Steinberg releases Polarities for Padshop 2, a new sound library by Simon Stockhausen

[Sampleconstruct]

EDIT:

Today (July 23 - 2020) Steinberg released my sound library Polarities for Padshop 2, I worked 4.5 months on this and I'm extremely happy with its outcome.
Check it our here.



Steinberg have just released my sound library Polarities for Padshop 2, I worked 4.5 months on this and I'm extremely happy with its outcome.

*255 Presets
*3.68 GB of samples (48 kHz/24 Bit)

Polarities for Padshop 2 juxtaposes electronic and acoustic sounds, exploring extreme sonic territories which clash with, oppose or compliment each other. This confrontation between two poles can happen in various ways: either inside a patch by e.g. morphing the sound from frozen/static to animated/moving, from tonal/harmonic to dissonant/noisy, from ethereal/divine to dark/evil or by splitting polarized sounds on the keyboard. The juxtaposition can also occur between presets, the patch names give a hint of what to expect and often function as a more abstract and conceptual thematization.
The new spectral oscillator introduced in Padshop 2 was used predominantly as it has opened a door to new ways of manipulating audio and transforming common timbres into fascinating wondrous sounds. Quite a few presets make use of the new arpeggiator creating polyrhythmic textures where the polarization happens between two different time signature or layering a pitch sequence with a pad or drone sound.
All patches have the modulation wheel assigned, many also use aftertouch. In many cases the modulation wheel drastically changes the timbre of a sound and/or introduces tempo-synced or free modulations also using only the controller lanes of the arpeggiators as additional modulation sources.
The 392 samples (wav/48 kHz/24 Bit/3.68 GB) are divided into 14 sub-folders, besides sampled acoustic instruments (dry and processed), chromatic percussion, membranophones and orchestral sections (borrowed from Iconica for HALion) Polarities also contains field recordings, foley samples, electronic sound effects, vocal samples, plenty of electronic sounds and dozens of long soundscapes and drones (1+ minute long).

Product page.

All my audio demos are below:

https://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/ ... -padshop-2

and here is a Youtube playlist with 17 videos, also containing two walkthroughs, one of them with voiceover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgOjJzv ... JDPBirLUZw

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Sometime over the summer Steinberg will release my new library Polarities for Padshop 2 which took me 4+ months to produce. I just made a run-through video with voiceover describing 14 patches and giving some general info about the library.

As of now Polarity will contain 254 patches, 392 samples with at total of 3.68 GB.

Introduction and run-through video
https://youtu.be/L9lDLD7wY1A

All videos for Polarities are in this playlist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgOjJzv ... JDPBirLUZw

All audio demos are here
https://soundcloud.com/sampleconstruct/ ... -padshop-2

[Sampleconstruct]

Stepping through/improvising with 4 patches from Polarities for Padshop 2:

https://youtu.be/QlAIYvtNmak

[arachnaut]

Just installed, and liking it a lot. I've gone through about half of the presets after about an hour of playing.

Some of them are named with our current situation in mind:
Self Isolation
Contagion

There is a tremendous variety, and the sound quality of each that I've listened to so far is excellent.

There is a thorough description of the presets with guides on using the modulations which is usual for Simon's products but unusual from most preset vendors. I will need to keep this in view during my next preset run through when I chose the presets I want to use for my own stuff later.

I will need to spend some time on this to appreciate it more fully.

I watched some of the videos while this was being teased and I was looking forward to this day for some time. I am not disappointed.

[Sampleconstruct]

Just installed, and liking it a lot. I've gone through about half of the presets after about an hour of playing.

Some of them are named with our current situation in mind:
Self Isolation
Contagion

There is a tremendous variety, and the sound quality of each that I've listened to so far is excellent.

There is a thorough description of the presets with guides on using the modulations which is usual for Simon's products but unusual from most preset vendors. I will need to keep this in view during my next preset run through when I chose the presets I want to use for my own stuff later.

I will need to spend some time on this to appreciate it more fully.

I watched some of the videos while this was being teased and I was looking forward to this day for some time. I am not disappointed.

Thank you for the thorough feedback, Jim!

[arachnaut]

I forgot to mention one installation issue I have been having with Steinberg Products lately.
It probably has to do with my PC screen resolution.
When I enter the elicenser activator, the window is supposed to have a button on the bottom to download the license from Steinberg.
The download button is not drawn because the window is truncated.
You will need to press 'Tab' to 'select' the invisible button and then press 'Enter' to enable the download.

This may be a rare thing, but it has happened to me several times - installing Padshop 2, Spectral Layers, and now this package.

Just a note for those who might encounter it.

Clipboard-1.png

[sqigls]

Great work Simon!
As always

[arachnaut]

Simon programmed several packages in PadShop Pro and now spent 4+ months on these, so his preset settings alone - minus the samples - can be used to save an enormous amount of time getting up to speed with a new synth and tapping into his experience.

So when I mentioned going through them a second time, I meant listening to the sound structure and modulations with the intent to find the things for samples that I make for my own music.

This can be done with any other preset as well, of course, but not many show the detail and modulation choices that most of his exemplify.

I know Simon has said in reviews of his products that he hears his presets in lots of others works, I wonder if he can hear his settings in other folks sounds?

[Sampleconstruct]

Great work Simon!
As always

Thanks Simon

[Sampleconstruct]

I know Simon has said in reviews of his products that he hears his presets in lots of others works, I wonder if he can hear his settings in other folks sounds?

Interesting question! What makes a signature sound? I assume if I hear certain combos of modulation I would at least think that I could have programmed those.

[arachnaut]

I have been following a lot of neural net things these last few years. I wonder if it is possible to somehow come up with a model of a synth patch and plug it into a trainable neural net? The network could learn what makes a good patch.

However, there are some obstacles, at least based on my limited understanding of how these work.

1) The network is probably synthesizer specific.
2) A lot of data is needed to train.

By a lot of data I'm guessing hundreds of thousands of 'good' patches, maybe a lot more. Probably much more than even the hugely prolific patchpool star.

So, my answer to my own question is, probably, we are a long way off, still. So Simon need not fear from any killer droids that will put him out of business.

Hmm... cool name for a preset - "Killer Competitive Droid Scape".

[TwoToneshuzz]

Just found this. Well having the old version Padshop pro I also had to upgrade that to play this. I'm liking the demos very much so far Simon.

The demos sound spectacular through my new audio interface The SSL 2+ . The old firewire interface I have doesn't work on the MacBook Pro 16 i9 usb c ports so the future of audio is more bills and boxes that used to do interesting things but just sit there now.. Improved sound is always welcomed though.

Now getting it the Polarities and Padshop 2 is being a bit of a struggle for which reasons I don't know. But I'll just listen to the demos while the downloads get sorted.

Wonderful to be back in the sounds universe.

[Sampleconstruct]

Just found this. Well having the old version Padshop pro I also had to upgrade that to play this. I'm liking the demos very much so far Simon.

The demos sound spectacular through my new audio interface The SSL 2+ . The old firewire interface I have doesn't work on the MacBook Pro 16 i9 usb c ports so the future of audio is more bills and boxes that used to do interesting things but just sit there now.. Improved sound is always welcomed though.

Now getting it the Polarities and Padshop 2 is being a bit of a struggle for which reasons I don't know. But I'll just listen to the demos while the downloads get sorted.

Wonderful to be back in the sounds universe.

Wade, long time no read, nice to see you back on these premises, hope you're well.

[TwoToneshuzz]

Hello Simon
Alive and kicking. Heatwave is ebbing out a bit so that gives increased energy..Like your sounds!