Post Description

Volume 2 of the Emulator II OMI Universe of Sounds library follows on from Volume 1, adding well over 500 further instruments and expanding the sound palette of the first library hugely.

The emphasis this time is a little different from before, with a wide range of classic analogue and digital synths represented, while brass, string and orchestral sounds are characterised by smaller selections but greater fidelity, rather than the sheer breadth of sounds covered in Volume 1.

The standout patches (to our ears at least) come in the form of synths, keys and solo instruments, while there are some neat left-field choices as well (like Mellotron strings). The synths delve deep into analogue classics, but also take in the then-modern crop of mid-80s digital machines, so you get both DX-style glitter and D50-style movement along with more typical subtractive fare. This expanse of rich synth tones makes layering the patches very rewarding: blending together an orchestral patch with a synth patch nearly always leads to something special happening. A quick tweak of the envelope attack to join the two together and the results are magical – tons of 8-bit grit from the EII, tons of warmth and depth from the sources themselves. This is something we’ve taken advantage of to great effect in the Multis, which cherry-pick some cool starting tones and then go to town on them with everything the interface has to offer. We hope you’ll have a go, too!

Ethnic instruments also get a good showing, with a wide variety of folk patches (including some great harmonicas) as well as indigenous instruments from around the globe – perfect for those Peter Gabriel moments! And to underpin your tracks there are some truly weighty basses, both electric and synthesised, ready to make your speakers shudder. There’s something incredibly punchy and rock-solid about the EII’s bass response which makes these kinds of patches a joy to play.

As always, we’ve gone the extra mile with the sampling itself, and as well as sampling each patch chromatically and in obsessive detail, we’ve also taken care to multi-sample anything that draws on the EII’s filters, so you can be sure of getting the same velocity response on our patches as you would on the original hardware. Hit harder, and on the patches that support it, the filter opens up just like the real thing!

The icing on the cake is the convolved Lexicon reverb, offering three plates, three rooms and three halls to choose from; period-correct reverb really helps to seat the sounds in a space of their own. Our personal favourites are Plate 3 and Room 2; though of course if you’d rather go dry, you can just hit the ‘Vintage’ button and all effects and modern tweaks will be disabled.

Recreating the Emulator II OMI Universe of Sounds for Kontakt has been a real labour of love; here, with Volume 2, we bring you the fruits of six months of painstaking sampling, looping, tuning and editing. We think it’s well worth the wait, and we hope you do too!
Here are the actual statistics of the library, just for kicks:

    37,238 individual samples
    25Gb original 24-bit
    16Gb uncompressed 16-bit
    8.83Gb compressed .ncw format
    534 individual instruments, consisting of:
        21 Bass
        4 Bells & Chimes
        39 Brass
        48 Drums
        46 Ethnic & Folk
        3 FX
        22 Guitar
        47 Piano & Keys
        45 Orchestral
        73 Percussion
        25 Strings
        139 Synth
        22 Vocal

nJoy!