Summary - Audio quality is excellent, there is no hint of noise or recording artefacts anywhere. There are throughout the collection the odd breath sound, instrument noise etc., very subtle. The introduction itself does say that "not everything is perfect" but to my thinking it adds to the depth and realism rather than detracts at all. There has been little if any sonic processing, the instruments sound very natural as they are presented.

Quantum Leap Brass is an extremely well constructed and comprehensive collection of brass sounds. The producers have aimed to create the definitive multisampled brass library and you would have to say that they have succeeded totally. From start to finish the collection oozes quality and I cannot imagine that anyone looking for a "brass" sound will not find exactly what they are looking for here. Not only find the sound, but also be given an extremely accurate rendition of it. The next step from here is hiring a live musician, I guess, and even then I'm not convinced that you would get a better result.

There has obviously been a huge amount of work that has gone into this project, you can tell just by listening to the sounds after waiting for a seemingly endless number of multisamples to load. It's a very serious piece of work and is priced accordingly. Value for money is hard to judge, to the casual user it will seem very expensive, the professional producer who could save on a session artist or two then it may seem excellent value for money.

Negative aspects....you'll need a lot of memory in your sampler, 16Mb as a minimum but more would certainly be better. It's pretty boring to audition, there really is a lot of material here and every patch contains a lot of multisamples. For example if your unsure what trumpet sound you might want to use you've got to go through a CD's worth of data. With this kind of collection it probably would have been a good idea to include an extra audio CD for people to get a quick overview of the sounds if your not quite sure what you need.

This CD collection won't be for everyone, if your looking for real life brass sounds for most any kind of music then you will find a whole mine of useful and usable material here. You'll still need skill to craft the sounds here into something musical, there are no ready made riffs or loops here, but if the collection appeals, and you can afford it, then it won't disappoint.

Overall - Value for money 8/10 - Usability 10/10 - Documentation 9/10 - Sonic Quality 10/10. Seriously good brass sample CD - 9/10

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