Ello.. just bought Alchemy the other day and while I understand that making my own patches is where the synth will shine I'm looking for a good soundbank or two for making psy and hard trance to get me going.

Any recommendations would really be appreciated since, while I'm impressed with the synth itself, I'm less happy with the factory and Planet Earth presets I have currently (had really hoped the Planet Earth pack would have more organic type sounds).

So far I'm looking at the Viral Outbreak, Ian Boddy: Analogica and Himalaya: Vintage packs, any thoughts from folks using Alchemy for these sorts of trance would be great.

You've probably picked the 3 best / most obvious sound libraries for psy + trance.

Ian Boddy: Analogica would probably be my pick from those, as it's got plenty of classic-modern analogue synth sounds you won't get anywhere else and has plenty of great sample material for creating interesting basses and leads. The presets tend to be sample based though, rather than granular / spectral / additive so you may not learn so much about the limits of Alchemy as you would with the Himalaya bank.

Also I would suggest something like Dream Voices, or perhaps Guitar Mutations, for ethereal sounds which are very common in various trance genres. Dream voices is particularly useful for dreamy vocal sections (I mean "space vocals" not "cheese vocals" btw).

BigTone is also excellent, with plenty of great starting points for classic trance sounds and sound effects - risers, bubbles, basses, leads etc.

You can see a list of presets included with each bank on the following page:

http://www.camelaudio.com/soundsearch.php

Peace,
Andy.

Cheers for the reply and suggestions. Was leaning towards Analogica so picked up that and couldn't resist Dream Voices as well and I'm now fully in love with Alchemy!

Have seen a lot of praise for Voices but have to say that Analogica is truly superb, not a single patch I dislike and the quality of the samples is outstanding. It has really inspired me to get into the guts of the synth and start experimenting with building my own patches.. all I can say is wow.. most fun I've ever had with a VST.

Yes, Alchemy is a fun machine!

For typical Electro sounds (analogue substractive), Himalaya vintage is my favourite bank (see my post about it).

Cheers,

Raymond