KVR Audio

DHijin · Post by **DHijin** » Thu May 16, 2013 1:53 pm

I've seen some Valdi Sabev videos and I realized that I don't have good soundbanks for Pads and I'm interested on using some Pads in some of my productions, then I wanted to ask for if any of you knows about soundbanks or any good VST for Pads. Thanks for your answers.

HunterKiller · Post by **HunterKiller** » Thu May 16, 2013 1:58 pm

You will not find them.

DHijin · Post by **DHijin** » Thu May 16, 2013 2:18 pm

HunterKiller wrote:You will not find them.

xDDD. Why not?

layzer · Post by **layzer** » Thu May 16, 2013 2:30 pm

http://www.kvraudio.com/product/oneping ... electronix

Luftrum · Post by **Luftrum** » Thu May 16, 2013 2:38 pm

There are many good soundbanks for pads.

If we take the obvious Alchemy expansions then Himalaya did a soundbank containing pads only. It includes Alchemy Player - so you don't need the full version of Alchemy to use the soundbank. You can buy the expansion alone and be able to play all the wonderful sounds included.

To do some shameless promotion of my own work, then I did a Luftrum: Ambient soundbank for Alchemy too, also containing a lot of good pads. It also includes Alchemy Player so you can play the sounds directly out-of-the-box.

I suggest you listen to the audio demo's:

Himalaya: Pads
Luftrum: Ambient

Happy pad hunting!

Lotuzia · Post by **Lotuzia** » Thu May 16, 2013 2:54 pm

Might want to take a look/listen at our site www.lelotusbleu.fr

We have at least one thematic Pads only audio demos for almost every soundset we propose. At least it will give you and idea of how some synths sound regarding pads.

LtZ

aquar · Post by **aquar** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:14 pm

May also be worth checking out the Galbanum Rapture expansion.
Although some of their stuff is a bit more experimental they still
have some beautiful Pads.

http://www.galbanum.com/products/piscis/

The Himalaya Pads though are just awesome and might be a safer bet.

manducator · Post by **manducator** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:17 pm

I like loomer string:

http://www.loomer.co.uk/string.htm

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Thu May 16, 2013 3:40 pm

Tone2 Rayblaster seems to be perfect for pads and there is an Atmosphere soundbank for it at the Tone2 website. Another banks based on pads will follow.

Wavetable synths like e.g. Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V and Largo seem to be perfect for pads too.

Besides that for me the Korg Wavestation is till the king of pad sounds. I got both a hardware Wavestation EX and the plugin:
http://www.korg.com/LegacyWAVESTATION

The Wavestation could also do some nice "analog" like sounds. Here is an audio demo of a Wavestation EX patch using the built-in Chorus + Phaser and additionally the ValhalleDSP ValhallavintageVerb Reverb plugin:

Wavestation EX - Polymoog Strings_Phaser + Reverb_2

The Wavestation plugin could import sysex files of the hardware and lots of commercial and free banks are available at the web.
http://www.danphillips.com/wavestation/ws_sysex.htm
http://www.pro-rec.com/WS.html
http://www.kidnepro.com/KN/Korg/Wavesta ... aMain.html
http://easysounds.eshop.t-online.de/epa ... ID=3712598
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... 9F-ZTW908w

Tons of sounds are already included with the factory sounds of the plugin version which also includes banks that were available on a ROM card.

Ingo

CrystalWizard · Post by **CrystalWizard** » Thu May 16, 2013 4:18 pm

a good question is what softsynths do you have?

olepro · Post by **olepro** » Thu May 16, 2013 4:19 pm

If you like pads as in the example you are good to go with ZynAddSubFX.
It does the greatest analog pads in history.

Examples:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/240 ... ne%201.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/240 ... ne%202.mp3

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Thu May 16, 2013 4:24 pm

Seconded for the Wavestation. It does from simple static pads to immensely complicated changing soundscapes. I still only use the h/w, but I keep meaning to buy the VSTi. Must do it. For me, the Wavestation is absolutely and utterly digital. It can attempt to make some analogue-ish sounds, but its strength is the digitalness - it makes pads that no analogue can even attempt to get close to. And I'm a huge analogue fan - still own several old analogues. Most digital synths I tend to dislike, but the Wavestation stands out head and shoulders as a digital icon. Especially if you do ambient soundscapes, and even more so - horror type soundtracks or any film soundtracks - Wavestations excel. It makes incredibly eerie sounds.

On their own, even a complicated wavesequence oscillator can sound quite thin, but consider that you can use 32 wavesequences together, the sound can become huge, and you can have pads that play for several minutes and still don't repeat the same exact sound. "Evolving pads" is a term only something like the Wavestation should be able to use.

There is Wusikstation which is a credible alternative, and it's far more flexible in terms of filtering and how you can use the filters within a wavesequence itself. However, I have to say the Wusikstation eventually pissed me off because of the constant upgrading, and consequent lack of fixing of so many bugs in previous versions. It never felt finished. Probably still isn't - his business ethos may have changed (and I'm sure he has plenty of loyal users), but I hate having to upgrade a synth every year ad infinitum - I buy a synth, I expect it to work straight off the disk.

The Wavestation s/w comes with all the old patches and waves etc from all h/w versions, which is a huge collection of some stunning patches (many of them pads).

Ingonator · Post by **Ingonator** » Thu May 16, 2013 4:36 pm

kritikon wrote:Seconded for the Wavestation. It does from simple static pads to immensely complicated changing soundscapes. I still only use the h/w, but I keep meaning to buy the VSTi. Must do it. For me, the Wavestation is absolutely and utterly digital. It can attempt to make some analogue-ish sounds, but its strength is the digitalness - it makes pads that no analogue can even attempt to get close to. And I'm a huge analogue fan - still own several old analogues. Most digital synths I tend to dislike, but the Wavestation stands out head and shoulders as a digital icon. Especially if you do ambient soundscapes, and even more so - horror type soundtracks or any film soundtracks - Wavestations excel. It makes incredibly eerie sounds.

On their own, even a complicated wavesequence oscillator can sound quite thin, but consider that you can use 32 wavesequences together, the sound can become huge, and you can have pads that play for several minutes and still don't repeat the same exact sound. "Evolving pads" is a term only something like the Wavestation should be able to use.

There is Wusikstation which is a credible alternative, and it's far more flexible in terms of filtering and how you can use the filters within a wavesequence itself. However, I have to say the Wusikstation eventually pissed me off because of the constant upgrading, and consequent lack of fixing of so many bugs in previous versions. It never felt finished. Probably still isn't - his business ethos may have changed (and I'm sure he has plenty of loyal users), but I hate having to upgrade a synth every year ad infinitum - I buy a synth, I expect it to work straight off the disk.

The Wavestation s/w comes with all the old patches and waves etc from all h/w versions, which is a huge collection of some stunning patches (many of them pads).

Not to forget that the software includes a resonant filter and an additional bank to show how this could be used.
BTW the FXs in both the hardware Wavestation (espacially the EX version) are stunning IMO (especially as they are 20 years old now). There are really lots of them including also a vocoder emulation which could use different sounds as modulator and carrier. The A/D hardware rack also seems to have an audio input to use it as a "real" vocoder.
The demo i posted above uses one of the Chorus Fxs and one of the Phaser FXs of the EX. In that specific patch the Modwhel could adjust the Phaser modulation speed.

Concerning analog sounds the Wavestation got one of the most beautiful anlog Horn sounds (ROM bank, patch 35 - Prophet Horn). Shows who the "father of the WS was (Dave Smith...).

I also found you could stack up 8 oscillators to do a "superswaw" like sound. with the hardware this leads to 4 notes polyphony, with the plugin it could be more. I had used a sample of such a sound in a patch of my commercial Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V bank:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/532 ... 20Demo.mp3

That bank also contain many more pad sounds based on samples (patches for those created by myself on multiple synths) and the internal wavetables. A link could be found in my signature.
Some samples were also created using the Wavestation as a modulator for the Waldorf Lector vocoder.

Ingo

fluffy_little_something · Thu May 16, 2013 4:58 pm

CrystalWizard wrote:a good question is what softsynths do you have?

Was wondering the same thing. Lots of synths can do good pads when you know how to do it. I have only listened to the first 20 secs of the video (too boring for my taste, don't want to fall asleep at this time of day

), but I suppose "digital" synths are better than VA's for that kind of sound. My brother uses Sytrus a lot, his pads sound like that, very slick and clean, good for background stuff, not so much for funkier music, though

I guess some other Image Line synths such as Harm___ would also be suitable.

I have heard lovely pads from Dune, too.

hollo · Post by **hollo** » Thu May 16, 2013 5:00 pm

Some shameless promotion of my own work:

Padsheaven1 & Padsheaven2 for Zebra.

As the name suggest there are over 200 soft, warm, sweeped, animated pads.
Both of them have a free bank to get the feel.

Looking for good Pads