KVR Audio

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:27 am

Just three days to go

A final candidate has been selected!!! The program list is as follows...

NC346 Aetherion.nki
NC346 Altitude.nki
NC346 Anode Strings.nki
NC346 Arcing Coils.nki
NC346 Bakelite.nki
NC346 BrassoChord.nki
NC346 Canned Vintage.nki
NC346 Cathode Sweep.nki
NC346 Cheezachord.nki
NC346 Clavachord.nki
NC346 Deadly One.nki
NC346 Delicate.nki
NC346 Distant Theatre.nki
NC346 Divider Rider.nki
NC346 Doom Strings.nki
NC346 Dry Octaves.nki
NC346 Dual Octave Harpsi.nki
NC346 Electron Beam.nki
NC346 Electron Cloud.nki
NC346 Ensemble.nki
NC346 Fifth Dimension.nki
NC346 Fission Strings.nki
NC346 Flutalto.nki
NC346 Flutter.nki
NC346 Forbidden Planet.nki
NC346 Formant Shift.nki
NC346 Futura.nki
NC346 Futurian.nki
NC346 Glass Filaments.nki
NC346 Grofe Piano.nki
NC346 Harpsarchaic.nki
NC346 HexVibrati.nki
NC346 Hideaway Bass.nki
NC346 High Strings.nki
NC346 High Tension.nki
NC346 HonkaChord.nki
NC346 Induction.nki
NC346 Intonarumori.nki
NC346 Inversion.nki
NC346 JMJachord.nki
NC346 Late Again.nki
NC346 Laurens Of Arabia.nki
NC346 Metropolis.nki
NC346 MonoChord 8ve Bass.nki
NC346 MonoChord Bass.nki
NC346 MonoChord Perc Bass.nki
NC346 MonoChord Taurus.nki
NC346 Morphography.nki
NC346 Mysterium.nki
NC346 Nasal Chord.nki
NC346 NeverDream.nki
NC346 NovaBrass.nki
NC346 NovaPad.nki
NC346 NovaVox.nki
NC346 OctaChord.nki
NC346 Octal Base.nki
NC346 OctaSproing.nki
NC346 Octave Strings.nki
NC346 Organics.nki
NC346 Percolator.nki
NC346 Phantastron.nki
NC346 Pipe Organ.nki
NC346 Plinky.nki
NC346 Plucked Anodes.nki
NC346 Qambenik.nki
NC346 Roosevelt's 5th.nki
NC346 Sea Of Pentodes.nki
NC346 ShimmerChime.nki
NC346 Shimmeria.nki
NC346 Slow Bows.nki
NC346 Soft Pluck.nki
NC346 Solaris.nki
NC346 Soma.nki
NC346 Space Chime.nki
NC346 Spike.nki
NC346 Sproing.nki
NC346 Stainless Strings.nki
NC346 Steamline.nki
NC346 SuperNova.nki
NC346 Sylvania's Pad.nki
NC346 Tesla Strings.nki
NC346 TheraChord.nki
NC346 ThermioShimmer.nki
NC346 Toy Trumpet.nki
NC346 Transglobal.nki
NC346 Tube Piano.nki
NC346 Tube Trumpet.nki
NC346 TubeOrgan.nki
NC346 Vangeliron.nki
NC346 Vibratosphere.nki
NC346 Vocan8r.nki
NC346 Vortex Field.nki
NC346 Vox Genie.nki
NC346 Warm French Horn.nki
NC346 Warmth.nki
NC346 Wide Sproing.nki
NC346 Wireless.nki
NC346 World Fair.nki
NC346 X Dry 1S (Acoustic).nki
NC346 X Dry 1S (Direct).nki
NC346 X Dry 2S (Acoustic).nki
NC346 X Dry 2S (Direct).nkii
NC346 X Dry 3S (Acoustic).nki
NC346 X Dry 3S (Direct).nki
NC346 X Harpsichord.nki
NC346 X HiStrings.nki
NC346 X MaleVox.nki
NC346 X MissingThe803.nki
NC346 X Modernism.nki
NC346 X NovaChord Vib.nki
NC346 X Novachord.nki
NC346 X Percussive.nki
NC346 X Piano.nki
NC346 X ScaryStrings.nki
NC346 X VibReed.nki
NC346 X WarmEnsemble.nki

Those with the 'X' prefix to the name are raw, unadulterated Novachord with no effects or post-processing - this is as close to sitting in front of the real thing as is possible and were carefully programmed (some might say 'modeled'!) by careful comparison with Dan's actual Novachord until they were as indistinguishable as possible. These are a real taste of 1939 - you can almost smell the Bakelite!!

The other sounds are variations from the subtle to the outrageous. In the more subtle variations, we have re-created the textures available on the real thing by careful A/B'ing or by carefully listening to recordings of the Novachord from over the decades and trying to re-create those.

However, in many of them, we've also taken the Novachord to a level Laurens Hammond and his colleagues could only have dreamed of using modern post-processing with swept filters, etc..

It's interesting though - it almost doesn't matter what modern sonic mangling you apply to the sound, the aroma of warm, living, thermionic technology and Bakelite and musty old documentation still hangs in the air!

Just to remind you...

Exciting times ... and getting closer all the time!!

Best crack on!

Cheers,

Steve

chilln · Post by **chilln** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:34 am

Awesome! Congrats, Steve! This instrument will be great. I hope to purchase a copy at some point in the near future. The demos of the restored novachord was

- Stunningly beautiful.

BUMP!

bobbybland · Post by **bobbybland** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:49 am

How much?

kelvyn · Post by **kelvyn** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:54 am

I definitely want this... I just listened to the stuff on your site and the sound is fabulous. I would also like to know how much this will cost?

Squids · Post by **Squids** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:38 am

This is really cool. What a beautiful unusual instrument. I'd love to own one of those and especially in that kind of shape. Having samples of all of those patches though is a bit more realistic for most people though. I might have to get this myself! Best of luck with it Steve.

Gosh · Post by **Gosh** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:14 am

hi steve, count me in. nostalgia is still my most beloved plugin/sampleset.
keep up the good work

Zmies · Post by **Zmies** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:26 am

Beautiful, a must buy for me.

fceramic · Post by **fceramic** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:34 am

PLEASE make a SF2 or NNXT version. Not everyone uses Kontakt you know!
I'm sure this will work with Kontakt Player which is free, so that is a solution for me, but it would be uber sweet both for both parts if you made refill versions as well. Lots of Reason users have a great love for lofi and vintage sounds. Just look at Soundcells and Reasonbanks, both top notch in that catagory.

Gosh · Post by **Gosh** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:50 am

price will be 120 british pounds according to the hollowsun site. for me that means that a purchase has to wait until march (at the moment i'm more interested in acquiring aether). okay, on to listen to the demos and then decide.
cheers

shanecgriffo · Post by **shanecgriffo** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:25 pm

yes, probably well out of my range i think at the moment.
maybe they will make smaller/cheaper packs available (hint hint

)

hollowsun · Post by **hollowsun** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:28 pm

dalxjar wrote:Hi Steve,

What's the story with this???

There was YOUR sampling project in the pipeline - and at the same time there was some guy overseas who had just finished restoring a Novachord he'd found or bought somewhere...

However - I think you said that this was just a coincidence!

Coincidence? Yes ... and no! Two totally separate projects.

The one you link to is Phil Cirocco's Novachord (he of Discrete Synthesisers) whereas my sample set is from Dan Wilson's Novachord here in the UK.

Phil acquired his a good few years ago and totally rebuilt it replacing failed components with modern equivalents. He has been threatening a sample CD for some time but nothing has materialised. He did make an audio CD which you can listen to/buy HERE however.

Dan bought his from one Marc Doty who featured in 'The Top 20 Weirdest Instruments' at Sonic State. He had it shipped (all 1/4 of a tone of it!!) to the UK and has been restoring it ever since.

However, Dan has taken a different course in that he is repairing any failed components by hand rather than replacing them as this means the thing will be closer to the way the original sounded back in 1939. His only compromise on that was that he had to build a completely new power supply as that was shot to pieces when he got it. However, he went to extraordinary lengths to build it exactly to Hammond's original spec right down to having the transformers hand wound identically to the originals!

Why go such lengths?

To make it sound as authentic as possible. Replacing components with modern equivalents is (arguably) much the same as putting a brand new Toyota engine in a vintage Jaguar MkII - it'll work but it won't drive the same. And so it is with this beast - it just won't sound the same.

So... that's the story. And no - Phil is not our nemesis. On the contrary.

Cheers,

Steve

fceramic · Post by **fceramic** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:31 pm

120 pounds is way over my budget. Especially for such a niche library.
Sorry have to pass then

I will try to emulate it with Reason!

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 11:17 am

fridtjof wrote:120 pounds is way over my budget. Especially for such a niche library.
Sorry have to pass then

I will try to emulate it with Reason!

I agree about the price but this instruments sound is so unique and nice that i think i'll buy it anyway, especially after i heard the audio clips and videos of the Novachord again.
After purchasing some other very nice sample sets and trying to reprogram on softsynths i still didn't find anything sounding like this. The closest i got was amber (from Synth Squad) with additional voice stacking and an external Chorus (Kjaerhus classic chorus). The result is beautiful in it's own way but still not matching the Novachord sound.

BTW after purchasing the Synclavier sample set from Enhus i know how expensive really good samples could be:
http://enhus.com/index.php?main_page=pr ... c765fbb069

On the other hand the Novachord sample set has a big amount of patches which seems to be unusual for high quality sample libraries.

The Novachord and Synclavier seem to be in the same league: rare, expensive, unique and beautiful sounding so i can't wait to combine both of their samples which should give an extraordinary sound.

shanecgriffo · Post by **shanecgriffo** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:02 pm

i only have kontakt player too so it runs abot 20/30 mins in demo mode with 'unofficial' stuff. so it makes it a bit less attractive for me.. mind you i'd spring for a pack of 10 or 12 select patches for $25- and just have to do a bit of freezing

It does sound very lovely tho (by the demos)

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:23 pm

shanecgriffo wrote:i only have kontakt player too so it runs abot 20/30 mins in demo mode with 'unofficial' stuff. so it makes it a bit less attractive for me.. mind you i'd spring for a pack of 10 or 12 select patches for $25- and just have to do a bit of freezing
It does sound very lovely tho (by the demos)

I found the same problems when using the Kontakt Playerery so i would be interested if those Kontakt patches could be imported into Ableton Sampler. Normally it's no problem but i found some Kontakt patches where it doesn't work.

BTW you can do keymapping of wav files with the Kontakt Player an save them as Kontakt files for as long it stops working because of the demo mode. Even if it warns you that the files will be in demo mode they are fully functional afterwards but only if you import them into another sampler like e.g. Ableton sampler.
This way i imported the Enhus Synclavier samples which came in exs format. The Kontakt files were imported to Ableton sampler then.

The Hollow Sun Novachord approaches!!!!