The Ambient Blog

Another great one from DSK Music, this time, this Synth, The Darkness Theory is really targeted to produce Ambient sounds, but playing around with it you can probably do whatever type you wish, as it is loaded with functionalities:

• 3 advanced OSC whit 53 waveforms
• octave and pan selector
• Amp. envelope and micro-detuner
• 3 HP/LP advanced pole Filter
• 3 LFO whit output routing
• Midi automation
• Velocity response

Listen to the sound samples, download it and give it a try !

BeatBurner, the music loop synthesizer, from codeAudio is now a freeware.

It’s a sample player, but also a Synth with all the options to change any loop or sound into some very nice soundscapes !

Give it a try, the complete package comes will a lot !

If you’ve missed it, like me, please have a check because the KVR 2007 developer challenge results are in !

That makes a good 41 audio plugins / applications to download and test.

The winner is Xoxos for his “Sounds of Nature” a collection of VSTi for emulating common natural sounds (wind, rain, thunder, songbirds and insects), a very good one for your Ambient tracks.

I’ve just discovered DSK VSTi’s instruments recently, and there is a lot of good synths to download over there, some of them being more targeted to our preferred music: Ambient !

I specificaly recommend you:

• The Odisea (2 Osc, 5 waveforms, Octave select and micro-detuner, Amp. envelope, Filter, easy programming, Midi automation, Preset selector)
• The DreamZ (Experimental additive synths, LFO (osc controlled), 3 LFO assignables to cutoff, resonance, pan, sync…)

A few hours of playing and testing ahead !

I’ve given the SynthMaster a two minutes test run yesterday, and for me, it miserably failed, for 3 reasons:

The installer is buggy, it kinda launches two instance, one for VST and one for standalone, but for whatever reason, on my WinXP it never worked. I’ve been obliged to use my brain (for an install on Sunday morning that’s no good) and let him finished first the 1st step, then cancel the 2nd one. Then launch it again, and do the opposite, cancel the 1st one and run the 2nd. I finally end up with a correct standalone application, that’s the one tested here, didn’t try the plug in version.

There is no Midi learn, and to play live with the beast you need to go through a really ugly Midi setup to be done by hand…

The sounds looks, argh, sorry, sound cool, but when I tried to edit and modify some, to play with those buttons and parameters, well it just stop playing ! In fact, while you’re turning a knob with your mouse, the sound stops until you’ve finished and then you can play it again. Really bad for sound editing, no live results. I don’t know if it’s the same as a VST, didn’t try.

That was enough for me, I’ve removed it. Go and try it yourself, as you might find that those reasons are not critical to you, and also could have a total different experience.

OK, so there is a new beast in town, from new guys, and everything seems very promising: KV331 Audio just release their first Software Synthesizer, the SynthMaster !

SynthMaster is a semi-modular fully loaded with:

• 3 Additive Oscillators
• 3 Multi-mode Filters
• 4 Modulators
• 2 MIDI LFOs
• 2 32 step Patterns
• 16 Step Arpeggiator
• 8 Band parametric EQ
• Stereo Echo / Delay
• 16 Band Vocoder
• Stereo Chorus / Flanger
• Stereo Reverb

It all looks very good, and what’s nice is that you can download and use a real free version that will let you really test this synthesizer before buying it. The free version has only a few limitations, nothing that will prevent you to use it and play it !

Zero-G just released Outer Limits, a new virtual instrument powered by Native Instruments Kompakt, that will be one of the most waited present for Christmas to all the Ambient musicians !

Or maybe you will not wait and order right now this 5 Gigs and 500 sounds library patiently hand crafted by Ian Boddy, one of the finest synthesists, from an incredible and very impressive gear list.

What they say :

OUTER LIMITS is Ian Boddy’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed MORPHOLOGY Kompakt instrument but this time he has delved deeper and darker than ever before. Every patch in this fantastic collection will stimulate your creativity. The range of sounds this instrument is capable of is truly amazing, from shimmering pads, to mysterious drones, crystalline digital manipulations to dark distorted atmospheres, menacing mechanisms, evocative resonances, surreal sound effects, complex cascades, formant sheens, dark disturbing horror, analogue waves, amazing space textures, strange vocal synthesis and of course, sounds from the Outer Limits of space and time. Patches this complex put many other synths to shame! And you can layer EIGHT of these at a time to create incredibly complex soundscapes.

Categories include: Ambient Loops, Analogue Waves, Chamber of Horrors, Click & Glitch, Deep Space, Dense Soundscapes, Digital Drones, Digital Manipulations, Distorted Views, Heavy Drones, Machine Dreams, Minimalism, One Shot Synth FX, Outer Limits, Surreal to Real, Transcendental, Twisted Pads, Vintage Synth Atmos, Vocal Transformations and White Noise Atmospheres.

The demos sound amazing. So, you’ll wait or not ?

Technorati Tags: synth, vst, soundscapes