Sample Libraries

**** 4/5 stars. e-Lab set out to produce a house sample CD. All the loops are either 125 or 130bpm, thumping bass drums dominate and every other element is designed to either reinforce or unobtrusively complement that all-important rhythm.

4/5 stars **** Hollywood Edge market one of the largest sound effects libraries in the world on audio CDs; we check out two of their massive collection...

*** 3/5 Stars. Pure Tabla is based on a library of rhythmic tabla loops performed by Aref Durvesh, who has recorded with artists as diverse as Sting and Jeff Beck.

*** 3/5 stars. This CD-ROM contains just over 1800 live drum loops, fills and hits for use with any sampler or MIDI + Audio sequencer that accepts WAV files.

***** 5/5 stars. Copious use of live performances and real percussion in these loops give them much more groove than you'd associate with a dance market library...

Take a famous studio, a top session drummer and engineer, make the results 5.1 surround-ready, and what do you get? We find out if using this innovative sample library beats working...

**** 4 stars. Although he's served time with vintage US rockers Aerosmith, there's more to Joey Kramer's playing than a 10-ton backbeat...

Keyfax have been creating all kinds of musical phrases, loops and flourishes in MIDI file format for their Twiddly Bits range for as long as we can remember, but this new set represents a departure from previous trends...

**** Score = 4/5. This library offers around 100 drum loops, divided into Breakbeats and Live Drums categories, plus music loops consisting of gated effects and short licks played on Rhodes, sax and upright bass...

**** Score = 4/5 stars. Celtic Instruments is a collection of 13 multisampled instruments supplied on two Giga-format CD-ROMs (which are compatible with HALion).

**** Score = 4/5. Supplied as a two-CD set containing both audio and WAV-file content, the underlying concept is "the creation of grooves that enter the bloodstream as fast as possible", hence the name Intravenous.

After creating the ultimate harp library, has Gary Garritan managed to succeed again with the most ambitious sampled string library ever undertaken?

**** Score = 4/5 stars. Programmer Brian Transeau delivers 436 breakbeats, mostly four bars long, divided into two categories, "Dirt Breakz" and "Live Breakz", with tempos ranging from 66 to 180 bpm.

**** Score = 4/5 stars. This 170Mb collection features the Moscow Session Strings working through a varied selection of fully‑arranged riffs, which have been processed with Propellerhead's Recycle 2.

***** Score = 5/5 stars. Categorised by emotions, Twisted Textures is a very useful and admirably varied collection of short, self-contained sonic mood pieces.

**** Score = 4/5 stars.  If you want some Aphex/Atari Teenage Riot madness or truly brutal loops to scare your granny, Noize Loops will not disappoint...

***** Score = 5/5. This is the first Dan Dean library to feature up to eight velocity layers for the smoothest ever transitions of timbre from soft to loud...

**** Score = 4/5 stars. Geneticz is a collection of processed loops and sounds programmed by Digital Davy, a Dutch DJ and techno/gabba producer.

***** Score = 5/5 stars. Return serves up 76 tracks of live beats ranging from 57 to 169bpm (though one loop pogos in at 194bpm).

**** Score = 4/5 stars. Vinyl Frontier 2 focuses on urban breakbeat styles such as hip-hop and drum and bass.

* Score = 4