parameters to work with. Slick.
• Lastly, the lower half of the screen scrolls to reveal deeper editing options for various components in your modulation settings as you select them from a small horizontal list of elements. And setting up modulation could hardly be easier.

OK. So I was, um, not thinking. If I had been, why would I make a resolution only TWO WEEKS before NAMM to NOT buy any new synth plug-ins before June 2009? I don’t even have the excuse of being hung over. Oh well…

Here are some damn interesting things announced on the first day of NAMM, several of which will migrate into my possession at some point this year. (Note that except for a short discussion of Live8, this is mostly a list with links. I’ll write more on each of these in the future.)

Ableton announces LIVE 8…

The biggest surprise to me was the announcement of Ableton Live8. Caught me completely by surprise.

First, if you have not checked out the videos on Ableton’s site, please do. Reading about the new features is not nearly as effective (IMHO) as seeing some of them in action. I’ve provided links to YouTube videos below, but better quality videos are available directly from Ableton at this link: http://www.ableton.com/home?movie=4

First up, there is an overview of Live8…

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But it gets so much more interesting. Check out “Share” for remote collaboration…

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Then there is “Extend” the integration of Max/MSP into LIVE…

Sounds damn decent too......

Just released by DiscoDSP: Discovery Pro is a virtual analogue synthesizer featuring 12 oscillators (8 Virtual Analog + 4 Wave) with extensive sound design capabilities. It’s available for Windows and Mac as a VST and AU instrument. It features 4 layers, WAV and SoundFont (SF2) support, 2X oversampling/undersampling, built-in arpeggiator, sync, FM, 12 filter types, panning modulation, stereo delay and gate effects, graphic envelope modulation. And it imports Nord Lead 2 SysEx data.

It sounds pretty damn good. Check out some of the demos.

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More info on DiscoDSP DiscoveryPro is available here.

The sonic painkiller...?

You just gotta love this end-of-year stuff. Image-Line is selling Morphine for $99 instead of $159 until the end of the year.

Morphine is an additive synthesis VI. It’s CPU and user friendly and has some really cool features like four morphable sound generator sources controllable via a built-int mix/morph envelope or external MIDI controller. It also has tools for re-synthesizing a sound.

Anyway, it sounds good – the pads and atmospheres in particular.

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• More on Morphine can be found here.
• For those interested in additive synthesis and re-synthesis, there are two other plug-ins on the market that take a similar approach: CamelAudio’s Cameleon 5000 and VirSyn’s CUBE.
• Also, CamelAudio will release Alchemy very soon. Alchemy features additive, spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, sampling, and a virtual analog engine with unison and PWM. (More on this when it’s released I promise.)