Sample Libraries

Drum & bass wasn't designed for human drummers but has still attracted the attention of a few die-hard technicians whose superhuman dexterity is surpassed only by their lung capacity.

You'd have to be bloody serious about Taiko to want 2.3GB of multisamples, but the instrument's ubiquity in high‑octane film and TV scores has led Nine Volt Audio to take it very seriously indeed.

Following their excellent esoteric tuned‑percussion releases Hang Drum and Balinese Gamelan, Soniccouture stay off the beaten...

If you want great drum sounds but don't need to tweak every bolt in the kit, Toontrack's EZ Drummer provides a very natural‑...

Divinity World Percussion captures the enthusiasm of half a dozen talented world musicians playing a wide variety of...

Housed on a single DVD, US sample-house Big Fish Audio's Hip Hop Mood Swings contains 40 hip-hop (in case you hadn't guessed)...

Interesting old keyboards are becoming ever-more expensive and difficult to find. MOTUs solution to this is Electric Keys — samples of all of the desirable retro instruments you could want, for less money than a second-hand Vox Jaguar!

Sample Logic's Synergy is an epic 18GB collection of over 1200 instruments, tempo‑sync'ed loops, and multis, powered by NI's...

Ueberschall's Score FX is a further volume in the Liquid Instruments series, where the phrase samples are accessed through a ...

Discovery Sound are a Japanese company specialising in ethnic sounds, and in particular the traditional music of Asia. This collection focuses on the koto — the national instrument of Japan.

Peter Siedlaczek's Advanced Orchestra was the must-have orchestral library for several years and set new standards for the...

We've reviewed a number of the Sonivox (and, under their previous label, Sonic Implants) libraries in recent times, including...

If you are a piano player who's keen to find the best sampled pianos available, the odds are that you will have at least tried...

More and more musicians are experimenting with the sounds of 'world' instruments — so is Best Service's Ethno World 4 Professional a one-stop-shop for all your virtual ethnic-instrument needs?

There are no prizes for guessing that Funky House Grooves 2 is Sample Magic's follow‑up to the original Funky House Grooves,...

More and more sample libraries now ship as self‑contained instruments, courtesy of Native Instruments' Kontakt Player engine,...

Ian Boddy has been involved in the experimental electronic music scene for 25 years, and SOS readers will doubtless be...

Another crop of sound libraries fall under the scrutiny of the SOS reviews team: • Project SAM Symphobia • Propellerhead Reason Electric Bass • Big Fish Audio Found Percussion • Project SAM Woodwind Libraries

Another crop of sound libraries get the SOS 'CSI' treatment: • Best Service HipHop & RnB • Ueberschall Adlibs • Vienna Symphonic Library Appassionata Strings II & Chamber Strings II • Vienna Symphonic Library Upright Bass

Heavyocity's Evolve is packed full of all kinds of high-quality sonic weirdness and looks set to become a popular tool for anyone involved in soundtrack work.

The latest in the EastWest Play series offers deluxe representations of four classic instruments. Is this 'grand design' the answer to our virtual piano prayers?