Phaedra – Music Tech – April 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Produced by Sam Spacey, Phaedra was born out of its creator’s frustration of virtual emulations of analogue synths, which he considered to lack the raw power of the originals. Approached in the same manner as sampling a large orchestra, it took him three years to make, meticulously hand-looping and editing 20,000 samples.
The loops are very long – in order to extract what Sam describes as ‘the magic of analogue randomness’ – and almost every preset has every note sampled to eliminate aliasing within the instrument’s range.
Sam’s obsessive attention to detail seems to have paid off, because Phaedra is certainly a fine analogue synthesizer capable of producing some very exciting sounds. We’re not told exactly which instruments were sampled, but the overall sound is rich and powerful. And the presets – conceived from a composer/producer’s perspective as opposed to just impressive sounds for their own sake – are both useful and easily edited using the proven and flexible Kontakt Player 2 interface.
Although this is essentially a playback library, Sam’s overall concept was to build a complete instrument in its own right. He’s pretty much achieved it, too, by recording raw analogue samples without EQ or enhancement, resulting in resets that can be used as building blocks for creating your own sounds.
Verdict: A powerful virtue analogue synth containing plenty of raw, exciting presets suitable for a variety of electronic and pop music genres.
Rating: 8/10
Click here for more information on Phaedra
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