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Analog to Digital
Page 3/4

Tracks 30 & 31, offer 50 odd TB303
sounds, need I say more, two categories short and long release.
Tracks 32, 33, 41 & 42 give us 39 Ambient
pads, effects & textures, from distant "thunder" rumblings,
to synthetic strings, via a few Sci-fi drone sounding effects. Most are
fairly gentle sounding, and have some evolution going on within them.
There are some quite excellent sounding samples here, though finding use
for some of them could be a challenge, as they would dominate any mix
they are used in.
Track 34, Sweep success, starts off
with a couple of excellent rapid arpeggio type effects then delves off
in to some pretty awful ear piercing radio static type effects, before
toning down again to some more usable sweep sounds.
Tracks 35 & 49, Mix it up, has
some interesting, and powerful sounding layered sounds, very impressive.
Some are quite short, ideal for a powerful sequence, or arpeggio type
pattern. Wished there were more of these.
Tracks 36-39, give us multisample each of
a Arp Omni & Crumar string patch, and two analogue bells sounds, fairly
anonymous, but not so bad for that compared to some of the many other
more complex samples.
Tracks 40 & 43, give us 27 A to D
arpeggio's and Digital Loopy Tunes, and there are some excellent ones
here, want to impress your mates when they come around and say, "can
I have a go", sample say track 40 sample 3 to the lower half of the
keyboard, a powerful string sound to the top half, let them play for five
minutes then try and flog them your old Akai S01 that's been sitting under
your desk for 5 years. Again these might find difficult to place, simply
because they would dominate a track they are in, but some of them do sound
extremely impressive, the pick of the CD for me.
Track 44, DX Piano/Oberheim string
has some decent sounding multisamples of these two classic sounds.
Track 45 has some seriously effected E-Bow
pitch sounds, sort of thing you might here on a circa 1973 "concept"
album. We'll leave this one in the "sounds interesting, but wouldn't
ever use it category".
Track 46 coaxes 16 patches out of the old
favourite Wasp synth.
Track 47 has 4 rather disappointing Jupiter
sweeps, now I know for a fact that you can get better sounding sweeps
than these.
Tracks 48 & 67 has us back on form with
a bakers dozen A to D layers, and Classics complex layered
sounds, quite excellent sounding. A little different from the norm if
your looking to get away from the "classic" analogue sound.
Track 54, Movie backdrops, are seven
long, evolving background atmosphere textures, from a synthetic jungle
type effect to the haunted, mystery dark effect. Very good.
Track 56 has 3 classic analogue polysynth
sounds, multisampled, very simple sounding, very usable.
Track 57, Jupiter Suite, has 16 samples
of classic analogue Jupiter sounds, listen to this and you realise why
the JP8000 exists. Good examples, very usable.
Track 58, Digilog, is 8 samples of
digital synths trying to sounds analogue, not bad at all.
Track 59, Sing along max, has 22
samples of "vocal" pad sounds, many of which are quite excellent,
these are very much synthesised vocal sounds, not much resemblance to
an actual human voice here. But if your looking for that kind of pad sound
then there are some crackers here.
Tracks 60 & 62, (why didn't the producers
just stick them together...) offer us 18 Trance textures, gentle ethereal,
evolving textures and atmospheres, very good indeed.
Tracks 61 Trance Dream, 64 Vangelis
& 66 Werking Kraft, give us examples of their respective styles,
analogue arpeggios, CS80 sounding patches and blippy rhythms. Not terribly
convincing, some of the Kraftwerk "rhythms" are awful.
Track 63, Tom & Jerry, have 25
assorted "orchestral" hooks and effects, if you've seen the
cartoon, you'll know what I mean. Seem almost out of place amongst all
the highly synth sounding samples elsewhere on the CD.
Track 65, Waves World, has some typical
D-50 and Wavestation, "wave" sounds, dark, modulating umm wave
like sounds. Mixed bag, not too keen on the sharply random modulating
examples, but some of the others are very good.
The CD rounds off with maximum level test
tone.

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