News
Voices of Passion wows in EQ Magazine
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 |
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Wow! Well, that’s the short-form review. To elaborate, these are superbly-recorded “ethnic” samples from Bulgaria, Syria, India, Wales (think Enya), and America (which tend toward more multisampled notes rather than idiosyncratic phrases). They play back through EastWest’s Play engine (32/64-bit, Windows/Mac, ASIO/Core Audio, VST/AU/RTAS) which itself is pretty cool, with convolution reverb, delay, artificial double tracking (chorus), amplitude envelope, and lowpass filter. There are also interesting tricks, like assigning mod wheel to sample start point—start anywhere within a phrase. Another is you can use the left, right, or both channels of a vocal (different channels use different mics) but if you use only one, you can synthesize a stereo spread. The Welsh vocal “phrase generator” is cool, too. Although initially it seems there are only a handful of presets, the “master” ones use keyswitching to access multiple articulations. There are also presets with individual articulations, and some with true legato. Print out the PDF manual—lots of options are hidden in those presets. While obviously geared for video and movies, the vocals are great for replacing that clichéd diva sound used in a lot of trance music, as well as for any kind of chill. Three words: Evocative, fascinating, and unique. Oh, and add “wow,” too. — EQ MAGAZINE, February 2008.
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Tutorial Videos
PLAY version 1.2.0 (and above) includes a new Advanced Streaming Engine (ASE) developed by EASTWEST that offers huge performance gains over previous sampler streaming engines. In this video, Nick Phoenix shows how the PLAY ASE engine provides the power to run large arrangements and orchestrations, and you will see the voice count exceed 400 stereo voices.