The nominees for the Sound On Sound 25th Anniversary Awards are in!  And Studio Guitars: The Michael Ripoll Project and Cinematic Percussion have both been nominated in the Best Sound Library category. Readers will decide who will get the coveted top slot in each of the major product-group categories. Voting will take place through the end of November, with the results being announced in time for the Winter NAMM Show this January in Anaheim, CA. Click here to vote for these two Big Fish Audio favorites!

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Sound On Sound Awards

It’s not often that a product comes along with groundbreaking sounds. Read what MusicTech Magazine has to say about Violence and why they gave it 9/10 stars and their MusicTech Innovation Award.

MusicTech Magazine – October 2010

Back in the 40s and 50s, American composer John Cage pioneered many techniques that would go on to influence much of the sound design and sample-based instruments we use today. One of Cage’s famous creations was the prepared piano, which had various objects placed on its strings to create strange new sounds. This unorthodox approach has been applied to the violin in Vir2’s new virtual instrument, Violence.

The instrument is available as an 800MB download that expands to 1.5GB of content and runs in VST, AU and RTAS formats. Powered by the seemingly unstoppable Kontakt engine, each of the 82 instruments features a custom set of scripted knobs and controls and have been divided into four categories: Drum Kits, Melodic, Pads and Sound Effects, and Tempo-Synced. Each folder has a full range of sounds, from natural and organic to weird and electronic as the violin is bowed, scraped, hit, plucked and played with guitar picks, chopsticks, mallets and wet fingers. The quality and depth of the sounds on offer is truly excellent and represents a masterclass in Kontakt programming, layering and sound manipulation.

The drum kits contain an array of acoustic-sounding glitches, taps and scrapes that would be perfect for electronica producers. Likewise, the highly atmospheric Melodic, Pads and SFX sections would be ideal for deep musical styles and sound-design duties.

Finally, there’s a collection of tempo-sync’ed grooves that although highly original may need a bit of tweaking to fit into a track. Despite the high quality of the audio, the clever use of looping and very short samples means that most of the patches load less than 10MB into memory.

The sounds on offer here may not be to everyone’s taste, but if you’re after some original timbres, Violence is well worth a look.

A beautifully crafted and highly original mix of organic, acoustic and mangled digital sounds. – MusicTech Magazine

One of the most trusted voices in the industry, Craig Anderton of EQ Magazine takes a look at Electri6ity. Read what he has to say and why he thinks Electri6ity has the “wow” factor.

EQ Magazine – October 2010

Electri6ity is an ambitious, complex virtual instrument/sound library that takes playing guitar on keyboards to new levels. Like other Vir2 products it’s based on the Kontakt Player, but this one pushes Kontakt 4 further than I’ve seen before-especially in terms of scripting. (Kontakt allows custom scripts that process incoming data; a simple example is assigning successive string notes to alternate between up and down strum directions.)

Vir2 gets around the “sample dry or processed?” dilemma by doing clean samples of the eight guitars (Les Paul, Les Paul P90, Strat, Tele, 335, L4, Danelectro Lipstick, and Rickenbacker, all with over 24,000 samples per guitar). With “Amped” versions, the Player provides some effects a la Guitar Rig; or load “DI” versions and use other amp sims, or send the out to a physical guitar amp. There’s 27GB of samples, so Vir2 recommends 4GB RAM-but go for more if you’re running a 64-bit operating system.

You’ll need an 88-note keyboard to access all keyswitching and articulations. You could use a smaller keyboard, as you can simply ignore the built-in articulations. Then again, you could drive a Porsche without getting out of second gear, but you wouldn’t want to.
The Systems setting page alone is mind-boggling: Set characteristics for individual strings, like velocity and volume, as well as body resonance and 4,544 other parameters (okay, it’s not really that many, but it seems like it sometimes). Thankfully, someone obviously spent a lot of time on presets, so what you load is ready to go. But, being able to change the sound with this level of detail means Electri6ity isn’t just for keyboard players. Even though my primary instrument is guitar, Electri6ity isn’t irrelevant because I can create “impossible” guitar parts that nonetheless sound like guitar.

A Performance page is where you change parameters like which pickup you’re using, the guitar’s tone control, pick position (closer to the neck or bridge), pick direction (up, down, or alternate), how morphing is controlled, and much more. A real-time Fretboard page shows notes being plucked and mapped (with artificial intelligence to map notes in a “guitaristic” way, although you can turn this off); with Amped presets, an additional page offers effects.
This is a remarkable virtual instrument, and yes, the manual does need all 54 pages. You can just load presets and go, or get lost in an amazing level of detail. This is an instrument with a serious “wow” factor. Wow. – Craig Anderton