The Hang - poll closed

[Sampleconstruct]

I am renting a Hang for a week, here are some impro tracks recorded with it, live on tape / HD, some FX.

The Hang is an instrument invented by some swiss guys, they stopped building it some years ago. so they're really hard to get hold of (and very expensive too). It's a percussion instrument, reminding of a steel drum but sounding much more mellow and warm, it has 8 zones with pentatonic pitches and a bass note/route note in the center of the instrument. You can play it with hands, mallets, sticks, rub it with various things and whatnot, on the backside is has a whole which can produce extremely low subbass sounds, reminding of a giant Udu.

I am deeply multisampling it, recording hours of loops, textures and all sounds that would come to my mind. I'm not sure yet for which platform this library will be released, probably MachFive, but I have to finish my other projects first and then decide what to do with these beautiful sounds.

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/s ... percussion

[BBFG#]

I have the SonicCouture set (PanDrums) that I use in Kontakt.
It would be really nice to have these for Alchemy too.

[Sampleconstruct]

I have the SonicCouture set (PanDrums) that I use in Kontakt.
It would be really nice to have these for Alchemy too.

If only version2 of Alchemy would be on the horizon somewhere, sigh...

[Sampleconstruct]

I added a poll to this thread, as I am interested to see, what people prefer. I know what I would prefer and I hate polls, so here is one
I skipped the fish option as I wanted to do something beyond the ordinary. Each user has 2 options to vote for.

As this library requires good round robin, key switching and velocity layer handling, only sample players which support those three features were added to the poll. As I also want to do granular Hang sounds and Hang-derived drones and soundscapes layering Hang derivatives and electronic sounds, MachFive 3 and HALion 5 would be the most versatile solutions, as they offer multiple synthesis forms within one instrument, so does Alchemy, but all multisampled patches for Alchemy must be prepared as sfz-files in order to do so, which is a clumsy conversion process, and Alchemy does mot stream from disk, so with several hundreds of Hang samples within one patch, the RAM footprint is pretty high, which only isn't an issue for people with lot's of RAM. Also Alchemy's granulator is not up to today's standards anymore and version 2 is nowhere in sight.

Kontakt always works, but it doesn't have anything but a sample player and a timestretch engine, so all electronic/synthesized sounds have to be pre-sampled and can't be tweaked in real time in a way that I would like to.

Releasing the Hang for MachFive and Kontakt will involve scripting, which will raise the costs/the library price as I have to hire a professional scripter for that.

Here my blabla ends...

[Sampleconstruct]

So far I've recorded over 5 hours of material, including a plethora of loops, here are some in 7-8, accompanied by a Tremor kick sequence and one of my Serum pads:

http://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/h ... percussion

Sadly I have to return the Hang to Switzerland tomorrow, another long night ahead of me.

[aMUSEd]

I would prefer Alchemy mainly because it has the best performance controls. My second choice would be Halio 5 - I don't own MachFive and find Kontakt rather limited.

What are you hoping from in Alchemy 2 then in terms of granular options?

[Sampleconstruct]

I would prefer Alchemy mainly because it has the best performance controls. My second choice would be Halio 5 - I don't own MachFive and find Kontakt rather limited.

What are you hoping from in Alchemy 2 then in terms of granular options?

Well, first of all Alchemy's sample engine needs an overhaul to improve the sound quality, the aliasing is already audible when only transposing samples down less than 2 octaves, the granular engine needs to sound less blurry and more pristine. As you own HALion5 and Padshop, you know what features we need:

• *Much longer grain times (crusherX has grain lengths of up to 60 seconds, which can create totally amazing, huge grain clouds), 200 ms just doesn't cut it anymore
  *Multiple grain streams (PSP/HALion have up to 8, crusherX has up to 64 if I recall correctly), MachFive can also do this by using unison voices in the respective layer, now you have to use all 4 oscillators in Alchemy to simulate at least 4 multiple streams, and that usually totally kills the CPU
  *Much wider grain randomization over the entire audio file if desired like in HALion/PSP
  *Pitch quantization of grain clouds, so you use scales (minor/major, pentatonic, custom scaled, microtonal, wholetone, chromatic, dorian....) to create tonal grain clouds (like in crusherX or The Mangle)
  *Pitch randomization, at least 1 octave in range
  *Crossfade looping (both for granular and sampling like in HALion 5)
  *More different grain shapes, or better, draw your own like in crusherX

Then it needs a dedicated stretch engine, TM Pro in Kontakt 5 is very good, so is the stretch mode in MachFive, the one in HALion is also not bad. Syncing loops with Alchemy's granular engine introduces too many artifacts and one can only transpose a loop within a very small range before it starts sounding silly.
The polyphony needs to be upped too, and the overall CPU load reduced. For the multisampled Hang instruments even 32 voices are not enough, as the release times are pretty long, and when you play fast sequences you can even hear the note-stealing.

But you're not Camel Audio, so what am I on about

[Sampleconstruct]

Close race here between Alchemy and K5, we need some more votes though...

[BBFG#]

Just remember there are similar sets from other companies for Kontakt.
No competition that I know of for Alchemy.

[Sampleconstruct]

Just remember there are similar sets from other companies for Kontakt.
No competition that I know of for Alchemy.

I don't care about other companies.

[BBFG#]

I just already own those other companies. So then there's a redundancy issue to consider.

(Even though I don't find them redundant as some would, because each seems to have their own harmonic content character by who sampled them.)
So I have sets in Synthmaster; Reaktor; & Kontakt and each has their place for me.
It would just be nice to also have a set for Alchemy that gives me another range of possibilities is all.

[lnikj]

I just already own those other companies.

You're a rich man

[BBFG#]

I just already own those other companies.

You're a rich man

Companies' versions of these instruments.

Plus Mach and Halion require dongle/extra software to run.
Which means it is highly unlikely I would own them.

[Sampleconstruct]

I just already own those other companies.

You're a rich man

Not at all, just my artistic decisions are not based on comparisons with other developers, I might as well stop doing all of this once I start making strategic decisions based on market research and what sells best, maybe I should but I'm more of an artist than a business man.

[Sampleconstruct]

I just already own those other companies.

You're a rich man

Not at all, just my artistic decisions are not based on comparisons with other developers, I might as well stop doing all of this once I start making strategic decisions based on market research and what sells best, maybe I should but I'm more of an artist than a business man.

Oh, I thought the rich man was directed at me, well, I made my statement