Produced by	AMG
No.Tracks	57
Playing Time	43:18
Mixed Mode CD
Released	1998

Dance Diffusion is part of the AMG Diffusion series - the others currently being Pop Diffusion and Beatz Diffusion - a mixed mode collection of budget sample CD's that take elements from the AMG catalogue and package them together in a theme, in this case Dance. This kind of CD is becoming increasing popular, kicked off by Time & Space's Creative Essentials series, aimed mainly at the computer musician or those starting out in the sampling world who might otherwise baulk at the thought of paying UKP60/US$100 for a full priced sample CD.

Dance Diffusion takes extracts from no less than eleven sample CD's - Norman Cook's (aka Fatboy Slim), Black II Black, Remix !, Blackbeat, Karma Chopra, Terminalhead, Beatmasters, Black II Black Killer Vocals, Coldcut, Pascal Gabriel and Global Trance Mission. Essentially this is a loops CD though there are some vocals and other sounds that I'll detail further on. Bear in mind that these CD's were produced over a period of time from around 1991-1996 so the samples aren't bang up to date, you can check out the AMG information from their catalogue here.

The CD has an audio section and a .wav section that contans 214Mb of data, 417 samples, so you can audition the samples then load them up into your computer/sampler without having to go through recording and editing them. There is also a version available that has in addition Recycled files created using Steinberg's Recycle program for an extra 10 UKP. For a budget priced CD you certainly get good value - double what you'd normally expect to find on a budget priced CD.

I've been a little critical of other AMG inlay cards for their lack of detail on occasion but full marks this time as we have a very thorough listing. We get a heading for each sample CD the sounds were taken from, then break downs by track and then by sample, the large majority of which are named individually. Each loops has a BPM and each sample has a bracketed number that corresponds to the name/number of the .wav file it corresponds to, so tracking down the sample your looking for is very straightforward. The type face is a bit on the small side, but well done AMG for cramming all the information in, does make actually using a CD easier. I for one when auditioning a CD like to make little notes or marks on the inlay cards for later use and having all the samples listed out in this fashion makes this a lot easier.

There is no demo track and no test tone, though it is stated that the samples are normalised to a uniform level. Otherwise there is little in the way of hype or other information, so on to the sounds....