Sample Libraries

Fracture Sounds serve up a trio of intimate piano sample libraries: Woodchester Piano, Midnight Grand and Glacier Keys.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Vintage Country is a collection of both playable instruments and performance loops designed to capture the authentic sound used in, well, vintage country recordings.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Sound Dust’s Felt Dulcitone is a rather oddball instrument created by abusing a dulcitone portable keyboard.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. This library is a collection of drum samples from seven‑time Grammy‑winning recording/mixing engineer John ‘Yosh’ Jaszcz, whose credits include George Clinton and Bootsy Collins.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars. A huge 362GB collection of complex, playable, largely chromatic long drones created by Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Spitfire’s new symphonic double‑bill combines two complete orchestras and a host of extras.

Chris Hein’s OCTA instrument is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Heavyocity’s Avant Modern Keys samples a classic Mark II electric piano.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Toska is a collection of carefully crafted evolving atmosphere and textural sounds that will let music producers or film composers evoke moods of melancholy.

Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars. Sample Logic's new library, Genesis — Pads In Motion, is likely to appeal to film or TV composers.

Rating ***** 5/5 Stars. Harmonic Bloom uses a series of eight keyboard tracking filters based on the harmonic series in order to extract musical sounds from harmonically rich or noise‑like sound sources.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. A Copenhagen WWII bunker came to be a home from home for violist/composer Nikolaj Moeller Nielsen.

Rating: 5/5 Stars. There can be few instruments with a simpler interface than Sound Dust’s Drift 001, but then that was the design ethos behind its creation.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars. Play a chord and Pathfinder Violin will react to the notes that you play, corresponding to selected patterns or shapes.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. Built in collaboration with Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers Music collective, Fractured Strings is a compelling library full of personality.

EastWest give the classic string machine sound a modern twist.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. Fluffy Audio’s Simple Opera Singer may provide a compelling alto and soprano solution for your next musical needs.

Rating: 5/5 Stars. The latest release in Heavyocity's Mosaic Series, how does Mosaic Pads measure up?

If you are working in genres such as lounge, hip‑hop, downtempo or lo‑fi, Tympo's  ‘performative drum instrument’ will be right up your street.

Rating: 4/5 Stars. Bloom offers a combination of natural sounds, modular synths and classic vintage gear, such as a Serge system and a Roland Jupiter‑8.

Rating: **** 4/5 Stars. Vocalise 3 provides 7GB of vocal‑inspired sample data and runs in a dedicated front‑end within Kontakt 6.7.1.