Cult Sampler

Having used a lot of the vintage units represented by this collection, I was very excited to see this released, and got it as soon as it was available. After a few weeks with it, I have to say that while it is very good, there are some mysterious omissions that weakens the collection.

First: The Kompakt engine is very good, and runs well in Logic on my Mac. It has a very small memory footprint (the samples are all pretty small - programs are between 1-6 meg each given the miniscule source samples).

Second: The samples are VERY well recorded, and background hiss has been removed. On some of the Mirage samples, it's actually distracting to have it sound so clean. The Fairlight RRR sound is glorious (you'll be doing "moments in love" all afternoon).

Now my problems: There are some instruments completely missing: The PPG Waveterm library would have been perfect for those of us who grew up with Frankie and Propaganda. Linndrum and Linndrum2s are missing, though the Linn 9000 is still there. There are no Emax1 or EmulatorII samples either (the EMUII they reference is an EMAX2, plus an Emulator3, both 16-bit, ugh!), so some trademark sounds like the Sledgehammer Shakuhachi aren't there... I could go on.

Issue 2: There are omissions WITHIN the represented libraries: While the RX5 drummachine set includes samples from 2 of the optional Wave cartridges, the R8 set is just the stock machine. The Fairlight factory library is 40 disks yet only 20 programs are represented, missing some of the big trademark sounds heard on Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger or Heaven 17 Luxury Gap albums. Nor did they include the "Art of Noise" drums, which almost every Fairlight owner had a copy of.

Issue 3: The final has to do with the Kompakt engine iteself: One of the charms of these old samplers is the aliasing grunge you get from overtransposing a sample. If you tune down any of THESE programs, it sounds too damn good. Some of the sounds on NIN's first album were factory EMAX sounds pitched 2-3 octaves too low with screechy results. You don't get that capability with this library. Not that the Linn1 was included, but the When Doves Cry detuned rimshot with isn't possible with this library.

So in conclusion, it is very nice to have some of these sounds in a low-impact, efficient library. But to live up to the billing of the "Retro VSTi" they should have been more complete in their selection of instruments, more complete in the libraries represented for each instrument, and more grungily authentic in the playback mechanism.

The Manual only covers Kompakt: There is a one page note about the library itself, which is nowhere near enough.

So I do recommend it, but I wish so much it could have been more. I was REALLY looking forward to this, and I think it is a real missed opportunity.

PPG