• Recently Added
• Sale Items
• Virtual Instruments
• Sample Libraries
• Software/Effects Plug-ins
• Downloads
• MIDI Files
• Tutorial Videos
• Books
• Misc
• Special Offers


• Apple Loops
• Kontakt
• Reason
• Rex Files


• Manufacturers



• Technical Support
• Knowledge Base
• Reviews
• Dealers
• Contact Us
• Links

Reviews

iZotope - Trash 2 - DJ Mag

iZotope's Trash has been around for 10 years. First released in 2003, it has gone on to stand the test of time, being used on various dancefloor hits. It gained favour as it was useful on nearly any audio source and could be applied with a deft touch to create subtle... more

Toontrack EZkeys - Sound on Sound

Extracts taken from Sound on Sound's joint review of EZkeys Grand Piano and EZkeys Upright Piano... Joint review of EZkeys Grand Piano and EZkeys Upright Piano (extracts)... Like any sample-based instrument, all the additional functions of EZkeys would be only so... more

UVI Vintage Legends - Music Tech

Review extracts... The fact that the collection is based on samples – over 30,000 of them to be exact – means that the download is a big one. In fact, you can use Time+Space’s special downloader app to get the multiple sections of the file and it... more

Rob Papen - Secrets of Subtractive Synthesis - Music Tech

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We’ve been waiting quite some time to get our hands on this DVD/book training combo from globally renowned synth designer Rob Papen. In fact, The Secrets of Subtractive Synthesis, which... more

Toontrack - EZkeys Upright Piano - Music Tech

We reviewed the original EZkeys Grand Piano in Issue 110, praising the software for its ease of use and slick songwriting abilities. Now Toontrack is back with the first expansion pack, EZkeys Upright Piano, which is available as both a soundbank upgrade to the original... more

iZotope - Trash 2 - Computer Music

Extracts... Trash was the third iZotope plugin to see a major update in 2012, and the visual similarities with Ozone 5 and Alloy 2 are immediately apparent. The update features a new general architecture, new distortion algorithms, redesigned filters, a new... more

iZotope - Trash 2 - Music Tech

The original Trash was one of iZotope’s earliest plug-in effects, featuring filters, an impulse response module and a toolbox of distortions capable of some complex and truly nasty sounds. Although we take things like multiband saturation and distortion for granted... more

iZotope - Alloy 2 - Sound on Sound

Review extracts... I was coming to Alloy as a new user, so I don’t know how much difference the redesigned interface has made in terms of usability, but I found it refreshingly simple to use for such a powerful tool, and my impression is that anyone who has a... more

Vir2 - Studio Kit Builder - Computer Music

Review Extracts... Studio Kit Builder offers a solid 6GB of quality sample content, and while there's nothing particularly unusual on offer, the package represents decent value for those who require virtual drums. Like BFD2 or Superior Drummer 2.0, you'll need... more

Toontrack - EZX Pop! - Sound on Sound

Ever since Toontrack launched EZ Drummer as the lightweight counterpart to Superior, they’ve been adding expander kits to it to cover just about any commercial style. All are meticulously recorded in world-class studios using the best kits and cymbals available.... more

Hybrid Two - Project ALPHA - soundsandgear.com

There are a lot of different sounds here but overall it sounds really good. I like the mixture of fx and playable instruments. There are some nice layered impacts and swooshes, smooth evolving drones and pads, and even some melodic style percussive elements.... more

Toontrack - EZX Pop! - Music Tech

Toontrack is a company that knows a thing or two about recording drums, having a history of working in the world’s best studios with award-winning engineers and top drummers. For the latest EZdrummer expansion pack, Pop!, Toontrack founder Mattias Eklund has... more

Zero-G Sax Supreme - Music Tech

Paul McCartney’s Listen to What the Man Said , John Coltrane’s My Favourite Things , and Facades by Philip Glass. Three big-selling recordings from the past with one thing in common: they all feature expressive soprano saxophone solos. But can similar... more

iZotope Alloy 2 - Music Tech magazine

When we reviewed the first version of Alloy, iZotope’s all-in-one mixing channel strip, back in January 2010, we were impressed by its range of features and the way in which it complemented Ozone 4. However, a few years on, the release of the superb Ozone 5 –... more

Synthogy American Concert D - Music Tech

Since 2003, Synthogy has been developing a range of well-respected virtual pianos, all powered by the company’s own Ivory player, which reached its second incarnation in 2011. America Concert D is the latest release for the Ivory II engine, sampled from a classic... more

iZotope Alloy 2 - Computer Music

Review extracts... On paper, Alloy 2 looks like it should be quite a handful, but actually, it makes a very complex setup surprisingly easy to navigate. First, if you're just after a quick processing chain, you can head straight to the library of 200+ global... more

UVI String Machines - Computer Music

Review extract... As we´ve come to expect from UVI, the sound of String Machines is absolutely top-drawer - the spirit, richness, warmth and dirt of the synths themselves has been captured with real love and attention to detail. Our only criticism is that there... more

Garritan Classic Pipe Organs - Computer Music

Review extract... Gary Garritan is incredibly passionate about pipe organs (as the historically detailed manual makes abundantly clear), and every ounce of that passion comes across in Classic Pipe Organs. The power, intensity and tonal depth it displays are truly... more

Cinematic Strings 2 - Computer Music

Professional string libraries can be intimidating beasts, but Cinematic Strings 2 aims to make programming realistic orchestral strings as easy as it ought to be in this day and age. A fully scripted library for Kontakt/Kontakt Player 5, CS2 divides an orchestra's... more

ESI Gigaport HD+ USB audio interface - DJ Mag

ESI have impressed the production community with their German-designed, Taiwanese-built quality for some time now, and their latest offering is a rather sneaky audio solution for laptop DJs and performers. Enter Gigaport HD+, a tiny eight-output USB audio interface. Buy... more

Toontrack Roots SDX Bundle - Sound on Sound

When Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 2.0 was first released, the only significant criticism that could be made was that it was only supplied with a limited number of instruments. Since that time, Toontrack have addressed that with their SDX (expansion) packs, like... more

Soundiron Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble - Sound on Sound

Recently risen from the ashes of the defunct Tonehammer company, Soundiron unleashed their 14.2GB Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble. Building on the concept of Tonehammer’s Epic Tom and Epic Dhol Ensembles (reviewed in SOS March 2010, see... more

UVI Darklight IIX - Computer Music

Inspired by the Fairlight CMI IIx workstation, but not intended to be a clone of it, Darklight IIx loads in the UVI Workstation ROMpler engine (free) or MOTU MachFive sampler (not free), both of which run standalone or as VST/AU/RTAS plug-ins. An actual Fairlight has... more

Toontrack EZX Americana - Sound on Sound

Americana is an addition to the Toontrack expansion library portfolio for EZ Drummer and is best described as an American-sounding range of drum kits recorded ‘honestly’, so that they still retain the character of a real kit played in a real room, rather than... more

Zero-G Perception Cinemascapes - Sound on Sound

There are absolutely no prizes for guessing that Zero-G’s Perception Cinemascapes provides a palette of samples for the creation of soundscapes to add a certain atmosphere to film, TV or other media, rather than for constructing your next chart hit. Accordingly,... more

ESI Unik05 monitoring speakers - Sound on Sound

ESI are the German manufacturers behind the popular Near series of powered desktop monitors (you can read our review of the Near 08s at www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan08/articles/esinear08.htm). Their new Unik range is claimed to offer a number of improvements, however, in... more

iZotope Iris - Sound on Sound magazine

iZotope have previously earned much respect for their restoration and mastering suites, so on the face of it, the release of a synthesizer seems like a new direction. Actually, Iris is described as a “sampling resynthesizer”, although sampling is not provided... more

Venus Symphonic Women's Choir - Soundiron - Music Tech

Recorded as a companion library to Mars (Soundiron’s all-male choir library), Venus Symphonic Women’s Choir features a full 33-voice female chorus with a set of extended choral articulations in both Latin and Russian. At 27GB it’s truly massive in size,... more

Synthogy - Ivory II Italian Grand - Playmusic Pickup

Synthogy’s original Ivory piano software has arguably been the industry standard sampled based piano software for longer than any software has a right to do in these days of rapid progress. Originally featuring unprecedented levels of sampling detail combined with... more

iZotope Iris - Music Tech magazine

Boston-based company iZotope has made a name for itself with its increasingly sophisticated range of audio processing plug-ins, including the excellent Ozone mastering suite and, more recently, Nectar and RX. Its latest venture is not a processor but a synth, and one... more

Rob Papen Blade - Music Tech

Software synthesizers aren’t exactly in short supply these days, and additive synthesis is looking to be a new trend, with companies such as Native Instruments and Image Line already having recently released AS-based instruments. These all aim to offer the... more

Garritan Instant Orchestra - Music Tech

Garritan’s Instant Orchestra is the company’s first product since its acquisition by MakeMusic, makers of Finale notation software. An ambitious collection containing a large quantity of orchestral combinations, mood-based presets, evolving textures and... more

Toontrack EZkeys Grand Piano - Music Tech

Although it’s perfectly feasible for a songwriter or composer to stumble on a winning chord progression, you’re much more likely to find success with a little music theory under your belt. EZkeys, from Toontrack, aims to help you craft the perfect song... more

Rob Papen Blade - Computer Music - June 2012

There´s much more to Blade than we can cover in the space we have here, of course. It will come as no surprise to learn that the synth has two effects processors built in, each loaded with plenty of options. And, as a Papen product, you would rightly bet that it is... more

Garritan Instant Orchestra - Sound on Sound

Back in 2004, Garritan Personal Orchestra enabled impecunious musicians to engage in the noble art of orchestral writing without having to take out a second mortgage to buy the samples, or attain a master’s degree in computer science to work out how to use them.... more

Vir2 Fractured - Music Tech magazine

If you were starting to think that you’d heard it all when it comes to sound design, then fear not, as the ingenious team at Vir2 is back with Fractured, a massive library of prepared acoustic guitar instruments. Following on from the company’s previous... more

ProjectSAM Orchestral Essentials - Sound on Sound

This orchestral compilation from Project SAM brings together samples from their Symphobia 1 & 2, True Strike 1 & 2, Orchestral Brass Classic, Woodwind Ensemble Orchestrator/Effects, Flute & Piccolo Effects, Organ Mystique, and Concert Harp libraries in one... more

Cinematic Strings 2 - Music Tech - May 2012

Cinematic Strings is a small outfit. Visit the company´s website and there´s only one product for sale: Cinematic Strings 2, an updated version of the original library. It runs in the latest free Kontakt 5 Player and is sold as a 25GB download. There are... more

Garritan Instant Orchestra - Computer Music - May 2012

Instant Orchestra review extracts... All the production work has been done for you, and Instant Orchestra sounds terrific - very Hollywood, and decidedly Garritan. The Aria sample playback engine is sufficiently editable (ADSR envelope, filters, EQ, reverb) that... more

Rob Papen Blade - Sound on Sound - July 2012

Review conclusion: Blade is like a scalpel: so sharp it's almost painless! Via a dozen knobs and a few menus and buttons, the Harmolator could be the gateway to widespread additive addiction. The spectrum display plays a big part in this, giving real-time insight... more

Sonokinetic Vivace - Music Tech

Since the release of Felt Force One a few years ago, Sonokinetic has built a range of samples libraries principally based on ‘performance sampling’ – using samples made from actual performance elements rather than individual multisamples. Our first... more

Toontrack EZmix 2 - Music Tech mag

Learning the craft of mixing audio can be a daunting task, especially when you factor in not just the number of different types of processing available, but also the sheer amount of choice when it comes to picking a certain manufacturer’s product. We’ve seen... more

iZotope Iris – Computer Music – July 2012

Review extracts They knocked our socks off with the RX spectral editor, and now iZotope's visual editing technology is being used to power a synth... [...] Unlike a standard waveform-style audio editor, Iris' Spectral view is actually used for isolating the... more

Cinematic Strings 2 - Sound on Sound - June 2012

Review extracts... CS 2.0's new ultra-short staccatissimo articulation will be welcomed by media composers who need to knock out hectic, Hollywood-style action cues in a hurry. The new samples are derived from the staccato samples, using a proprietary algorithm... more

Toontrack EZkeys - Future Music - June 2012

Extracts from review... The software automatically analyses the MIDI file's chord structure and displays this above the region. Here's where things get interesting: you transpose or otherwise modify the parts not by manipulating the notes directly, but by chord... more

Toontrack EZmix 2 - DJ Mag

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Hot on the heels of Toontrack’s original mixing plugin EZmix comes EZmix2, which promises to deliver even better results through a wider variety of features. /* Style Definitions */... more

iZotope Ozone 5 Advanced - Computer Music - February 2012

Review extracts... The Advanced edition has some exclusive features that particularly impressed us; first up, the EQ. Here, not only can you select analogue filter shapes within the digital EQ mode, but there's also a mixed phase option for smoothly varying... more

ProjectSAM Orchestral Essentials - Music Tech

Since releasing the first library in 2002, Project SAM has gone on to assemble a desirable range of cinematic sound libraries, from the powerful and expressive colours offered by Symphobia through to orchestral stalwarts like the percussive True Strike. All of Project... more

iZotope Ozone 5 Advanced - Sound on Sound

Ozone 5 Advanced is the latest incarnation of Izotope’s well-established mastering suite, and now comprises seven modules: Maximizer, Equalizer, Multi-band Dynamics, Multi-band Stereo Imaging, Meter Bridge, Multi-band Harmonic Exciter and Reverb. All are now... more

Toontrack Roots SDX Bundle - Music Tech

Roots is a new two-part expansion pack for Superior Drummer containing a massive 64GB of material, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive drum libraries ever recorded. The Toontrack team joined forces with jazz drummer Roy ‘Futureman’ Wooten and... more

The Producer's Manual - Sample Magic - Music Tech

The Producer’s Manual is the follow-up book to the excellent Secrets of House Music Production, which received a glowing review back in Issue 84. This time round, Sample Magic have teamed up with veteran music writer Paul White, whose numerous books and articles... more

iZotope Ozone 5 Advanced - Music Tech

Whether by accident or design, there seems to a big gap between the world of music production and the more refined environment of professional mastering. Some would argue that this is a logical sate of affairs, explained by the fact that the process of mastering is... more

Toontrack EZX Number 1 Hits - Sound on Sound

As off putting as I found the name of this drum expansion library (I’m pretty sure that a sample library alone isn’t going to bring me a number one hit!), I have to say that I was quite taken with it. In terms of the drum machines sampled here, there’s... more

iZotope Ozone 5 - Future Music - January 2012

Future Music magazine review extracts... Even without the more specialised features of the 'Advanced' offering, Ozone 5 is a real improvement to an already solid product. The new interface style, while still familiar really helped the editing process. More use is made... more

Freshtone Lost Tapes Vol 1 - Sound on Sound

Lost Tapes Vol 1 is the first release from UK-based Freshtone Samples. The library’s title derives from the efforts to catch the authentic sound and vibe of the 1960s and 1970s era with the use of instruments and recording technology from that period: classic... more

Synthogy Ivory II Grand Pianos - Sound on Sound

Ivory II Grand Pianos is the principal product in US piano sampling specialists Synthogy’s line up. It sits alongside their specialist Italian Grand and Upright Pianos libraries, and the whole range builds on the original, very successful Ivory, which was reviewed... more

Toontrack EZX Americana - Playmusic Pickup

Americana EZX demonstrates how Swedish drum sampling specialist Toontrack are moving into increasingly niche markets. One important advantage that the EZX system has over larger drum libraries iss its lower cost compared against the multi gigabyte Superior libraries.... more

Rob Papen Punch - Sound on Sound

The latest virtual instrument to emerge from Rob Papen’s stable is Punch, a drum machine that places synthesis and sound design at the top of its priority list. With sample playback, effects and a pattern sequencer too, this is one Punch that could easily sneak... more

Rob Papen Punch - DJ Mag

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Every producer’s favourite Dutch genius Rob Papen has been a bit quiet of late, leaving many of us to wonder if and when he would grace us with another awe-inspiring virtual synthesiser. A... more

Spectrasonics Omnisphere v1.5 - Sound on Sound

pectrasonics’ Omnisphere is a multitimbral virtual instrument whose patches are based on a 40GB collection of varied, often remarkable audio recordings, paired with a powerful DSP synthesizer. Individual patches consist of two layers, each with extensive timbral... more

Rob Papen Punch - Future Music - August 2011

Future Music review extracts... Punch has some powerful features up its sleeve. The drum sequencer on first examination may appear to be a standard grid/step-time affair, but it goes deeper than initial glances may lead you to expect. The sequencer section is... more

Toontrack EZX Metalheads - Playmusic PickUp magazine

Drum sample libraries are an extremely convenient and efficient way for any recording musician to capture authentic sounding sampled drum sounds and grooves. Thanks to Scandinavian-based company Toontrack, even those with little or no experience at playing real drums or... more

VSL Vienna Dimension Brass - Sound on Sound

Ten years on, and with over 1.25 million samples on the clock, VSL keep churning ’em out. Having covered most of the conceivable orchestral brass bases in their Brass I & II and Special Brass Vienna Instruments collections, our cultured European neighbours have... more

Synthogy Ivory II Grand Pianos - Music Tech

Ivory II is a new version of the highly acclaimed virtual instrument from Synthogy, which is used to reproduce and play back the sounds of some of the world’s finest pianos, including the company’s Ivory Italian Grand and Ivory Upright Pianos. We’ve... more

iZotope Stutter Edit - Sound on Sound

iZotope have given the world plenty of top notch signal processing tools over the years, including Ozone 4, RX2, Nectar and Trash, but they haven’t before released anything designed for use in a live environment. Enter Stutter Edit, which has been co developed with... more

Garritan Concert & Marching Band 2 - Music Tech

For the best part of a year Garritan has been updating its samples libraries to work with the company’s new ARIA player. These include Personal Orchestra, Jazz & Big Band and the Authorized Steinway Grand Piano. The latest library to receive the makeover is... more

Vir2 Q - Music Tech magazine

There’s a trend among samples library developers at the moment to produce virtual instruments that target television, fi lm, game and media composers. Vir2’s Q fits this cinematic mould with almost 2,000 patches and 16GB of material including drums,... more

iZotope Nectar - Sound on Sound

Creating a modern vocal sound can involve many different processes and requires quite a lot of skill to get right. Izotope have come up with an easy solution in the form of Nectar, a cross platform plug in that is available in RTAS, Audiosuite, VST, MAS, Audio Unit and... more

ESI KeyControl 25 XT - Music Tech magazine

Despite the increasing numbers of more obscure and innovative control surfaces and USB MIDI devices, the keyboard remains the easiest and most common ways to get notes into your computer. Add to this the fact that a large number of bedroom producers aren’t laying... more