Plugsound Vol. 4: Hip Hop Toolkit

woohoo... my first review.

I needed a plugin for RnB and this is the only dedicated one there is.

Interface: pretty staightforward. It's a ROMpler so you have a limited amount of control over the sounds and it's therefore very easy to use.

Sound: This is the most important thing I suppose. All the sounds a categorized. First is the loops. They are topclass especially the Timbaland style loops. Very well programmed. Each loop is also chopped up into hits which makes it easier to create your own loops.
You have different instruments; basses, keyboards, guitars, synths, and vinyl noises. The basses are great. Keyboard are your standard ep, organ etc. which you can find so many places. Guitars suck at bit as you could expect, and the synths are ok, but not more than that.
Then there's some phrases; bassloops, fx loops, guitarloops and synthloops. Hmm.... I can't see myself having much use for those. I would much rather have preferred some brass phrazes instead of synths. The synths phrazed just sound too much techno. FX phrazes are also a bit off.

Features: well, it's a ROMpler so it's obviously not loaded with features, but you have the usual envelopes, lfo and filter. A nice addition is portamento, not outstanding but it give it all a bit more life.

Documentation: is quite limited, but it's pretty straightforward anyway so you don't really need it.

Presets: well, I've already mentioned that I suppose.
Drums - superb, phrazes - not very inspiring, instrument - a mixture, nothing out of this world, but some decent ones especially the basses.

Customer support: haven't had need for that.

Value for money: Considering it only costs £20 more than a audio sample CD I think it's great value.

Stability: I haven't had any problem.

So, if you are looking for something to create contemporary RnB/Hip hop with this is not a bad choice. But keep in mind that it's mostly the drums that shines. Having said that, not many ROMpler sell for £80 though.

i suppose i should start this review by saying that i dont write hip hop...so i honestly dont know how well it stands up in that style.

ok, now that i've got that out of the way...

i already had plugsounds excellent drum and percussion vsti and i wanted to augment that collection with some more drums. so for me, this was more of an add-on and, as such, i have found it to be extremely useful.

there are some great kits on here and there is pretty much no overlap between this and the drum vsti. i would have preferred more/better funk kits though.

what i didnt expect is that i would find the drum loops so useful. im normally not a loop user but im finding these to be very handy.

i tend to write at higher bpms than the loops were intended for so i typically only use small chunks of the loops as accents that are layered with tracks i've made with the drum plug.

i never touch the instrument loops though. they are well done...i just have more fun writing the parts myself.

the individual instrument samples are hit or miss. for example, there are some great basses, clavs and ep's but the synth and guitar sounds leave much to be desired.

on the technical side of things, the plug is stable, easy to use, and requires very little cpu power.

overall, i think this plug is worth a look. i have found it to be very useful, but a friend of mine (who does write hip hop) was far less impressed.

download the demo and see what you think.