500 MB of ambient loops, 5$. Now with Wusik patches by nitex

[mahtazz]

I ordered on Feb 2.

No e-link yet?

[Ned Bouhalassa]

I'm in too for the ambient sounds. Looking forward to checking them out!

[airvent-media]

nice sounds indeed. thanks. ill recommend to some friends ! they sound good even without external fx/reaktor mangling. nice

[Hannes_F]

I ordered it and am not really sure about it. It is 77 different samples, most of them sounding quite equal. Looks more or less a synthesizer session cut into pieces. But maybe I did not really get the idea.

[tomg]

I ordered it and am not really sure about it. It is 77 different samples, most of them sounding quite equal. Looks more or less a synthesizer session cut into pieces. But maybe I did not really get the idea.

I was also surprised by the sameness. It was only $5 so what the hell.

[Ned Bouhalassa]

OK, so after having listened to many of them, here's my quick review:

Good news:

- Although it's often very hard to use ambient loops that are this short (average 10 seconds), they loop very well right out of the box. As an example, I just opened a bunch in Quicktime, set it to loop, and often the loop was excellent as is. I'm sure that that's how they were edited.

- The Fizmo sounds are very cool. They move a lot, have quite a bit of character. Yes, there is a sameness to many, but there's enough variety for the collection to inspire more than one musical idea, for sure!

Bad news:

- Since they're all 96Khz, unless that's what you use all the time, you're going to convert them to 48Khz. That means that you're really getting half of 512Mb's worth of material. What I mean is that it's more like a bit over 20 minutes of audio at 48Khz. Still, not bad for 5 bucks.

- Although they do loop well, you'll have to make your own beginning and end to them. They just start and stop, often abruptly. IMO, the only way to use these is as loops in a sampler, where you program a proper attack, slow I suppose for ambient, and a release. These really are just performance edits.

- The Wavestation samples are really often quite thick, busy in the harmonic dpt. In fact, they are more like rich drones than ambient. I wouldn't want to relax while listening to many of them. It's not a criticism per se, but don't be expecting Eno.

- There's no information whatsoever.

All in all, you get what you pay for. In fact, I'd say they're worth at least double the price. But if this was to be aimed at a more professional crowd, I'd be expecting a lot more in terms of how the sounds are prepared. Also I'd MUCH rather have fewer LONGER loops, then these short ones, especially for ambient applications.

[mahtazz]

I ordered on Feb 2.

No e-link yet?

Got it.

Thanks.

[herodotus]

Wow, this is overwhelmig!

I have never gotten so many emails in 24 hours in my life.

@Ned Bouhalassa

First off, I would like to thank you for the detailed review. As I said, these are new territory for us. I don't use a lot of these kinds of sounds myself, so the only way I can know what is going on is feedback like this

OK, so after having listened to many of them, here's my quick review:

Good news:

- Although it's often very hard to use ambient loops that are this short (average 10 seconds), they loop very well right out of the box. As an example, I just opened a bunch in Quicktime, set it to loop, and often the loop was excellent as is. I'm sure that that's how they were edited.

Oh yes. The editing on these was HELL. By no means did I just cut up a synth performance (there were 5 different sessions that these came from, not 1). Each loop required not only elaborate crossfades, but often it took every trick in the audio editors book to make a smooth sounding loop. For example, it was not at all uncommon to have to reverse portions of certain segments and spline them together. Even then, I discarded as much material as I kept.

- The Fizmo sounds are very cool. They move a lot, have quite a bit of character. Yes, there is a sameness to many, but there's enough variety for the collection to inspire more than one musical idea, for sure!

Glad you liked them. There is much more material including it, but it is really hard to get usable material from it. The arpeggiators often interact in really discontinuous ways, making any attempt at editing the result a nightmare.

Bad news:

- Since they're all 96Khz, unless that's what you use all the time, you're going to convert them to 48Khz. That means that you're really getting half of 512Mb's worth of material. What I mean is that it's more like a bit over 20 minutes of audio at 48Khz. Still, not bad for 5 bucks.

You see, I thought people expected 96 khz, as it is the 'industry standard'. Plus they were recorded into ProTools at 96khz. But 48 khz is easy enough to deal with. I will consider this in the future.

- Although they do loop well, you'll have to make your own beginning and end to them. They just start and stop, often abruptly. IMO, the only way to use these is as loops in a sampler, where you program a proper attack, slow I suppose for ambient, and a release.

I wondered about this. What I couldn't figure out is how one could make a loop that faded in and out and was still a loop.

In any case, these were very much intended for use in sampler workstations, with their own EG.

- The Wavestation samples are really often quite thick, busy in the harmonic dpt. In fact, they are more like rich drones than ambient. I wouldn't want to relax while listening to many of them. It's not a criticism per se, but don't be expecting Eno.

Personally, some of those sounds actually scared me as I was working on them (I often work late at night, wearing headphones, which is sort of a weird feeling anyway.)

All in all, you get what you pay for. In fact, I'd say they're worth at least double the price. But if this was to be aimed at a more professional crowd, I'd be expecting a lot more in terms of how the sounds are prepared. Also I'd MUCH rather have fewer LONGER loops, then these short ones, especially for ambient applications

You see, I thought people would want even shorter ones! Shows what I know!

But yes, these loops were very much an experiment. I thought 5$ was a reasonable price for such an experiment, given the work involved, and I was very much hoping for exactly this kind of feedback.

Thanks!

[herodotus]

nice supply - i'm in ...thx

tro

[emdot_ambient]

- The Wavestation samples are really often quite thick, busy in the harmonic dpt. In fact, they are more like rich drones than ambient. I wouldn't want to relax while listening to many of them. It's not a criticism per se, but don't be expecting Eno.

Personally, some of those sounds actually scared me as I was working on them (I often work late at night, wearing headphones, which is sort of a weird feeling anyway.)

Actually I found the Wavestation samples to really zone me out.

My only comment on quality is that the volumes really vary. I'm not really used to working with loops, but I would have thought they'd be more normalized.

Love 'em, though. Definitely worth the cost of a creamy, sugary Starbucks "coffee" drink.

[vurt]

Love 'em, though. Definitely worth the cost of a creamy, sugary Starbucks "coffee" drink.

and that i think is what counts...
yes lets say wed spent 50 dollars, i think then we could all expect a huge variation in sounds and so on.
i actually think companys may benefit from doing smaller packs like this in the future rather than gigs worth of stuff i like the idea of a small package of sounds for pocket money prices.

as for the samples themselves, i havent had much time to get into them properly yet but am liking what ive heard and think even with orions basic sampler i can do a lot with such sounds, reaktor mangling added to that well if anyone wants to bet me a 100 dollars i cant make a full album from just this package

im off to get a coffee

[emdot_ambient]

Spent a couple hours with these samples and Absynth3 last night. I was simply taking presets and replacing their oscillators with these, maybe tweaking filters and FX a little. The results were pretty friggin' cool . . . can't say they were particularly ambient, though

But the results were good enough to start saving the sounds for later use.

[herodotus]

Actually I found the Wavestation samples to really zone me out.

My only comment on quality is that the volumes really vary. I'm not really used to working with loops, but I would have thought they'd be more normalized.

Love 'em, though. Definitely worth the cost of a creamy, sugary Starbucks "coffee" drink.

Glad you Love 'em.

About the lack of normalization: I never normalize loops. This is because one of the distinguishing characteristics of our loops is natural dynamic range. I have never held with 'quiet' loops that have peaks in the same range as the loud ones.

But synthesizers don't really have a natural dynamic range, because, well, they aren't natural, and so normalization is a good idea that I have noted for the future.

Love 'em, though. Definitely worth the cost of a creamy, sugary Starbucks "coffee" drink.

and that i think is what counts...
yes lets say wed spent 50 dollars, i think then we could all expect a huge variation in sounds and so on.
i actually think companys may benefit from doing smaller packs like this in the future rather than gigs worth of stuff i like the idea of a small package of sounds for pocket money prices.

I made more sales in one day than I previously have in a week (and a damn good thing, as we needed the money desperately), so I think you might be on to something.

as for the samples themselves, i havent had much time to get into them properly yet but am liking what ive heard and think even with orions basic sampler i can do a lot with such sounds, reaktor mangling added to that well if anyone wants to bet me a 100 dollars i cant make a full album from just this package

Yeah, but you could make an album with a recording of a chainsaw.

Thanks a lot vurt!

im off to get a coffee

Sounds like a good idea, but it will be at home. The wind chill here is -14 Fahrenheit.

[emdot_ambient]

About the lack of normalization: I never normalize loops. This is because one of the distinguishing characteristics of our loops is natural dynamic range. I have never held with 'quiet' loops that have peaks in the same range as the loud ones.

But synthesizers don't really have a natural dynamic range, because, well, they aren't natural, and so normalization is a good idea that I have noted for the future.

To my mind normalization doesn't change the dynamic range:

Dynamic range = the difference between the quietest and loudest volume of an instrument, part or piece of music.

So if you have a drum loop that peaks at -3dB and the quietest part is -6dB, you have a dynamic range of 3dB. If you normalize the loop so the loudest part is at 0dB, then the quietest part would be at -3dB and you still have a 3dB dynamic range.

In order to make sure drum loops are as useful as possible, I'd probably normalize them to at least -1dB, maybe louder. The dynamic nuance is retained while providing the user the best signal gain possible.

It becomes problematic when you're talking about ambient loops like these, though, because you really don't want them all screaming loud. I listened to them all last night and only altered one of them, increasing it by 12dB. I can't remember which loop it was, but even at a 12dB increase, the loop was probably still the softest of all the loops.

I haven't programmed much in Absynth, but I did notice that if you increase the amount of its polyphony, the output gain decreases and you have to boost the instrument's overall volume. Even with some of the louder loops I had to boost Absynth by 9dB in order to get a good output volume at even 4 note polyphony. Had I been using an unaltered version of that extremely quiet loop, I'm not sure I'd ever have been able to hear it.

So . . . I think if I were you I'd try to publish all synth sounds of a similar style to a uniform perceived volume. You can always turn a sound down, but there's only a limited amount you can turn it up.

[herodotus]

About the lack of normalization: I never normalize loops. This is because one of the distinguishing characteristics of our loops is natural dynamic range. I have never held with 'quiet' loops that have peaks in the same range as the loud ones.

But synthesizers don't really have a natural dynamic range, because, well, they aren't natural, and so normalization is a good idea that I have noted for the future.

To my mind normalization doesn't change the dynamic range:

Dynamic range = the difference between the quietest and loudest volume of an instrument, part or piece of music.

So if you have a drum loop that peaks at -3dB and the quietest part is -6dB, you have a dynamic range of 3dB. If you normalize the loop so the loudest part is at 0dB, then the quietest part would be at -3dB and you still have a 3dB dynamic range.

The dynamic range I was referring to is of a whole recording session or rather, of the set of loops made from one, not the dynamics of an individual loop, which as you noted does not suffer from normalization. If each loop were normalized to, say, -1 db, the ones with just brushes on cymbals would be as loud as the ones with a bunch of snare/rimshot thwaks. This is (to me) quite annoying: when trying to construct a part with a package of loops, you have to readjust the volumes each time you put a new loop in. It is the same as if a recording engineer were to edit/amplify a drum part by hand so that the quiet parts were as loud as the loud parts. Something that is only done in extreme emergencies.

I should note, though, that I do normalize the whole wave file before I start to edit loops out of it.

I haven't programmed much in Absynth, but I did notice that if you increase the amount of its polyphony, the output gain decreases and you have to boost the instrument's overall volume. Even with some of the louder loops I had to boost Absynth by 9dB in order to get a good output volume at even 4 note polyphony. Had I been using an unaltered version of that extremely quiet loop, I'm not sure I'd ever have been able to hear it.

So . . . I think if I were you I'd try to publish all synth sounds of a similar style to a uniform perceived volume. You can always turn a sound down, but there's only a limited amount you can turn it up.

Hmm.. interesting. I didn't know that. Food for thought.

Thanks!