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Posts Tagged ‘rx2’

Percussion is a section of instruments which on many sample collections get’s thrown in the mix. But Loopmasters have made a complete sample collection solely dedicated to ear candy. Greatly recorded percussion loops and hits which will enrich your compositions for sure. The loops form construction kits where you get all of the individual parts plus the total mix as Rx2/Wav loops. You’ll even find some of the total mix loops processed thru cool effects which make these loops very interesting. All sorts of percussion instruments were used to make these loops. You’ll find Tambourines, Conga’s, Cowbell’s, Shaker’s, Agogobells and many more. But you’ll also find plain drumsounds to complement the percussion. The cool thing is that you get all layers of the full mix loops seperately so you can mix and match them with the other construction kits on the CD. The sound quality is very good. Everything has been recorded with high quality equipment.

There’s an additional folder which contains tambourine and shaker loops which will find their entry into most of your compositions i’m sure. They sound very good and can be mixed into your exsisting arrangement with great ease. They have been made with various instruments including a basket shaker, cabasa, egg shaker, jingle stick and others. Great sounds to lay on your beats to give it just that little twist of realism.

One Shot Sounds

As if this wasn’t enough you’ll also find a folder full of various one shot samples made with a host of percussion instruments. Really too much to mention here but count on it that you’ll find all instruments used for the loops here. Great one shot samples which enable you to get upclose and personal with these instruments.

Conclusion

This CD is packed to the rim with great sounding percussion samples which are of a very high quality and are extremely usable. I recommend everyone who is into using percussion in their songs to grab a hold of this disc as it brings all these percussion instruments right under your fingertips. For £39.95 this disc shows enormous bang for buck values. Great stuff!

Homepage: http://www.loopmasters.com/

Downbeat and Leftfield is an extensive sound collection. You will find a host of sounds covering styles like HipHop, DownTempo, Ambient and more. The sound quality is nothing but staggering thruout the collection. You will find all types of sounds like loops (rx2, wav), drum hits, multi-samples (NN-XT) and one shot samples. Some of the drumgrooves are played live which gives a great feel to them. Others are programmed with great care. One thing i do find is that the drumloop collection could have been bigger. There are basically 22 main loops with some variations per loop. I would have liked to see less variations and more original loops, but what’s there really is of a good quality and after all more isn’t always better. The loops come in wav and rx2 format plus you”ll find the individual drumhits used in the loops in their own folder for making even more variations to the loop or to simple mix the different drumhit kits with each other to come to totally new loops. Endless posibility’s!

Also present on the CD are instrument and bass loops. The instrument loops include the well known vintage keyboards as well as pads, strings, woodwind (Sax and Flute) and vocoder loops. All very musical and of a high quality. The bass loops are groovy and mainly made with bass guitars with a few of them made with sythesizers. There’s some really funky bass riffs in there which will definately inspire many of us.

The structure of the CD is somewhat chaotic at first glance. Directly on the CD you will find folders for the different types of sounds which could have been presented in a more compact way for faster browsing. But this ofcourse doesn’t take away anything of the quality of the sounds on offer. You’ll definately love this disc if you are into hiphop, dnb, downtempo, triphop, etc, etc.

Homepage: http://www.loopmasters.com

Recycle! is the tool for the serious loopist. And especially Recycle! 2.0 since it supports stereo wav and aiff files to be converted to the very popular REX format. Recycle! 2.0 has it’s own format: Rx2. But that’s not the only thing that has changed since the previous version (1.7) of Recycle! There are many interface changes and there are 3 effect processors added to the Recycle! toolbox. As if that wasn’t already enough you can now preview the loop in at a new tempo or/and pitch. And your loops will be compressed in non-lossy compression which saves up to 50% space!

For people who use Reason, Recycle! is just essential stuff. If you want to take full advantage of the Dr.Rex you need it to make Rx2 files from your own loop collection. Either home brewed or from your sample cd’s. And you don’t need to be an audio professional to start working with Recycle! It’s very user friendly and almost al the functions can be found very easy. If you own a hardware sampler you will also find Recycle! to it’s perfect companion. You chop up the loop in Recycle! and when you’r done you send the slices to the sampler and load up the midi file in your sequencer. As easy as it sounds!

Minimum System specifications:

Power MAC
Cd-Rom
16 Bit soundcard
16 Mb Ram
Os 8.6 or later
Midi Interface (for use with external sampler)
SCSI Interface (for use with external sampler)

Intel Pentium Class CPU 66 Mhz or faster
800×600 256 Color or better
Cd-Rom
16 Mb Ram
16 bit soundcard
Win 98 or NT 4.0 or later
Midi Interface (for use with external sampler)
SCSI Interface (for use with external sampler)

Working with Recycle! 2.0

When you have some loops which you want to use in your songs but they are not in the right tempo or pitch, Recycle! is just the perfect tool to make these loops ready to be used in your tracks without having to work for hours on timestretching and stuff like that. Recycle! can slice up your loops into all the individual building blocks it was build of. For instance: A drumloop is usually made out of various drum sounds. Namely a kick, snare, hihats etc, etc. What Recycle! does is placing slices (markers) on the exact beginning of each of these sounds (sounds which are on top of eachother are also in the same slice). It can do this automatically or if you don’t like the results or if the loop is to complicated you can manually add slices to the loop.

When each sound is ‘sliced’ you can start to put up the tempo or/and the pitch of the loop. And the timing stays rocksolid. What actually happens her is that the slices (markers) form a midi file which drives the individual sounds which were seperated by the slice. If you raise the tempo the midi file will play faster and this causes the sounds to be triggered faster. At the same time the pitch will also rise (if you want it to). So you will get a very accurate timestretch without timestretching! Very usefull!!

You can also load in a piece of music and cut out a loop yourself. Just place the L and R handle around the exact loop and choose crop loop. Now the loop will be cut out, ready to be processed by you.

New in Recycle! 2.0 are the 3 effect processors. Which can add real-time effects to your loop. That way you can totally change the sound of your loops which will only give you many more options while working on your loops. Let’s have a closer look at these effect processors:

This is what the name suggests. An envelope with wich you can set the amount of stretch, attack and decay for each slice in the loop at once. The stretch function makes sure that when you lower the speed of a loop you don’t have the ends of these sounds to be cut off at once. This is very important if you have a loop in which there is no space in between the sounds. Recycle! will calculate a tail to each slice according to the last few bits of the slice. The attack can be used to fade in slices when you still have pops and clicks after setting the slice in the best way possible. The decay is used to make the slices shorter (rapid decay). There are some very tasty presets available!

This is really a compressor. You can use it to give your loops more or less punch. The transient shaper re triggers on each slice. So you have very accurate control over the sounds. There are a few very good presets available for if you don’t have a lot of experience with compressors. And these are quite good i must say!

The eq within Recycle! 2.0 is a high quality one. You have total control over your frequency’s. You can boost and cut frequency’s in the whole spectrum of sound. Very usefull to give your loops just that little bit more low or high. Also here you will find some very nice presets. Check out the Serious LoFi preset!!

A very nice thing is the option to change the colours and look of the wavform area. You can have the wavform shaded or plain in the colour of your choice. Also can you set the contrast level. Usefull for when you have to work for a long time with the program without starting to get square eyes.

After you have loaded in your wav or aiff file you can start making slices immediately. However it’s a smart thing to click the preview toggle button right away. There you will have to set the number of bars of which your loop exsists (1 bar is 4 beats). Recycle will now calculate the tempo which you can see in the upper right corner in the tempo section. This is also the point at where the 3 effect processors can be used.

When all this is set you can use the sensitivity slider (sens.). Which will add slices to your loop automatically. The further you move this to the right the more slices will appear in your loop. Most of the time Recycle! finds very good spots to place the slices. But sometimes you might want to manually add or remove slices. This is when the toolbox comes into play.

Recycle has a bunch of tools with which you can slice up your loops. There is the pointer, hide tool, lock tool and pen tool. The arrow is used to move slices. The hide tool to hide slices you have made but which aren’t exactly the ones you really needed. The locktool will lock slices so you can have the sensitivity bar search for more slices while these stay present. The pen tool is used to draw in slices. All tools except the pen tool can audition slices by pressing on the wavform.

As you can read. Recycle! is a pretty powerfull tool with which you can make loops totally ready to be used in your songs. You can load the Rx2 files into many sequencer software programs like Cubase and Reason. And you can use it in your hardware sampler ofcourse. Recycle! 2.0 supports even more samplers then the previous version. Akai s5000, s6000 samplers are also supported now.

Conclusion

Recycle! is essential stuff for all samplist’s. When you work a lot with loops, either self made or from sample cd’s. You cannot overlook Recycle! It’s a great program which really works! No more timestretching drumloops. But not only drumloops. You can throw almost any loop at it and it will handle it. The effect processors in Recycle! are of a very high quality and will give your loops what they might still miss. You can export the loop into a range of formats. Recycle! is even usefull for sounddesigners who make multisamples. Recycle! proves to be a very good cutting help for long takes of multisamples. If you need to know the exact tempo of a loop just load it into Recycle! and you know which tempo the loop is in. For Reason users Recycle! is absolutely needed to get the most out of the Dr.Rex. A very good and highly professional looping tool which will help you to make music even better!

Homepage: http://www.propellerheads.se

The name already makes it clear. This cd is packed with retro sounds. But that’s kinda like calling a harley just a motorcycle I think it’s a great sample cd filled with phatt and great sounds!!

If you are into retro/elektro/funk or jazz you will absolutely love the content of this great refill. But you can absolutely also use the sounds for other kinds of music. The sounds are not the kind you get to hear everyday. I really think these sounds are very unique and cool. It’s not hard to get the right inspiration when going thru the samples

And that’s ofcourse a good thing.

On the cd are also the Rx2 files wich are also in the refill. So you can load ‘m into Recycle and make some really cool variety’s for your own personal use. I usually make more variations to one loop using the filters and/or the gate function. This way you can really make a loop sound just the way you like.

The following files are on the cd:

The Rx2 files:

The Rhodes loops are very cool. Some of ‘m are panning all around the place Great stuff! They also adapt to tempo changes nicely. The upright bass loops are very realistic. You can hear the guitarist working on the guitar. Every slide is picked up in the recording. The Wurlitzer Loops are great too. Funky loops wich can really add life into your tracks.

Great samples. And super usable! Combine some of these loops and you will allmost have a whole track And with the fitting Subtractor patches or NN-19 patches backed by the redum kits you will be able to create the coolest tracks!!

The drumloops are also very nice and well played. Some are really groovy and some are really phatt and with a really high impact. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you produce. There will be some loops to suit your needs.

The Subtractor Patches:

The Subtractor patches are programmed very well. The patches are all analog sounding. But with some sort of lo-fi edge wich adds phattness to these patches. And i don’t mean the Low BW turned on, but the way they are programmed. This patch collection is really a nice addition to your (huge?) sample collection.

The NN-19 patches are in the following flavours:

Arp’s – Clarinet’s – Clavinet’s – Bass – Organ – Piano – Rhodes – SynthLead – SynthBass – SynthPad – Upright Bass – Vintage Strings – Wurlitzer Chord – Fx

And they all sound really good. The Vintage Strings are a blessing for the ear. They sound really very realistic and detailed. With those strings you can build one really beautifull soundscape. And this really goes for all of these patches. Great quality both in sample and patching. The SynthBass and SynthLead are also very convincing and can really be used in all sorts of music. They won’t feel out of place in a great trance or techno production as well. But i never look at sample cd’s that way. I always use all sorts of samples in my music. And these samples are all just great.

The Redrum kits:

The eleven kits are devided into several categories:

And they are great. The drumkits are from clear sounding to drums that seemed to be ripped of a 50′s record Great stuff!!
The Redrum kits are also very usable and fit really nicely with the other samples on the cd. Clear and distorted. You will find some really great drumsounds in the drumkits. The effect kits are also cool. Perfectly to use 10 effects without adding 10 samplers. This is a great way to keep the arrangement organized. And they sound really good to

A great Reason sound cd if you ask me! definately one of the more nicer Reason cd’s ive come across. I would even say this cd is a potential classic.
It’s not just a cd that dissapears between all of your other sample cd’s. This refill contains patches and samples wich are to unique to not be used. I really like this refill. The samples are original and of a high quality.

Great Stuff!!!

Homepage: http://www.powerfx.com

When i opened up the plastic wrapper that’s around the cd. I thought this would be just a nice sample cd. But i was wrong.

This cd is full of analog, fresh and inovative sounds wich are really, really cool!!

On the cd is ofcourse the refill. But also the off-line versions of the AMG/ReasonRefills websites, a bunch of demo refills.

And a collection of demo Rex and Rx2 files wich come from the demo refills. The refill is 204 Mb large and contains some

wicked sounds and patches:

• Dr.Rex DrumLoops
• Dr.Rex MusicLoops
• NN-19 SamplerPatches
• Other Samples
• Redrum Kits
• Setup Song Templates
• Subtractor Patches

The sounds in the refill come in a great variety. All Reason instruments can feed on the refill. More then 100 Beats/Breaks REX files. Including live drums, wich i think are rock solid. And very groovy

Also for the Dr.Rex are 4 categories of music loops (Non beat). They include the following:

Gated FX – Great samples. Very analog sounding. Cool!

Rhodes – Great!! i really love the rhodes. And these Rhodes Rex’s are so natural and analogue sounding. They sound just like the real deal. Along with all of it’s noize. Great material!.

Sax – Some wicked sax loops. This is really some serious sax playing. I can’t stop listening to ‘m.

Upright Bass – 37 great bass loops. Very funky and with the right groove. They also adapt nicely when used in a song a little slower or faster then the original loop tempo.

The NN-19 Patches are great. The samples sound very clean even when played on a low/high octave. The patchlist includes 10 analog FX sets, 13 atmosphere patches, 8 music FX sets, 28 bass patches, 4 Rhodes licks sets, 4 sax licks sets and 2 upright licks sets.

In the ”Other samples” folder are the samples from the Rex files and the NN-19 patches. Great samples if you ask me. The sax definately are my favourites here. But i have a thing for sax’s

The Redrum kits are of an equal quality as the Rex files and that is just great. Very clear and natural sounding drumsamples.

Hard and subtle. Both are represented in the selection of drumsamples. Great material!!!

The Subtractor is one of the main instruments in Reason. It’s just a super device You can do so many cool things with it.

The posibilities are endless.

Some very interesting patches can be found in the ”Subtractor Patches” folder. Bass, Fx, Pads and some more patches wich are to unique to label. All programmed very well.

The bass patches are unbelievable. Great bass sweeps as heard in all the great Drum&Bass productions. Super analogue and very sharp sounding pads are also included. Great to create mystic atmosphere’s or to widen the stereo field in your music.

It doesn’t matter if you make Acid Jazz, Funk, R&B, Drum&bass or HipHop. This refill will fill your needs for analog, fatt and clear sounds. All you need to do is make the composition and add the vocals. To give you some help with starting out a

composition in the desired style there are 5 Setup Song Templates in the refill. They can be a major help when you just don’t know how to begin a song in the style you like so much. They are available in the following styles:

Dark – Jazzy – JumpUp(Kosheen like ) – Tek – Trancy(Great sounding and widely atmospheric)

They should definately get you in the right direction when producing you’r own Drum&Bass (or other) track.

I think the cd is very usefull. The sounds are super usable and won’t wear out easily. This refill is a definate must for serious Drum&Bass producers who work with Reason.
Really a super complete refill!! With this refill you can definately build a drum&bass track wich will sound super fatt!!!!!!

Homepage: http://www.amguk.co.uk