[ Archiv ] Musik VST Synths und FX - Sammelthread

COLOSSUS is the first SUPER HIGH QUALITY complete sound set ever created, and includes 160 instruments (approx. $6 an instrument) that exceeds the General MIDI specification!

COLOSSUS is a massive 32 Gigabyte (not Megabyte) Virtual Instrument that covers all of the basic musical genres, the way a keyboard workstation attempts to, except COLOSSUS offers much higher quality instruments and dynamics than any keyboard available today.

COLOSSUS is an indispensable tool that you will reach for time and time again when nothing else works, it will become your Swiss army knife of composing, and it?s GENERAL MIDI compatible! You can expect the usual QUANTUM LEAP exceptional quality in COLOSSUS. Even if you own some of these instruments, you will love this collection. A good example is the Fender Rhodes. Despite the fact the Rhodes has been sampled many times, COLOSSUS includes a unique vintage sounding Rhodes you won?t find anywhere else. COLOSSUS includes 15 Gigs of new sounds recorded at Ocean Way Studio B (24-bit), a new 2 Gig piano recorded in Europe, and 15 Gigs from the award-winning range of QUANTUM LEAP and EASTWEST titles, all newly programmed with superior sound quality due to the features and improved audio quality of the included Native Instruments KOMPAKT player.

Programming is kept very simple, and programs that utilize the mod-wheel are labeled appropriately. All programs have CC11 as an additional volume control. Many programs utilize auto sample alternation for added realism.

For touring musicians, this is the ultimate instrument to have on the road or in a club, in fact, EASTWEST is also releasing a hardware rack-mount version of COLOSSUS called COLOSSUS LIVE. COLOSSUS has incredible instruments of every type (check out the complete list at the bottom of this page), for song-writing, filmscoring, multi-media production, in the studio, or on stage, COLOSSUS is an indespensible tool that has you completely covered.

VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT CONTENTS

DRUMS/PERCUSSION
Country Drumkits, Electronic Drumkits, Ethnic percussion, Funk Drumkits, Hip Hop Kits, Jazz Drumkits, Rock Drumkits, Standard Percussion, Studio Drumkits, Taiko Drums

GUITAR FAMILY 60?s
Guitars, 66 Silvertone Bass, 72 Rickenbacker Bass, Acoustic Guitars, Banjo, Blues Guitars, Distorted Guitars, Electric Sitar, Fender Bass, Fender Guitars, Fretless Bass, Hawaiian Guitar, Jazz Guitars, Lakland Rock Bass, Lapsteel, Mandolin, Nylon Guitar, PRS Guitars, Rockabilly Guitar, Slap Bass, Stingray Bass, Surf Guitar, Ukelele, Upright Basses

ETHNIC
Agogo Bells, Bagpipes, Cora, Didjeridoo, Duduk, Dulcimer, Erhu, Fiddle, Irish Low Whistle, Kalimba, Koto, Mid-East Strings, Ney Flute, Ocarina, Pan Flute, Sarangi, Shakuhachi, Shamisen, Shehnai, Sitar, Thai Gong, Uilleann Pipes

KEYBOARD/MALLET
Accordian, Celeste, Church Organs, Concertina, Glockenspiel, Harpsichord, Marimba, Music Box, Reed Organ, Tango Accordian, Vibraphone, Xylophone

ORCHESTRA
Bassoon, Brass Section, Cello, Clarinet, Concert Harp, Contrabass, English Horn, Flute, French Horn, Oboe, Orchestra Hits, Orchestral Strings, Piccolo, Pizzicato Strings, String Ensembles, Timpani, Tremelo Strings, Trombone, Trumpet, Tuba, Tubular Bells, Viola, Violin

PIANO/E.PIANO
Clavinet, CP-80, DX-7, Fazioli F308 Grand Piano, GS-1 Programs, Honky Tonk, Rhodes MKV, Chuck Monte, Steinway B Grand Piano

POP BRASS
3 Trumpets, Alto Saxes, Bari Saxes, Flugel Horn, Pop/Jazz Trumpets, Salsa Trumpets, Soprano Saxes, Trombones, Tubas

CHOIR
(extensive vowels with crossfading) Men?s Choir, Women?s Choir

VINTAGE ORGANS
B3 Organs, Farfisa Organs, Vox Continental Organs

NEW AGE ENSEMBLES
(Inspiring ethno ethereal soundscapes)

STORMDRONE
(3 Gigs of dark atmospheres with morphing)

SYNTH BASSES
(with morphing)

SYNTH LEADS
(with morphing)

SYNTH PADS
(with morphing)

NO SAMPLER REQUIRED !

COLOSSUS comes as a VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT which includes a high-performance NATIVE INSTRUMENTS interface powered by the efficient KONTAKT audio engine, including Direct-from-Disk*, for Mac and PC (*With freely-downloadable Direct-from-Disk extension).



This VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT combines intuitive handling with excellent sound quality, and functions as a plug-in instrument, without the need for a sampler.

For the sonically adventureous, many sound shaping tools have been built in to the interface. Powerful multi-mode filters, envelopes, and LFOs give a wealth of creative possibilities. Integrated high-quality reverb, chorus, and delay effects are also provided.

Direct from Disk playback easily handles large samples beyond available RAM (which is assignable).

Professional sound quality with advanced 32-bit processing, and 256 voice polyphony allow for lush arrangements. The clean and intuitive interface never lets the technology get in the way of your creativity. All important instrument parameters can be immediately adjusted without the need to page, scroll, or fumble through a manual.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

# 32 GB Free Hard Disc Space, DVD Drive

# MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS (for Native Instruments software)
# Windows XP, Pentium III/Athlon 500 Mhz, 256 MB RAM
# OS 10.2.6 or higher, G3 500 Mhz, 256 MB RAM

# RECOMMENDED SYSTEM (for Native Instruments software)
# Windows XP, P III/Athlon 700 MHz, 1 GB RAM
# OS-X or higher, G4 733, 1 GB RAM

# COMPATIBILITY
# WIN (VST?2.0, DXi2?, ASIO?, MME?, Direct Sound?)
# MAC (VST?2.0, ASIO?, Soundmanager?, OMS?, Audio Units?, Core Audio?, RTAS?)

*DFD - Direct from Disk extension from www.soundsonline.com/techsupport.shtml is required.

Registration is required within 14 days (by web, fax or mail).


REVIEW

Keyboard Magazine, June 2005
by Craig Anderton


Awarded KEY BUY AWARD

Pros and Cons

Pros: Very balanced collection of present, accurate, well-recorded sounds. Great General MIDI instruments, but also a whole lot of more esoteric options. Kompakt is much more than a bare-bones playback engine. Streams long samples from disk. Compatible with lots of different formats. Automatable panel controls with host. Stand-alone operation.

Cons: Extremely limited control from external MIDI controllers. Limited roster of effects.

Corona and lime. Lennon and McCartney. Surf and turf. Cheech and Chong. To these famous pairings, we can add Quantum Leap and . . . Maxtor. Or Western Digital, or Seagate. You see, Quantum Leap likes big sound libraries. Colossal, even. Whenever I get one for review, I experience renewed gratitude to my computer guru for recommending removeable drive bays. I pop out my underpowered, weenie hard drive (which started life as a powerful, big hard drive) and insert something big enough to run Quantum Leap?s latest. (Note to conspiracy theorists: Contrary to rumor, Quantum Leap is apparently not a wholly-owned subsidiary of any hard drive company.) Colossus is a General MIDI-compatible sound set for Mac or Windows that has about as much in common with garden-variety GM as a Ferrari Testarossa does with a tricycle. And it has a lot more than just GM: We?re talking about a 32 gigabyte (as the box copy helpfully points out, ?not megabyte?) sound library that folds in 15GB of ?greatest hits? from previous Quantum Leap and East West sample libraries, a new 2GB piano, and 15GB of new sounds recorded in 24-bit fidelity at Ocean Way studios. There?s a total of 160 instruments. And to think that only a few years ago, hardware keyboard workstations were advertising their ?massive 4MB ROM sets.? There are actually two elements that need to be reviewed here: The sounds and the Kompakt player, which allows you to process the instruments and add some of your own mojo to the basic ?ROM? sounds.

Installation
The package consists of a colossal-sized box that houses eight DVDs (sure beats 40 CD-ROMs), a manual for Kompakt, and a sheet of paper advising you to download the ?Direct From Disk? streaming extension. And you should, unless you have multiple gigabytes of RAM installed in your computer. You first install the program, which requires entering the provided serial number. Next comes the library, which (thank you!) can be installed anywhere and moved with impunity. Then comes the obligatory trip to the web for two reasons: To register the product (otherwise, it times out after 14 days) and download the DFD extension. As much as I find online registration an inconvenience, I like NI?s approach because you can manage your registrations online ? for example, if you change computers, you can de-register everything, then re-register again. No need to beg for extra installs. As expected, installing data from eight DVDs is time-consuming. Take advantage of it to pay some bills, clean up your workspace, read a book, take in a movie . . . nah, it?s not really that bad, and the end results are well worth it. Data appears in the library as 23 blocks of monolithic files, not individual waveforms. There?s also a folder for Multis (which starts out empty ? it?s for storing your own multis), as well as a folder of instruments. It?s worth noting that while Colossus touts GM compatibility, in reality that?s just one folder in the bank of instruments (see Gory Details). There are plenty of non-GM sounds as well.

The Workstation Concept
I like ?workstations.? I use SampleTank and Sonik Synth 2 regularly, and they?ve served me well. As far as I?m concerned, the part you play is much more important than the sound you use, so I don?t feel the need to have 4,000 drum kits and 400 pianos. A good workstation plug-in also allows moving fast when inspiration strikes; sounds are just a few mouse clicks away. Having said that, though, great sounds will always trump so-so sounds, so I was curious how Colossus compared to other hardware and software workstations. Also note that Colossus works in stand-alone mode. As musicians get more confident about using computers on stage, you can load up a laptop or music-oriented computer with this baby, and wail. The only limitation is load times for instruments; you?ll probably want to depend on loading multis between songs.

Sounds And In Use
The heading says sounds and in use because I had some ?rough? versions of songs done using MIDI sequences, and had used ?placeholder? sounds to speed up the compositional process. I wanted to see if I could replace those with higher-quality Colossus sounds. First stop: Synth basses. They all had a ?mod? suffix, meaning the mod wheel did something ?under the hood? (as simple as changing the filter to crossfading between two entirely different instruments). Oddly, it couldn?t find samples for one of the basses; it asked if I wanted it to auto-find, it did, and all was well. That didn?t happen with any of the other instruments. When I first saw there were only 14 synth basses in the synth bass folder, I was disappointed. Wrong reaction. Many of them let you morph between two distinct bass instruments with the mod wheel; and the bass sounds are full and powerful, with a great low end. However, most had enough going on in the high end that you could use the onboard filtering to create significant changes. I could easily have tweaked those 14 presets into three times that number, and I bet you wouldn?t have known they were even from the same sample sets. Colossus was off to very promising start. Next up: Brass. I?ve needed some good trumpets for zouk and reggae-type music; after going through seven ?idiomatic? patches for a trumpet section, I hit pay dirt with a sustained mod/filter sound. I?d also wanted a classic muted Miles Davis sound. Bingo! ?Miles Straight? did the job. After trying a bunch of other trumpets, I realized I had all the trumpets I needed here (love that salsa trumpet, too). Good stuff. The idiomatic sax parts didn?t do quite what I wanted, but the ones in the GM set were outstanding. Like several instruments, these are multisampled for expressiveness ? for example, in the alto sax, high velocities bring in samples with a bit of bend and growl. Outstanding. I wanted to replace some drums, too. This is where ?sample alternation,? which avoids the ?machine gun drum? effect, really comes into its own; the acoustic kits drip with realism. The electronic kits are crisp and varied. One of my faves, Technorganic Kit 88, has an embarrassment of riches (88 keys of sounds). And the Ethnic Drums 88Key patch is absolutely killer too, with a gourmet selection of sounds. And now, the pianos. Excellent, but they?re very responsive ? you?ll need a keyboard with a consistent velocity response to bring out the best of what these patches can do. The classical piano made me want to play Claire de Lune and the bright piano, some happening jazz chords. Yes, they passed the ?inspire-me-to-play? test. Even that tired old Rhodes sound took on new life; it growled appropriately on the low notes, and tinkled on the high ones. And here?s a hot tip: Layer the two GM E-pianos. You?ll thank me when you do, especially if you narrow the velocity response on piano 1, and drop the highs a bit on piano 2. In fact, this brings up something else about Multis: They rock for creating layered instruments ? they?re not just about multitimbral sequencer playback. Guitars were great, although there?s a glitch with the GM nylon string model: the highest velocity ?slid? samples on the highest B and C notes have a noticeable amount of hiss on them; some of the other slid samples have a lesser amount of hiss. This isn?t that huge a deal, especially given that this kind of thing was highly untypical, but stood out as one of the very few ?glitches? I encountered. I brought this to East West?s attention, and they said that sounds can be updated online if such problems are caught. Here?s hoping ?can be updated? becomes ?was updated.? I?ll spare you the details, but I kept auditioning sounds, and the hits kept coming. The cellos and strings are rich, the atmospheric sounds can add shading to any soundtrack, and the few rhythmic loops don?t feel gratuitous. The sounds that come out of this instrument pretty much hit a home run, or at least a triple, each time at the plate. I?d say make the GM bank your first stop, because the sounds in there are excellent. And, like the other instruments, they?re pretty ?naked.? This makes them much easier to customize. For example, the string ensemble is as dry as a good martini ? if you want to drench it in reverb or extend the release, that?s your call, not the library?s. If the GM bank doesn?t provide what you need, then dip into the other folders. Colossus has the virtue of having plenty of sounds, but not so many as to be overwhelming. And the sounds that are included are ?broad? enough that you can derive serious variations using Kompakt?s signal warping modules. Did I find the sounds I needed for my tunes? Did I ever.

Kompakt
Kompakt is a compact, 8-part multitimbral version of Native Instruments? Kontakt sampler. For most users who need to add tweaks here and there, it will more than do the job. Hardcore sound surgeons can use Kontakt 1.5 or higher to load the Colossus sounds and really go nuts. Individual instruments can be soloed, muted, transposed, and set to respond to a particular MIDI channel (or Omni; all MIDI channels) and specific keyranges ? great if you want to create an instrument with splits and layers, or bring in an octave or two of idiomatic sounds to accompany standard sounds. Some sounds let you apply processing to particular groups of samples (this is most effective with the drum kits), although it?s fairly limited compared to the group editing available in Kontakt. Regarding automation and control, controller 11 controls volume in standalone or plug-in modes; in plug-in mode only, controller 7 affects volume, and controller 10 controls pan. I didn?t notice any effects from aftertouch in either case. The parameters don?t do MIDI learn, but when used as a VST or DXi plug-in, I was able to record control moves into host sequencers (although for DXi, you have to insert the synth manually into an audio track?s FX bin, not use Sonar?s ?insert DXi synth? option). I did notice that, when used a DXi plug-in, the on-screen keyboard keys go down but don?t come up. Fortunately, that doesn?t indicate a stuck note ? just a graphics bug. I do wish there was a quicker way to audition presets within a folder. Kontakt lets you use right/left arrows to go to the next patch in a folder, but that?s not possible with Kompakt.

Conclusions
Last month we looked at (and liked) Sonik Synth 2. SS2 gives a lot of value for $399, beats Colossus when it comes to effects and playback engine options, and is a virtual synth museum. It?s a great deal. But even at $995 USD, Colossus delivers serious value. It?s slanted much more toward ?real world? sounds, but the extras ? from the New Age layers, to the morphing drones, to the ethnic sounds ? are stellar, and the sounds have power and presence. It?s all killer, no filler, and totally useable. Given that almost half the content comes from other QL products, if I?d invested a lot in those products I?d be peeved to have to buy a bunch of them again to get the sounds I didn?t have. But I think the primary audience for Colossus is those who want a ?desert island? sample CD. Quantum Leap?s contention that Colossus covers all the basic musical genres is accurate, but in some ways, sells the collection short because there?s a ton of valuable, but definitely non-basic, sounds. And while they hit on the ?Swiss army knife? concept, frankly, I?d respectfully disagree. A Swiss army knife is practical and useful, but I wouldn?t consider it inspiring. I found Colossus to be all three. Certainly, the luxury of a 32GB ?ROM set? is something you don?t find in typical keyboard workstations, and they?re right about ease of use ? although operation is simple, not simplistic. So does it have you ?completely covered?? Well, nothing can ever cover everything you could ever want. But I?ve yet to find something that comes as close as Colossus. Playing the sounds is a joy, and one can?t help but respect the obvious amount of work that went into creating this library. Overall, Colossus is a superb collection that puts the essentials ? and more ? in a convenient, well-rounded package that definitely delivers on its promise.