What do the scores mean

Value for money: This is a fairly straight ratio of material supplied against price charged. For a full price release we expect at least 60 minutes of samples, or 300Mb of data. A CD that meets this would score 8/10. This would be adjusted for more expensive releases, value products and so forth. Things like including a second free CD of data with an audio CD or multiple formats all get plus marks. Overlong demo tracks, demo's and non usable material all get minus marks.

Usability: How easy is it to use the product, how much effort to take the supplied material and use it in your tracks. Plus marks for good layout of samples, good sample quality, good documentation, samples in data format or multiple format. Minus marks for confusing layout, samples that need work doing to them to make them more usable, bad documentation. For example an audio CD that contains only 16 bar loops, would require some effort to extract usable material to construct into a track, but one that contained 4 x 4 bar variants with 3 fills in audio and .wav format is a whole lot more usable.

Documentation: How good is the inlay card or other supporting information, are the samples all listed out, is it easy to find the sample you want, is it clear where everything is, is information about the samples given, BPM's, pitch, sample size. We don't feel that you can give sample users too much information. Plus points for listing out all the samples with required information, additional notes and information, minus points for vague references or "missing" information. We like to see samples grouped into logical groups, all the samples listed out and with as much information about each samples as can be given.

Sonic Quality: Simply the audio quality of the release. Is there any noise or hiss, or recording artefacts, clicks, sample defects etc. Generally most sample CD's are very good in this respect, an 8/10+ score should be expected from any release.

Overall: The above scores are largely factual in nature, it's not too difficult to tell the good from the bad or areas where a CD could do better. The overall score is partly the sum of the other scores, but also a matter of opinion, which is why they don't always add up. Music by it's very nature is liked by some hated by others, what someone things is brilliant others think dire and so on. So this score is a little more subjective than the others, but is basically the reviewers overall impression of the collection.

We try and keep reviews as factual as possible, and generally keep opinion, especially about style, to a minimum, this as much as anything is to avoid genre bias. Just because we might think that we'd rather have root canal surgery than listen to a New Age CD doesn't mean that a sample CD containing this sort of material doesn't appeal to a whole range of people. So if we give a factual report as far as possible then readers are free to make up their own minds.

Overall Scores:
9.5-10 - Top quality all around. Faultless or near faultless in execution. Originality and inspirational is a factor, but not a requirement. For example a drum hits CD would score zero in the originality and inspirational stakes, but if faultlessly produced would score highly. Any CD that scores in this area can be recommended without hesitation.

8.5-9 - Very good sample CD, excels in all departments with maybe just a minor flaw or two. CD's in this category forfill all the requirements for a quality release and if it's in the area your looking for can be thoroughly recommended

7.5-8 - Good quality release, won't disappoint, but maybe needs a little work to get the best out of the release, or has a slightly more serious flaw or two. Possibly a little short on quantity or quality. Can certainly still be very much recommended, but you might want to audition the CD first against others, check out the demo tracks first. Still a very usable and worthwhile release.

6.5-7 - Still a quality release, but maybe with a defect or two, perhaps it's hard to use or the audio quality isn't ideal or maybe the sounds and concept are a bit bland or out of date. Still usable and worth investigation, but worth checking alternatives, especially if it's not right in the channel that your looking for.

5.5-6 - Getting to the area where the release has a major problem, perhaps quality or presentation wise. Possibly the samples aren't that usable or part of the collection isn't usable at all. There are certainly parts of the release that are usable, but check out alternatives. Would be something of a luxury purchase.

5 or less - If you can get it on sale prices....