# New Spitfire & HZ Library? (Mercury)



## AdamKmusic (Aug 25, 2022)

Let the hype begin!


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## Matt Moen (Aug 25, 2022)

Spitfire's take on Granular x FM ? Would be surprising to say the least.


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## mussnig (Aug 25, 2022)

AdamKmusic said:


> Let the hype begin!


I'm not completely sure he is really that much involved but maybe he used it on a project or was involved in some discussions? If it were really something that was done in cooperation with HZ then I would expect way more marketing ...

But obviously, I hope I am wrong!


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## richmwhitfield (Aug 25, 2022)

Could it be a sample library of some of Chas Smith's instruments?


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## derschoenekarsten (Aug 25, 2022)

There was another ad on IG stating something about "otherworldly sounds". Really hope it's something along the lines of Resonate rather than sampled synths again (i.e. orchestral instruments recorded in an unconventional manner).


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## AudioLoco (Aug 25, 2022)

...aaaand it's another synth lib....

.....aaand the site has been over(under?)hauled .....


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## davidson (Aug 25, 2022)

AudioLoco said:


> .....aaand the site has been over(under?)hauled .....


Nice, I like it!


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## AudioLoco (Aug 25, 2022)

davidson said:


> Nice, I like it!


Still undecided. I really liked the old one.


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## Loerpert (Aug 25, 2022)

Hans Zimmer Bwraaaaaaaahhs. One can only dream.


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## becolossal (Aug 25, 2022)

AudioLoco said:


> ...aaaand it's another synth lib....
> 
> .....aaand the site has been over(under?)hauled .....


The synth library (Blankfor.ms) is the release from last week.


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

Alright fine, I’ll buy it


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## thaeo (Aug 25, 2022)

Crazy and illogical is this new site design. What a mess.

Gone is the beautiful typography and tasteful whitespace. Elegance nowhere to be seen. Everything is now huge and "utilitarian".

At 100%:






At 80%, has shades of the old design:






Also, what is the point of the unruly huge scale when the actual UI images are so low rez and blurry, the text isn't even readable on a Retina screen?






In this age of Adobe Typekit and other server-loaded web font solutions, this system default san-serif look is the best a designer could come up with for premium products?

I also hate the dark look, as all the photography has been shot assuming the spacey openness of a white background. What was airy and beautifully sparse now feels clunky and claustrophobic. Paragraphs and lists of high contrast white text on dark are extremely irritating to read at length.

I'm the guy that praised marketing "romance", but sadly, this new site design absolutely kills the dream for me. Now that the type is so huge, I find myself actually reading it and quite annoyed by the gushing hype when the actual design is so amateur.


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## Ricgus3 (Aug 25, 2022)

I miss the white page, I wrote that in my feedback for the beta site


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## filipjonathan (Aug 25, 2022)

Meh


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## MisteR (Aug 25, 2022)

new site is a bit… mercurial.


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## MisteR (Aug 25, 2022)




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## Ricgus3 (Aug 25, 2022)

filipjonathan said:


> Meh


Same thought. I have eDNA earth, Segla Textures (NEO), Casette orchestra (solstice)

I have heard all the things in the walkthrough in the ones i own. And yes, I have gone through eDNA earth deeply when I posted my reorginization file on their forum


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## Delboy (Aug 25, 2022)

Mercury Solar for £99 ... dont think we need this at the mo especially but it sounds very much like the NI Light trilogy of products over the last 2-3 years that seem similar .. I may be wrong.


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## becolossal (Aug 25, 2022)

thaeo said:


> Crazy and illogical is this new site design. What a mess.
> 
> Gone is the beautiful typography and tasteful whitespace. Elegance nowhere to be seen. Everything is now huge and "utilitarian".
> 
> ...


Deep breaths. It's a website.


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## Spid (Aug 25, 2022)

Ricgus3 said:


> I miss the white page, I wrote that in my feedback for the beta site


To each his own, you see, I actually hate white pages/websites… I’m a dark mode guy, so I love the new website, so easier on the eyes, mainly when we’re working in the dark.


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## CT (Aug 25, 2022)

I didn't expect to be interested in another of their synthy releases, but this is the kind of thing I really like....


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## SoftSynthLover99 (Aug 25, 2022)

Just from the initial sounds, eDNA Earth can do what this does, and a lot more actually. Spitfire Albion ONE has some great warps as well, so maybe if you don't have either of those libraries, this will be great.

However this is the problem spitfire will run into with the move away from kontakt. So much of what they are releasing has already been done in previous libraries (Albion range, eDNA earth, Olafur Arnalds etc) and arguably sometimes better (eDNA earth is very good IMO). 

In my honest opinion, this entire library seems like something that would have been a small part of a brand new Albion library. Sucks we didn't get Albion Mercury with a full orchestra section + this synth element like previous Albions. One can dream lol


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## doctoremmet (Aug 25, 2022)

So now they are going to release many more “soundsets” for Solar? I haven’t seen or heard any actual specs but I can’t imagine a Spitfire plugin having the power of Falcon or even Soundpaint. Or am I wrong in assuming they’re touting this as some sort of new synth “platform”? 

(Sorry - I have not been able to do much research)


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## Ricgus3 (Aug 25, 2022)

Spid said:


> To each his own, you see, I actually hate white pages/websites… I’m a dark mode guy, so I love the new website, so easier on the eyes, mainly when we’re working in the dark.


Sure I can relate, I have everything on Dark mode usually aswell


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess. 

Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.

I'm lucky enough to own a couple of Chas's instruments in real life, and now you can have the next best thing - a massive collection of samples of his best devices, all mapped and ready to play, inside a slick synth UI for layering, filtering, and LFO-ing. For a mere pittance, less than the cost of the cello bows I've destroyed playing Que Lasta!

It's super generous of Chas to release his iron grip on his one-of-a-kind sounds... you have no idea how long we've been trying to convince him to do this library, and how strenuously he resisted. But Spitfire's team of convincers, aided a little bit by my nagging, finally made it happen, and I'm excited to have such a huge palette of Chas's best sounds at my fingertips. Plus, it's a lot more portable than the real Que Lasta is!


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...


I was going to buy it, but if you pay me £99 I promise not to!


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## blaggins (Aug 25, 2022)

SoftSynthLover99 said:


> Just from the initial sounds, eDNA Earth can do what this does, and a lot more actually.


That is not the impression I'm getting... To be clear I own neither (yet!) but eDNA Earth feels like a world of gorgeous pads heavily laden with synthy elements, in the walkthroughs it sounds more like Lunaris to me (which I do own). This feels different, shimmery and metallic and gritty compared to the sounds I've heard out of eDNA Earth...


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...



Yeah I’m 110% buying this!! I’ve been fascinated with his stuff since watching behind the scenes videos on the Man of Steel score, this is must have!


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## davidson (Aug 25, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> So now they are going to release many more “soundsets” for Solar? I haven’t seen or heard any actual specs but I can’t imagine a Spitfire plugin having the power of Falcon or even Soundpaint. Or am I wrong in assuming they’re touting this as some sort of new synth “platform”?
> 
> (Sorry - I have not been able to do much research)


This engine doesnt seem to have any new user facing features that havent been in edna (or whatever its called now, im confused) for years already, and even back then it was basic and pretty clunky. Soundpaint has little to worry about as far as I can tell. I do quite like some of the sounds in this release though.


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## SoftSynthLover99 (Aug 25, 2022)

tpoots said:


> That is not the impression I'm getting... To be clear I own neither (yet!) but eDNA Earth feels like a world of gorgeous pads heavily laden with synthy elements, in the walkthroughs it sounds more like Lunaris to me (which I do own). This feels different, shimmery and metallic and gritty compared to the sounds I've heard out of eDNA Earth...


Oooh yeah love Lunaris & also Bioscape! I have those as well and those are fantastic libraries. 

I'll probably buy this and compare. It does seem to be a really good library. From using eDNA earth and also the eDNA stuff within all the Albions, I'm just not hearing anything I couldn't achieve with those. That being said, this does sound great (as all of the previous libraries I was comparing do) and I do hope I'm wrong and this offers something completely unique to the libraries I mentioned above.


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## doctoremmet (Aug 25, 2022)

davidson said:


> This engine doesnt seem to have any new user facing features that havent been in edna (or whatever its called now, im confused) for years already, and even back then it was basic and pretty clunky. Soundpaint has little to worry about as far as I can tell. I do quite like some of the sounds in this release though.


Gotcha. So the eDNA engine in Polaris is also “Solar powered” in a way.

I concur that Spitfire is quite adept when it comes to recording good sounding synths. The Segla Textures are a particular favourite of mine, and some of the SA Recordings issues are also quite good in that regard (Alex Epton for instance).


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## Rambobinator (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...


I encourage everyone NOT to buy Hammers !...oh wait...what ? ...i'm too late ?...


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## NuNativs (Aug 25, 2022)

Yawn...


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## Francis Bourre (Aug 25, 2022)

I'm interested, but I hope someone will make a walkthrough of all the core instruments, playing less notes to be able to listen to Chas Smith's instruments in details. I'm less interested by all the processed part of the library.


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

Francis Bourre said:


> I'm interested, but I hope someone will make a walkthrough of all the core instruments, playing less notes to be able to listen to Chas Smith's instruments in details. I'm less interested by all the processed part of the library.



Me too, I’m buying this strictly for the raw, unprocessed instruments, I’m sure the sound design stuff they’ve done is great too but I’d rather do that part myself


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 25, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> Gotcha. So the eDNA engine in Polaris is also “Solar powered” in a way.
> 
> I concur that Spitfire is quite adept when it comes to recording good sounding synths. The Segla Textures are a particular favourite of mine, and some of the SA Recordings issues are also quite good in that regard (Alex Epton for instance).


Solar is powered by eDNA, so it seems to be the name they've come up with for eDNA-in-their-award-winning-plugin.

The downside is that the samples are under lock and key, the upside is that it has a big knob.


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## CT (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...


Would you mind getting me a quote from Chas about maybe commissioning my own bit o' musical sculpture? I'd gladly jump on that so as to get a similar effect but without having to play with other people's toys (and without letting anyone else play with mine). 

...provided he can match the price tag offered here, that is.


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## Alchemedia (Aug 25, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> The downside is that the samples are under lock and key, the upside is that it has a* big knob.*


But does it go to 11?


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 25, 2022)

Alchemedia said:


> But does it go to 11?


Couldn't you just make ten louder? Nah, sorry, I'm confusing myself...


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## kgdrum (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...




I almost feel like I’m back on 48th St. lol 
For people that have only known Charlie through his musical endeavors and these threads,he’s also a great salesman!
This is going to be very hard to resist……..
I do wish there were WAV files available, that would make this beyond insane with creative possibilities.


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## kgdrum (Aug 25, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I was going to buy it, but if you pay me £99 I promise not to!



I still think you’d cave………….


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## Paj (Aug 25, 2022)

Is there any reason that SA couldn't also work this up as an expansion for Kontakt eDNA?

Paj
8^?


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

Michaelt said:


> Would you mind getting me a quote from Chas about maybe commissioning my own bit o' musical sculpture? I'd gladly jump on that so as to get a similar effect but without having to play with other people's toys (and without letting anyone else play with mine).
> 
> ...provided he can match the price tag offered here, that is.


Thing is, Chas doesn't take commissions, sell instruments, or build instruments for anyone but himself. The fact that I have a couple of his instruments is a fluke, a one-off, and came only at the end of a decade-plus of working together. Here is the story:

I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.

So the two of us went over to Chas's workshop and Peter did a good job convincing Chas that if he would give me a few samples of some of his instruments, that I would absolutely NOT screw him over by letting those samples go walking out the door, and that I wouldn't re-use them on other projects without paying and crediting Chas. So the deal was struck that in return for the use of a few samples, I'd pay Chas 10% of the measly fee I was getting for that first SAW film, which was a pretty low-budget affair. I used maybe 15-20 samples from the collection he rented to me, and when SAW was a hit and we immediately began work on the sequel, I paid him 10% of my now-larger fee to compensate him for me re-using those samples on the sequel. As the franchise grew and we made a movie every year for seven years straight, I continued this practice, cutting him checks each year for continued use of that handful of samples. On every SAW movie, Chas gets paid and gets a credit. And I've never used those samples on any other project and I never will. In particular, a few of the low growling bow strokes on Que Lasta became somewhat of a signature sound in the SAW scores. Which was weird, since Chas told me that Que Lasta was the only instrument he'd ever built at the request of someone else. It was built to make one sound, a massive bowed low D, and that's it.

So. A few years ago, Chas was preparing to move from the LA suburbs to a grassy knoll up in northern California, and began the momentous task of disassembling his massive workshop and purpose-built recording studio. Besides all of his recording gear and custom instruments, we're talking massive WW2-era milling machines, drill presses, and lathes, hundreds of specialized bits for cutting exotic metals, a multi-ton "surface plate" (basically a huge thick slab of steel that is perfectly flat to within 1/1000th of an inch for use as a precision fabrication bench).... literally tons and tons of equipment. As he was preparing for the move, he basically said, "Since you've never screwed me over, you love Que Lasta and it's a signature sound in your movie franchise, and technically it's not something I built for my own music, I might be convinced to part with it."

Of course I grabbed my checkbook and a handful of pens with plenty of ink and scooted right over there. The price was.... substantial. But it's not like I buy that sort of thing every week, and it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As we were loading it onto the truck, Chas pointed to another instrument that he'd named "Tio", and said, "Ya know, that one never really worked out the way I planned, so if you want to babysit that one for a while that would be okay. You don't own it, but we can park it at your place.... for now."

Tio is sort of a double-sided waterphone-like device, with a 12" high-carbon saw blade as the resonant body (with the teeth cut off for safety). On both the top and bottom of this disc, an array of steel rods, similar in layout to a waterphone, are affixed around the edge of the disc, which is mounted at its center on a silent low-friction bearing from aircraft surplus, so the whole thing can rotate freely and silently. There is a silent, powerful, DC motor with Variac to control its speed mounted at the bottom of the custom-fabricated blue-anodized aluminum stand that Chas built, so the resonant disc and all its rods can be rotated at consistent speeds. Beneath the resonant disc is a pair of EMG active bass pickups mounted at 180 degrees opposite each other. With headphones on, when you pan the signals from those two pickups to the L+R, and rotate the disc, the sounds of bow strokes on the rods sound NOT like they're panning around the room, they sound like they're passing through a hole drilled through your head from ear-to-ear. It is the most unsettling psychoacoustic effect ever, and although it's most effective on headphones it is still quite weird on speakers.

Where else ya gonna find one of those? Nowhere, that's where. Only a microtonal maniac like Chas would think up something like that, and only an expert metal fabricator with a precision fab shop could even attempt to construct something like that. Every single piece apart from the motor, bearings, and pickups was hand-fabricated by Chas. The L-brackets, the custom-milled stand.... it's a work of art and an example of metal working at the absolute highest level. I've had A LOT of custom metal work done over the years, from architectural steel work on my house like 14" structural I-beams curved to a 45-foot radius, to custom fixtures used to affix giant streetlight globes on top of concrete caissons, not to mention all the custom keyboard stands from the NIN era, and Chas's work is on another level - truly aerospace-grade precision. The fact that he possesses the imagination to conceive of his instruments, the knowledge of the sonic properties of various alloys and shapes of metals, the understanding of nodal points and resonances in metal structures, and the talents and skills to fabricate the instruments.... it's really mind-blowing and unique. 

No price is too high. He's worth every dollar. Just ask Hans.


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## Ricgus3 (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, Chas doesn't take commissions, sell instruments, or build instruments for anyone but himself. The fact that I have a couple of his instruments is a fluke, a one-off, and came only at the end of a decade-plus of working together. Here is the story:
> 
> I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.
> 
> ...


What happened now? I am on parent-leave, already oen eDNA earth, solstice and NEO. And now after reading this I feel like buying this library for 99€.... mr salesman


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## doctoremmet (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, Chas doesn't take commissions, sell instruments, or build instruments for anyone but himself. The fact that I have a couple of his instruments is a fluke, a one-off, and came only at the end of a decade-plus of working together. Here is the story:
> 
> I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.
> 
> ...


Mister Clouser, you are one hell of a story teller! ❤️


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## Peter Satera (Aug 25, 2022)

The amusing thing is, the first time I heard a previous library teaser ( I think it was hammers) my guess it was a Chaz Smith library.

It's a very unique sound and I've picked it up, as I liked it. Going through the huge array of sounds in this UI is challenging. A lot of back and forth opening and closing menus. Even if you like a preset, to fav it, you need to open the menu. Hit star, and back out. The texture of the library is really nice. It's gonna take time to learn it, the many many FX you can control is great.

Gonna give it some time tonight.


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## blaggins (Aug 25, 2022)

Reading @charlieclouser's story, it feels like a wonder that he agreed to work with Spitfire at all! Thanks for that by the way Charlie, posts like yours are why I love this forum so much.


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## Otonal (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.


Hadn't realized until reading this that Peter Freeman had passed away. Have been a huge fan of his work with Jon Hassell for many years. Interesting that they both passed so close together.


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## Thomas Costantino (Aug 25, 2022)

Ricgus3 said:


> Sure I can relate, I have everything on Dark mode usually aswell


Dark mode EVERYTHING. But with this site an many others, you gotta go full black. These dark grey, brown and blue themes always look terrible. Black is super clean. Anything is better than white sites and getting stunned in the face at night.


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## ka00 (Aug 25, 2022)

I didn’t read everything so not sure if this was talked about… but the engine is called Solar, and the first release is Mercury. I guess we’re going to get a series of releases in this engine named after all the planets? And we have Earth for Kontakt, so I assume that will be ported into Solar. Could be an interesting series.


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 25, 2022)

tpoots said:


> Reading @charlieclouser's story, it feels like a wonder that he agreed to work with Spitfire at all! Thanks for that by the way Charlie, posts like yours are why I love this forum so much.


Lucky us that he decided to do it. Where would any of us have access to even one of those instruments let alone this many at once? Outstanding work!


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 25, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> So now they are going to release many more “soundsets” for Solar?


I wouldn’t take that too seriously. It was a forum member speculating with zero evidence. We’ll just need to wait and see. If it’s just this library I am perfectly happy with that.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

Otonal said:


> Hadn't realized until reading this that Peter Freeman had passed away. Have been a huge fan of his work with Jon Hassell for many years. Interesting that they both passed so close together.


Yes, it was rather sudden and I remain quite saddened by his death. I'd known him longer than all but a half-dozen people who are still in my life - since the early 1980s. We were quite close and he worked on many of my scoring projects in recent years, and Peter worked on many of Thomas Newman's scores as well. They'd call him up to do a session and he'd ask, "What are we doing? What should I bring?" and they usually told him something like, "We don't know what we need, but it has to be interesting, so bring whatever you think..." He'd show up with a bass or two, an Eventide h8000, maybe a laptop or an iPad or a small modular rig, and off they'd go. From his bass through his processing, they'd wind up with dreamy clouds, percussive pulses, and ghostly whistles... but almost never an actual bass line. And his work with Jon Hassell was in a similar vein. He worked in the studio and performed live with Jon for many years across many albums. 

Peter was literally the only person whose ears I trusted more than my own. With everybody else, if they declare that some piece of gear or some piece of music "sounds good", I usually disagree by some amount. Not so with Peter. He always stated that most software synths were garbage, and most emulated filters sounded like trash - until the U-He synths hit the streets. Those were permitted. If I stated that I thought something "sounded good", he'd explain exactly why I was wrong! We shared the same snarky sense of humor and had many multi-hour phone calls that only ended because our faces hurt from laughing so much.

He had a massive Synclavier system and was a driving force behind the recent crop of hardware and software that permitted modern computers to control the ancient Synclavier engines. He simply tracked down Cameron Jones and other NED engineers, and by the sheer force of his enthusiasm convinced them to unearth ancient code and collaborate on modern upgrades. A lifetime ham radio enthusiast, his collection of vintage outboard like Lex 480L and PCM42s, AMS DMX+RMX, and tons of Eventide stuff was matched only by his collection of vintage arcade video games, especially vector-graphics machines like Tempest, Ripoff, and Tailgunner. Keeping all that gear operational was a task only a fearless glutton for punishment like Peter could handle.

I remember at one point I needed to do an instrumental cover of Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime" that would be used as the main titles theme for a tv series. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what instrument, what effects, or even what notes were being played in the swirly arpeggio that forms the basis of the track. After bashing my head against it for a day or two, in desperation I called Peter for help. He came over and reverse-engineered a perfect copy using stock Logic instruments and effects in about an hour. He could always hear right through "to the bottom" of any sound or piece of music and disassemble it with ease.

He was good friends with computer music pioneers like David Zicarelli, Mark Jeffery, and Joel Chadabe, and beta tested, argued about, and hounded them relentlessly about their software innovations. He toured with Seal playing bass, and collected arcane technology like magnetic core memory modules and PPG WaveTerm units. 

His ham call sign was K3CS. He will be missed.









Kudoboard for Peter Freeman | Kudoboard


Collaborate to create a unique, online memorial. Add memories, photos, or videos; invite others to contribute; visit online anytime and print it out as a book of remembrance.




www.kudoboard.com













K3CS, by Peter Freeman


11 track album




peterfreeman.bandcamp.com


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

tpoots said:


> Reading @charlieclouser's story, it feels like a wonder that he agreed to work with Spitfire at all! Thanks for that by the way Charlie, posts like yours are why I love this forum so much.


Yes, it took quite some convincing. I started talking to Chas about collaborating with Spitfire something like five years ago, maybe more? Long before I'd started work on Hammers anyway. So I brought him along to a Spitfire dinner a while back, long before he moved up north, and he met Paul and Christian and got the pitch from them.... 

.... and then he just said, "Meh. Not ready to open the vaults to the public just yet."

So we waited. In the meantime he moved up north, did a few more movie scores with Hans, and finally, at long last... he succumbed to the incessant nagging from me, Christian, and Paul! Glad he did, there's gold in them thar hills.


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## Trash Panda (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library.


No worries. I had no plans to do so.


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yes, it took quite some convincing. I started talking to Chas about collaborating with Spitfire something like five years ago, maybe more? Long before I'd started work on Hammers anyway. So I brought him along to a Spitfire dinner a while back, long before he moved up north, and he met Paul and Christian and got the pitch from them....
> 
> .... and then he just said, "Meh. Not ready to open the vaults to the public just yet."
> 
> So we waited. In the meantime he moved up north, did a few more movie scores with Hans, and finally, at long last... he succumbed to the incessant nagging from me, Christian, and Paul! Glad he did, there's gold in them thar hills.



We’re glad he did too!! I just rewatched the behind the scenes video for Man of Steel and it was immediately inspiring, can’t wait to mess around with the monstrous instruments he’s created, truly can’t believe we now have access to this stuff!!


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## Thlian (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, Chas doesn't take commissions, sell instruments, or build instruments for anyone but himself. The fact that I have a couple of his instruments is a fluke, a one-off, and came only at the end of a decade-plus of working together. Here is the story:
> 
> I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.
> 
> ...


Now that`s a story! :D

Hasn`t been many days since I actually thought about this. Chas`s vast collection of insane and out of this world instruments is zero to none. When will some of it be sampled?? Now it has....
First time I actually found out about him was in a video on scoring "Man of Steel", there was a short interview with him. He picked up a piece of sheet metal (picked up a sheet....) and played it with a bow and could immediatly which tone it was. That alone is impressive! Hans had used this particular blade to create the sound of the World engine terraforming the earth in that movie. I was blown away by it! But it wasn`t until I decided to try and get into this world of soundmaking thing, which is a FREAKIN`large rabbit hole, I come to think of his work sampled sounded like a good idea. That fire was lit when @charlieclouser had a visit from SA and Christian Henson to promote the Hammers and this steel frame with a piece of sheet metal hanging in there became the main topic - the Que Lasta! I wanted so bad to run out and cut, weld, machine and put some weird shit together, but there stops my comprehension. The musical creativity Chas posess is one of a kind and when Charlie bowed those strings and bars on it I got the chills!! I said to my wife "You have to listen to this, it`s F***ING awsome. She couldn`t care less and I found that highly disrespective......
Since then I`ve been thinking a few times how cool it would be if someone got those instruments sampled properly :D 
So thank you @charlieclouser for a wonderful story, thank you for your reverbiant livingroom and your passion for drums which gave us Hammers  (well, it wasn`t free so nobody actually gave it to me, but you know)


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## Reznov981 (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I encourage everyone NOT to buy this library. That way the sounds of Chas Smith's instruments will remain exclusive to my use... well, and HZ's too I guess.
> 
> Seriously though, Chas is a true pioneer and nobody else on earth has his unique combination of talents, skills, and background. Studied under Subotnick and Budd? Collaborates with Newman and Zimmer? Can source and weld rare alloys and fabricate instruments machined to a tolerance of one one-thousandth of an inch? Microtonal clusters, ethereal clouds, and horrifying screeches.... they're all in there.
> 
> ...


Firstly, and please forgive me for asking. Are you the real Charlie Clouser? Because bruh! You rule!

I have SUCH big respect for Chas. Please also forgive me for saying this, but the walkthrough of the synth felt... Underwhelming to me? Like what I heard in the video felt like typical celestial ambient sounds I've heard everywhere. Genuinely not trying to be insulting, but is there maybe more diversity and uniqueness to the sounds than the walkthrough was letting on?

Joel


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## Reznov981 (Aug 25, 2022)

kgdrum said:


> I almost feel like I’m back on 48th St. lol
> For people that have only known Charlie through his musical endeavors and these threads,he’s also a great salesman!
> This is going to be very hard to resist……..
> I do wish there were WAV files available, that would make this beyond insane with creative possibilities.


Couldn't you bounce some notes with no FX from the synth?


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## Peter Satera (Aug 25, 2022)

KEM said:


> We’re glad he did too!! I just rewatched the behind the scenes video for Man of Steel and it was immediately inspiring, can’t wait to mess around with the monstrous instruments he’s created, truly can’t believe we now have access to this stuff!!



The sounds from it are beast Kem, I love the sound design possibilities with it. It's such a huge playground.


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## Double Helix (Aug 25, 2022)

Anyone hear Mercury (at merely 8.2GB) as a sort of "Solaris Lite"?
Completely different approaches, of course, but I can imagine similar/wide ranging sound design possibilities


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## Thomas Costantino (Aug 25, 2022)

KEM said:


> We’re glad he did too!! I just rewatched the behind the scenes video for Man of Steel and it was immediately inspiring, can’t wait to mess around with the monstrous instruments he’s created, truly can’t believe we now have access to this stuff!!



‘ Man of Steel: Hans Original Sketchbook’ embodies my soul in one epic track. I’ve listened to that everyday since it’s release. Part of my evening coffee ritual. Trying to kick the coffee, but never that track !

I love introducing film music to people that never listened to scores before. I play the Sketchbook for them and after the first few minutes the response is always the same: “ I never knew music like this existed. I get it now ”.

Always blows me away how people just need exposure to film music and it instantly becomes part of them.

Looking forward to getting my hands on this.


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## CT (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, Chas doesn't take commissions, sell instruments, or build instruments for anyone but himself. The fact that I have a couple of his instruments is a fluke, a one-off, and came only at the end of a decade-plus of working together. Here is the story:
> 
> I was introduced to Chas by one of my oldest friends in the world, a super-talented, golden-ears musician / synthesist / programmer / bassist named Peter Freeman, who sadly passed away last year. I had known Peter since the early 1980's when I briefly worked at the Sam Ash store on 48th street in Manhattan (the only real job I ever had). Peter was the guy who would come into the store a couple times a week and we were always glad to see him because he KNEW what he was talking about. We'd spend hours talking about whatever new synth or processor had arrived that week, but now that I think about it, I don't think he ever bought anything! No matter, we remained friends through the decades, and he came to LA around the same time I quit NIN and returned to LA from New Orleans in 2001. Around 2003 when I was about to start scoring the first SAW film, Peter introduced me to Chas: "I know someone you've just GOT to meet, he builds instruments that make the most haunting, terrifying sounds ever!". And he was right.
> 
> ...


Thanks for taking the time to type all this out man. And yeah... you're a damn good salesman.


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## walkaschaos (Aug 25, 2022)

When I first heard it I was like yay, more pads, but then reading about how they are actually crazy IRL instruments built by this mad scientist, that is actually pretty dang cool.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

Reznov981 said:


> Firstly, and please forgive me for asking. Are you the real Charlie Clouser? Because bruh! You rule!


Yes, 'tis I, in the flesh.


Reznov981 said:


> I have SUCH big respect for Chas. Please also forgive me for saying this, but the walkthrough of the synth felt... Underwhelming to me? Like what I heard in the video felt like typical celestial ambient sounds I've heard everywhere. Genuinely not trying to be insulting, but is there maybe more diversity and uniqueness to the sounds than the walkthrough was letting on?
> 
> Joel


The thing about Chas's sounds is that there's a depth, solidity, and weight behind the organic footprint to these sounds that lets them coexist with other organic sounds, like orchestra and processed guitars, in a way that other stuff generated by PaulStretch / Pigments / Omnisphere doesn't seem to do as well. Ask Hans.

A lot of what you hear in the walkthrough is just the "normal" sound of Chas's instruments. They don't need to be processed to sound like that. Those massive clouds of gradually building metallic sheens - that's what the instrument does when you're standing next to it in the room. Of course, in person, it's quite a unique experience - most people will never in their life hear sounds like that traveling directly from the source to their ears, bouncing around the room in acoustic space, instead of coming out of a loudspeaker. But I have. And since we're in the business of dealing with sounds that do come out of a loudspeaker, well.... here we are.

Not everyone is going to care about that difference. For many folks, and for many types of projects, a $29 pack of "evolving cinematic drones" from some random source will be just fine.

That Man Of Steel video linked above is a great example of what Chas does - if that lights a fire under you, and you'd pay any price and crawl naked through broken glass to get at those sounds, then Add To Cart. If not.... see ya.

But if I may do a little bit of "get off my lawn you young whippersnappers" and "old man yells at cloud" for a minute:

I have every single sample library that's ever used the words evolving, cinematic, texture, bowed, or drone in their description, from $19 Ghosthack specials to $299 big-ticket Kontakt libraries. Terabytes upon terabytes worth. And I've been buying every one I can get my hands on for about 35 years. And sure, there are some cool sounds in many of them.... here and there.

* deep breath * But every laptop-jockeying, bedroom producing, "built" my own DAW PC, PaulStretch shareware plugin processing, just bought an eBow last year, $49 Amazon cello bow purchasing, first-time cymbal bowing, Home Depot metal aisle shopping, portable recorder in the junkyard field tripping, "I'm gonna sample these suspension bridge cables" attempting, home-made Shopify website building, punk-ass BEEEYOTCH sound designer needs to bow the fuck down to Chas Smith. (whew, just had to get that off my chest)

This man was building and recording his unique instruments since the 1970s. He studied with Subotnick and Budd. He's on the scores for The Shawshank Redemption and American Beauty. He was building Serge synthesizers when Serge was still in business, before most sound designers were born - hell, before most sound designer's parents were born! And by building, I don't mean "building" like Perfect Circuit customers "build" a EuroRack system by screwing modules into a case, I mean BUILDING as in assembling modules from individual components with a soldering iron. Here's a photo of Chas in his studio in 1980, three years before the invention of MIDI: 






Yes, that's a massive Serge modular he's sitting behind. He built it. From scratch. With a soldering iron. What were the guys at Sample Developer XXX doing in 1980? Still living in their dad's nutsack, which is where most of 'em should have stayed, judging from the weak-ass sounds they sell. 

Hell, here's Chas's studio from about 12 years ago:






Even only twelve years ago, how many other sound designers and sample devs were sat behind a triple-neck steel guitar that they built from scratch, with modded VHT amps and multiple Eventide H-series processors, conjuring juicy clouds of goodness? None, that's how many. Most of these fools only showed up a few years ago, if that.

I buy and meticulously comb through all the sample libraries from exactly these same punk-ass beeeyotches, including dozens of "bowed cymbal" libraries, and my "keep rate" is around 5% because, to me, all but a tiny handful sound like absolute ass. Just clanky, mid-rangey, unusable crap, mic'ed wrong, played wrong, processed wrong, mixed wrong, mapped wrong.

What you're paying for in Chas's library is a lifetime of experience and innovation. You think Thomas Newman or Hans just lets any random dude contribute to their scores? For $149 / $99 intro pricing? Ridiculously cheap for what you're getting, which is... *The Actual*. The real shit.

Sure, sometimes there's a few gold nuggets in a lot of those cheap-n-cheerful libraries, but usually that's an example of a theory of mine about musicians / bands / sound designers:

"They often accidentally pass through greatness on their way to what they were truly after, but unfortunately, what they were truly after totally sucks ass."

Spend enough time with Pigments and PaulStretch and it's almost impossible not to come up with something cool. But will it sound like just another $19 grab bag of sounds off the internet, or will there be real depth, solidity, and an organic footprint that anchors it in reality while simultaneously ascending to terrifyingly unreal heights? 

For those who think so, then, fine - problem solved, and money saved.

But I've spent eons flipping through every sound under the sun, going, "No... no... no... lame... sucks... weak... no..." whereas with almost any of Chas's sources I immediately trigger a serotonin release and start thinking about how and where I can use them, often changing my approach to a piece of music because "this sound is making me feel things, it's just too damn good not to use RIGHT NOW." 

That instrument of his called The Towers is made from titanium rods and plates and is about twelve feet high, hanging from the ceiling. You stand in the middle of a small forest of these rods and beat them with rawhide mallets as they slowly start to produce sound which swells and cross-resonates with the other rods until you're immersed in the most unholy cloud of tonally resonant sound.... it's unearthly. Where the hell else are you gonna get that? Nowhere.

Never mind the fact that Chas is an ace pedal steel and slide guitar player, and can get you to Bakersfield and back without breaking a sweat. Here's what most people think of when you say "slide guitar":






But here's some of Chas's interpretations of what "slide guitar" means.... His "Junior Blue" hand-built bass steel guitar, in front of his Serge in the DA-88 era, probably 20+ years ago:






... and here he is about 20 years later playing his GuitarZilla and Replicant in concert:






... the GuitarZilla and the Replicant:











(Check the TWO Electrix Repeaters in that rack under the h-8000, about 15 years ago!!) These aren't even the instruments that are the focus of his Spitfire library. These are the insane steel guitars that he builds. 
He *MADE* those. He throws a solid block of aluminum at a WW2-era milling machine and a 20-string double-neck instrument with attached microtonal-rod-resonator comes out the other end! 

Y'all don't even know.

If it doesn't matter, then fine - save your money. If it does matter, Add To Cart, and feel lucky that we've all been given the opportunity to tap into Chas's creativity, expertise, and experience. 

Now stay the hell off my lawn! 

(Can you tell I'm a fan?)


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## becolossal (Aug 25, 2022)

Awesome stories, @charlieclouser! Inspiring and moving to read!


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

Charlie’s enthusiasm about this speaks volumes, this was already an instant purchase for me, but when you have someone of that caliber speaking so much praise you can’t help but want to give in and buy it


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## CT (Aug 25, 2022)

Yeah it's the authenticity here that is appealing. This is one of those cases where I've been after this sound, as a result of the many prominent uses of Chas' stuff in scores I love, for a while now, and I've picked up a few lesser stopgap options in the meantime (and as Charlie says, there's no shortage of those). Wish I could get that cash back now.


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## kgdrum (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yes, 'tis I, in the flesh.
> 
> The thing about Chas's sounds is that there's a depth, solidity, and weight behind the organic footprint to these sounds that lets them coexist with other organic sounds, like orchestra and processed guitars, in a way that other stuff generated by PaulStretch / Pigments / Omnisphere doesn't seem to do as well. Ask Hans.
> 
> ...





So am I safe to assume you like Chas’s work?


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

kgdrum said:


> So am I safe to assume you like Chas’s work?


How’d you guess?


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 25, 2022)

I hope someone is gonna do a playthrough of just the raw samples. Sounding very promising for direct usage or further mangling with more tools in the DAW than the engine has available.


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## kgdrum (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> How’d you guess?


Never underestimate the deductive reasoning of a drummer 🤪


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## AlexRuger (Aug 25, 2022)

@charlieclouser with the greatest post this forum has ever seen, holy shit.


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## Reznov981 (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> ...if I may do a little bit of "get off my lawn you young whippersnappers" and "old man yells at cloud" for a minute...


Not gonna lie, I feel like a proper ass for making such a sh*tty first impression to _Charlie-f*ckin'-Clouser_ right about now 😅

I see and love your passion and you may have just moved me to, as you said, Add To Cart.

Please know I meant no offence before to Chas or the Spitfire product *at all,* and I was going off a video played through a Bluetooth speaker while I was in the shower.

To think those sounds are unprocessed (bar inevitable recording and balancing "processing") is uncanny, and the idea of _physically_ _hearing_ those sounds... I'd probably weep, man! For real!

I hope I've repaired even a tiny shed of respectability from the ignorance of my previous comment to which you were replying 😅 you've been informative and infectiously zealous for a man and his uniquely marvelous craft I have a much greater deal of admiration (reverence?) for.

To make it up to you, would you like to try my post-neo-cinematic ambience soundpack? I made it myself by plucking kitchen forks and adding 18 second reverbs 🤯 Only $19 right now!


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## ka00 (Aug 25, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> I hope someone is gonna do a playthrough of just the raw samples.


Yes, whoever you are, you will become a forum god for a day. Let’s hear those raw samples.


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## NYC Composer (Aug 25, 2022)

@charlieclouser were you working at Ash during the Rick Stevenson/Manny’s era?

Heady days on 48th Street.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> @charlieclouser were you working at Ash during the Rick Stevenson/Manny’s era?
> 
> Heady days on 48th Street.


Yup. 1986 through 1988 or something like that. Good times. New groundbreaking gear arrived weekly it seemed. Software was in its infancy but still, it was a fun era to be on the block.


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## NYC Composer (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yup. 1986 through 1988 or something like that. Good times. New groundbreaking gear arrived weekly it seemed. Software was in its infancy but still, it was a fun era to be on the block.


Rick sold me on the Roland 700 series, starting with the 770. 16 Mb! Yowsah. Mouse driven with a VIDEO OUT. Amazing.

He definitely ruled the keyboard roost salesman-wise, and for a good while. 

48th street was the old “sit around the cracker barrel and trade info” place. Now it’s here. Life a funny old bear.

Back to topic 😉


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

Alright I bought it, time to get lost in the world of Chas Smith…


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yes, 'tis I, in the flesh.
> 
> The thing about Chas's sounds is that there's a depth, solidity, and weight behind the organic footprint to these sounds that lets them coexist with other organic sounds, like orchestra and processed guitars, in a way that other stuff generated by PaulStretch / Pigments / Omnisphere doesn't seem to do as well. Ask Hans.
> 
> ...


Outstanding! Brilliant read! This guy is the real deal. Thanks for the stories, man.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

Reznov981 said:


> Not gonna lie, I feel like a proper ass for making such a sh*tty first impression to _Charlie-f*ckin'-Clouser_ right about now 😅


Hahaha not even, dude. Fret not!


Reznov981 said:


> I see and love your passion and you may have just moved me to, as you said, Add To Cart.
> 
> Please know I meant no offence before to Chas or the Spitfire product *at all,* and I was going off a video played through a Bluetooth speaker while I was in the shower.


Yeah, the true depth of these sounds is when you hear them on the bigs, in a theater, or at least on a nice home theater rig. But even still, the weight is there.


Reznov981 said:


> To think those sounds are unprocessed (bar inevitable recording and balancing "processing") is uncanny, and the idea of _physically_ _hearing_ those sounds... I'd probably weep, man! For real!


Not gonna lie, the first time he did a gnarly bow-stroke on Que Lasta, I did literally tear up a bit. I kind of froze in place and said, "Do that again... please?" This was years prior to the YouTube videos etc., so I was totally unprepared for what I was about to hear. I've only had that experience a couple of times in my life, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that one of those times was hearing a Roland D-50 when it first arrived on 48th street.... 

When Chas first told me to stand in the center of The Towers as he hammered them with rawhide mallets and I felt the sound slowly build and envelope me, coming from front, back, top, and bottom.... it was a slightly out-of-body experience. Like, vertigo, or zero-gravity, or some sensation that disturbed my equilibrium and connection with gravity was occurring.... dude is tapped into some other shit for real.


Reznov981 said:


> I hope I've repaired even a tiny shed of respectability from the ignorance of my previous comment to which you were replying 😅 you've been informative and infectiously zealous for a man and his uniquely marvelous craft I have a much greater deal of admiration (reverence?) for.


Nah, don't sweat. I was kind of waiting for someone to rip shit on Chas's library so I could go nuclear, but that hasn't really happened (yet), and I guess that's no surprise really because it's objectively good. So I just decided to go nuclear anyway! Your post merely gave me the excuse to vent about all the noob-created libraries I've enthusiastically bought over the decades, only to delete 95% of the samples. And I generally try to be diplomatic, deferential, and to give the benefit of the doubt - and try not to name names when it comes to sounds or music that I think totally suck ass. And, to be fair, I've found treasures in the midst of a mountain of pig shit more than a few times when it comes to sample libraries. It's all down to personal taste I guess.

But I stand by my views: that Chas is a sonic god who walks the earth among we mortals, that many sample library devs either don't know what they're doing in the first place, or manage to botch the job somewhere in the process, and that if I think a sound is good or bad I am always right!




Reznov981 said:


> To make it up to you, would you like to try my post-neo-cinematic ambience soundpack? I made it myself by plucking kitchen forks and adding 18 second reverbs 🤯 Only $19 right now!


Sold! Adding to cart....


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## Reznov981 (Aug 25, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> one of those times was hearing a Roland D-50 when it first arrived on 48th street....


You had me going to YouTube to listen to present runthroughs. Must have such a crazy time. I can't lie man, I've written music for a few years now but stepped into the sample world like a year ago, with there already being so much around. I genuinely just can't imagine how it would be for something like this to come out for the first time. It's kinda sad 😅 will there be a music-technological breakthrough in my time? What could it even be? Weird to think about. The 80s must have been exciting as heck.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 25, 2022)

NYC Composer said:


> 48th street was the old “sit around the cracker barrel and trade info” place. Now it’s here. Life a funny old bear.


Yeah, it really was like that. Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks used to come into Sam Ash with an Anvil briefcase full of alternate sound chips for the Linn / DMX / Drumulator, we had the first SP-12 on the block, etc. - plus the "spiffs" from manufacturers like, "Sell five EPS-16 samplers and you get a free one". Great time to be on the block.


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## KEM (Aug 25, 2022)

Ok my first impressions after messing around with it for a few minutes: these sounds are absolutely incredible, especially the raw, unprocessed sounds. They instantly draw you in with such a unique sonic landscape, in a strange way they’re very much tonal and atonal at the same time, you can absolutely feel a “note” to them whenever you play them on the keyboard but they don’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard so the pitch almost becomes irrelevant, like you couldn’t even play a wrong note as it would always sound good no matter what, it’s so alien and foreign that it could sit under anything you’ve written and immediately bring so much atmosphere without distracting from any core musical elements, but it’s also has enough nuance and character to carry a track on its own. I always use scraped cymbals and stuff like that in my music and this just takes that same aesthetic and pushes it so much farther 

Truly a wonderful collection of instruments and absolutely worthy of a purchase, right away the sounds immediately reminded me of the atmospheric stuff that Mel Wesson did for Zimmer on Batman Begins, so it’s no wonder Hans would’ve been so eager to work with Chas Smith, this stuff is right up the same alley


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## Peter Satera (Aug 26, 2022)

KEM said:


> Ok my first impressions after messing around with it for a few minutes: these sounds are absolutely incredible, especially the raw, unprocessed sounds. They instantly draw you in with such a unique sonic landscape, in a strange way they’re very much tonal and atonal at the same time, you can absolutely feel a “note” to them whenever you play them on the keyboard but they don’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard so the pitch almost becomes irrelevant, like you couldn’t even play a wrong note as it would always sound good no matter what, it’s so alien and foreign that it could sit under anything you’ve written and immediately bring so much atmosphere without distracting from any core musical elements, but it’s also has enough nuance and character to carry a track on its own. I always use scraped cymbals and stuff like that in my music and this just takes that same aesthetic and pushes it so much farther
> 
> Truly a wonderful collection of instruments and absolutely worthy of a purchase, right away the sounds immediately reminded me of the atmospheric stuff that Mel Wesson did for Zimmer on Batman Begins, so it’s no wonder Hans would’ve been so eager to work with Chas Smith, this stuff is right up the same alley



Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you. 

All sounds from Solar.


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## RudyS (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you.
> 
> All sounds from Solar.


This sounds amazing.

I really don't need another library, especially from spitfire. I should make some music first. But man, I really like this one.


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## AdamKmusic (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you.
> 
> All sounds from Solar.


Wow sounds great! Are these presets or the raw sounds you’ve then mangled yourself?


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## RudyS (Aug 26, 2022)

Downloading. This must be the most expensive forum in the world. Salesmen like @charlieclouser are not helping either..


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## Peter Satera (Aug 26, 2022)

AdamKmusic said:


> Wow sounds great! Are these presets or the raw sounds you’ve then mangled yourself?


Bit of both. I took some of the presets and tweaked them here and there. The mangling I did was in engine, the FX i added were pretty much high-cut filters and Sound Toys Tremolator (sequencer), but since I made this i find myself liking the spitfire inbuilt one as it can jump from left to right sample, giving really interesting effects. Nothing excessive.

The one thing I think I'd like from the library is an offset (not one that pushes the sample up and down), but one that lets you cut into the samples start time. (Unless there is one, and I'm overlooking it.)


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## Thlian (Aug 26, 2022)

@charlieclouser I see that Que Lasta are on the list. Does that mean that it is sampled at your home with the natural room ambience you have?
I'm gonna try this with Hammers, that will be fun 😊


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## Ricgus3 (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Bit of both. I took some of the presets and tweaked them here and there. The mangling I did was in engine, the FX i added were pretty much high-cut filters and Sound Toys Tremolator (sequencer), but since I made this i find myself liking the spitfire inbuilt one as it can jump from left to right sample, giving really interesting effects. Nothing excessive.
> 
> The one thing I think I'd like from the library is an offset (not one that pushes the sample up and down), but one that lets you cut into the samples start time. (Unless there is one, and I'm overlooking it.)


Your demo do sound great! Do you own any other Edna engine libraries? If so how would you compare them to this?


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## soulofsound (Aug 26, 2022)

It sounds really impressive. I love the new website design too.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

It always used to be then when Spitfire had a sale that other reductions wouldn't apply. I'm not completely sure if that's true of educational discounts, but it was of Able Artist. Maybe it's the change of website design, maybe it's only temporary, but I'm able to use an Able Artist code to get 50% off of the introductory sale price of Mercury. Which is nice.

So, if anyone has such a code, or can get one, you might want to bear this in mind.


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## Drumdude2112 (Aug 26, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yup. 1986 through 1988 or something like that. Good times. New groundbreaking gear arrived weekly it seemed. Software was in its infancy but still, it was a fun era to be on the block.


Oh man that was an AMAZING time to be on music row ...I was mainly a drummer back then and all my buddies worked there and Manny's...My Bud Marco Soccoli "holding court" on Fridays at Sam Ash (then Manny's) drinking Grappa, FUN times and the technology dropping was otherworldly for the time. I remember putting together an electronic drum rig with Marco with an S900 lol..Then Simmons SDX dropped...then D-Drums lol...Was all WOW .


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## Technostica (Aug 26, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> A lot of what you hear in the walkthrough is just the "normal" sound of Chas's instruments. They don't need to be processed to sound like that. Those massive clouds of gradually building metallic sheens - that's what the instrument does when you're standing next to it in the room. Of course, in person, it's quite a unique experience - most people will never in their life hear sounds like that traveling directly from the source to their ears, *bouncing around the room in acoustic space*, instead of coming out of a loudspeaker. But I have.


I can relate that to playing 3 or more large gongs in a small room, where the sound envelopes you and fills the room.
That is my idea of surround sound and I lose sense at times of which gong is making which sound, even though they are right next to me.

There's an irony in that those of us that have experienced this in person, will know that sampling doesn't get close to that experience, but the samples can still stand up on their own and are worth promoting.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you.
> 
> All sounds from Solar.


Hm. That's a bit good, that is.


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## Baronvonheadless (Aug 26, 2022)

In the walkthrough Dan plays multiple patches at once, how is this achieved in this engine? I didn't think that was possible?
Or is he just record enabling 3 tracks in his daw? with 3 separate plugins of solar?
Sorry if this has been addressed already, just nabbed it and in between projects can't dig through the whole thread atm. 

Cheers!


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## Simeon (Aug 26, 2022)

Exploring this collection was such an amazing experience!
I am working on editing the section on MERCURY, but thought I would share the full replay here. When I brought Mercury together with Tundra and Cinematic Soft Piano, inside of Unify, it was a very special moment and illustrates how powerful Mercury can be.

Synth AI, MERCURY - SPITFIRE AUDIO, GSI Piano Edition | Giveaways and More!


Thanks so much @charlieclouser for sharing your remarkable stories.

Joyfully!


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## Technostica (Aug 26, 2022)

Reznov981 said:


> Not gonna lie, I feel like a proper ass for making such a sh*tty first impression to _Charlie-f*ckin'-Clouser_ right about now 😅
> 
> I see and love your passion and you may have just moved me to, as you said, Add To Cart.
> 
> ...


You weren't alone in initially feeling underwhelmed by the walkthrough and I also listened on inappropriate equipment.
I very rarely listen to my iPad Mini 5 via the speakers but I did for the live stream and I bailed on it as it sounded like a wash of reverb to me.
I did go back later with headphones and jumped forward and heard some intriguing sounds.
I would like to hear a different walkthrough as I'm not convinced that showed it at its best.

I see that Simeon did a live stream last night which I will check out. (He linked it just before me).
It starts at 57:28:


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> I unfortunately don't, therefore I can't make an experience comparison. Audibly it is quite different from what I have heard from Edna Earth but from the walkthrough of Phobos, I can see why someone could consider passing on it, or holding off on it, especially since it seems to have some issues on my end.
> 
> ----
> On using this, I have found Mercury Solar doesn't always playback the sound and then sometimes it does. I have tried in Cubase 11 and FL Studio 20.9.
> ...


I've only just installed it, so I haven't investigated much yet. But, yes, I have the same issue with Angry Sprite (in the Warp category). It sounds like one of the following, but may well not be: a continuously cycling or random sample start point (some of which are very quiet) or a filter with an LFO set free and not re-triggered. I can't find any evidence of either of those being in play, though.

Angry Sprite uses two Que Lastos banks. These banks (in the core section) sound like they lend themselves to the problem of a varying a start point meaning that sometimes the key will trigger the sample whilst it is quiet.

That's all I've got so far.


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## Mithnaur (Aug 26, 2022)

As I don't have eDNA Earth or NEO, even if I have other comparable libraries, I was keen to try for this price.
And also because I am weak ^^
Anyway I let myself be tempted and ... well it's not bad.
The quality of the sound, the rendering, the atmosphere are there!
On the other hand a lot of patches are more or less the same, and with a lot of déjà vu.
Well, it will be useful for me, that's for sure. And above all it leaves a lot of possibilities of modification like in Omnisphere.
But I was already expecting more tonal patches, and maybe a bit more originality.

But that being said, it still fills a real need depending on what you already have or don't have in the same genre. But it's hard to know without testing whether there are a lot of duplicates or not


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## Drundfunk (Aug 26, 2022)

Guess I'm going to instabuy this. I don't know, this just sounds spacious. Price is also not too high. Great release and all of that without much marketing tamtam. Like it!


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## Dr.Quest (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you.
> 
> All sounds from Solar.


Very very cool!


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## Peter Satera (Aug 26, 2022)

Ricgus3 said:


> Your demo do sound great! Do you own any other Edna engine libraries? If so how would you compare them to this?


I unfortunately don't, therefore I can't make an experience comparison. Audibly it is quite different from what I have heard from Edna Earth but from the walkthrough of Phobos, I can see why someone could consider passing on it, or holding off on it, especially since it seems to have some issues on my end.

----
On using this, I have found Mercury Solar doesn't always playback the sound and then sometimes it does. I have tried in Cubase 11 and FL Studio 20.9.

If you own it, could you choose the Mercury: Angry Sprite preset from the drop down menu. I find the upper register cuts out and makes a clicking sound struggling to get the sample out, then, if I gradually scale one note of a time, it will sometimes play. Other presets did this too while exploring.

Anyone else having this issue?


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## Peter Satera (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I've only just installed it, so I haven't investigated much yet. But, yes, I have the same issue with Angry Sprite (in the Warp category). It sounds like one of the following, but may well not be: a continuously cycling or random sample start point (some of which are very quiet) or a filter with an LFO set free and not re-triggered. I can't find any evidence of either of those being in play, though.
> 
> Angry Sprite uses two Que Lastos banks. These banks (in the core section) sound like they lend themselves to the problem of a varying a start point meaning that sometimes the key will trigger the sample whilst it is quiet.
> 
> That's all I've got so far.


That's quite helpful, i will continue to investigate asap!


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

I played each of the Core banks, middle C, working through alphabetically. The samples are not played in full in nearly every case, but just enough so that you can get a sense of it's character. I don't want to facilitate anyone in sampling these from playback. I'll probably take this down after the weekend; or sooner if anyone suggests that I should. (This upload isn't public and can only be found here on this thread.)

No processing, obviously! No EQ, no limiting; just increasing the gain before posting (Spitfire does like their quiet libraries!).


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## Mike Fox (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I played each of the Core banks, middle C, working through alphabetically. The samples are not played in full in nearly every case, but just enough so that you can get a sense of it's character. I don't want to facilitate anyone in sampling these from playback. I'll probably take this down after the weekend; or sooner if anyone suggests that I should. (This upload isn't public and can only be found here on this thread.)
> 
> No processing, obviously! No EQ, no limiting; just increasing the gain before posting (Spitfire does like their quiet libraries!).



Thanks for posting this. I honestly wasn’t interested until i heard some of the sounds in your clip. Definitely some great stuff here for horror.

That damn player though.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

And here is the exact recording that I posted as First Planet, but now put into Falcon with granular processing, delay and reverb, and some rather rough improvising.


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## KEM (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> And here is the exact recording that I posted as First Planet, but now put into Falcon with granular processing, delay and reverb, and some rather rough improvising.




Sounds like Arca, I can dig it!!


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

KEM said:


> Sounds like Arca, I can dig it!!


Thanks! I'll have to listen to some of Arca's work, then!


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## kgdrum (Aug 26, 2022)

Drumdude2112 said:


> Oh man that was an AMAZING time to be on music row ...I was mainly a drummer back then and all my buddies worked there and Manny's...My Bud Marco Soccoli "holding court" on Fridays at Sam Ash (then Manny's) drinking Grappa, FUN times and the technology dropping was otherworldly for the time. I remember putting together an electronic drum rig with Marco with an S900 lol..Then Simmons SDX dropped...then D-Drums lol...Was all WOW .


Marco is a dear old friend 💥❤️💥great guy!


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 26, 2022)

I wonder whats the rough ratio between chromatic/tonal and atonal/fx/cluster raw soundsources?


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## charlieclouser (Aug 26, 2022)

kgdrum said:


> Marco is a dear old friend 💥❤️💥great guy!


Marco is awesome. Extremely New Yawk! I remember going out to L'Amour in Brooklyn to see his band ROXX. How perfect is that? I think he had an electronic kit with a big sexy female robot airbrushed on the backs of all the pads?

I was jealous of him because he got to go to the NAMM show in Anaheim the year before Richie Ash took me out to it, and when he got back and we asked him how he liked California, he said, "It's fuckin' amazing dude, so many hot chicks and they all got the big Sepulvedas! Just big Cahuengas everywhere you look!" (meaning boobs of course) For those not from LA, Sepulveda Blvd is a main street in the Valley, and Cahuenga Blvd is a main street in Hollywood. So perfect! I know Marco is totally New Yawk but he would have fit right in on the Sunset Strip.

Great dude.


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## Simeon (Aug 26, 2022)

Here is the edited (and indexed) segment from the livestream.
Enjoy!


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## Daren Audio (Aug 26, 2022)

Peter Satera said:


> Good example of it's raw use. Once you get under the hood, pitching it, mangling it and with some simple processing I can get absolutely behind the context Charlie is speaking about. That it sits in a more organic area than Omnisphere, and your approach to the mangling of them can make them unique to you.
> 
> All sounds from Solar.


Fantastic example!

I've used the eDNA in Albion One and the new "Solar" Engine in Mercury should be no different except the new GUI is a huge improvement for the eyes (no more tiny fonts).


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## charlieclouser (Aug 26, 2022)

KEM said:


> Ok my first impressions after messing around with it for a few minutes: these sounds are absolutely incredible, especially the raw, unprocessed sounds. They instantly draw you in with such a unique sonic landscape, in a strange way they’re very much tonal and atonal at the same time, you can absolutely feel a “note” to them whenever you play them on the keyboard but they don’t sound like anything you’ve ever heard so the pitch almost becomes irrelevant, like you couldn’t even play a wrong note as it would always sound good no matter what, it’s so alien and foreign that it could sit under anything you’ve written and immediately bring so much atmosphere without distracting from any core musical elements, but it’s also has enough nuance and character to carry a track on its own. I always use scraped cymbals and stuff like that in my music and this just takes that same aesthetic and pushes it so much farther


Well put. That "always tonal yet still atonal" aspect is something that's a big part of a lot of Chas's instruments. Sure, there's plenty of pure pitched tones that don't have any "cluster" aspect and thus are easy to use for melodic purposes, but the atonal + cluster stuff still has a tonal aspect that's present and that's the thing that comes from Chas's knowledge of microtonalalities, nodal points, etc. The black art of which he is a master. And THAT is one thing that doesn't happen by accident. It only can happen when lengths and ratios are precisely calculated and fine-tuned. 

In that Man Of Steel video when we see him playing Copper Box, you can see little round counterweights clamped on to each of the rods. These are use to damp certain harmonic frequencies and emphasize others, and it's not random or by accident. On the instrument called Lockheed, those little rods protruding around the edge of the sheet are placed at precisely calculated and measured nodal points, where Chas knows that exciting the sheet at that physical point will cause vibration that's harmonically sympathetic to the fundamentals of the sheet. *It's all calculated.* Who else out there even has the knowledge and experience to attempt to go to such lengths? It's madness. It could not be duplicated by mere mortals.

And it's precisely those calculated, guided-by-knowledge and fine-tuned-by-ear ratios and harmonics that create that sympathetic nature of his "atonal" sounds. It's not random atonal noise clouds, it's *microtonality*. When he talks about using a 14-tone scale, that doesn't just mean "divide the octave into 14 equal splits instead of 12 and be done with it", it means "fine tune the ratios of 14 notes per octave to create an unconventional, yet still tonal, interpretation of an octave". And that's why those "atonal clouds" sound different, better, more *musical* than some knucklehead like me just grabbing a hunk of metal and a cello bow and going to town.

Any civilian who's trying to build Chas-style instruments, and any sample library that has sounds claiming to be of a similar origin, will ultimately fail because that knowledge and experience is just not there, and the sonic results will be either atonal or tonal, but never occupy the same nether-region between the two that Chas's stuff does. That harmonic cohesion, the way his sounds can coexist with "normal" sounds without rubbing against them in uncomfortable ways, the feeling that there are no "wrong notes", that sense of strangely placid, "comforting uncomfortable-ness", is what I found so amazing about his instruments, and is what I've been trying to describe as I sing his praises. 

He is the *master* of microtonality, and after *fifty years* of working in that rarefied atmosphere, Chas has built up a body of knowledge and expertise that is truly unique and cannot be duplicated or even simulated. Utterly amazing.

The only appropriate reaction GIF I can think of is this:


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## Baronvonheadless (Aug 26, 2022)

First experimental meandering with the library mixed with Hammers.
I thought the two would pair exceptionally well.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

Baronvonheadless said:


> First experimental meandering with the library mixed with Hammers.
> I thought the two would pair exceptionally well.



The pair very well indeed! That sounds great! I love how you ended it, too.


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## Baronvonheadless (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> The pair very well indeed! That sounds great! I love you ended it, too.


Thank you my friend!


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## Peter Satera (Aug 26, 2022)

Baronvonheadless said:


> First experimental meandering with the library mixed with Hammers.
> I thought the two would pair exceptionally well.



Nice!!! Hammers is defo on my list!


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 26, 2022)

A bit of psychology - I think it's a bit of a trap to get too focused on the origin of a sound.
I'm sure when being too impressed by the source the sound itself can become way more impressive than it is.
So I'd just try to imagine everything you hear is just me sampling random string textures run through paulstretch. If it holds up without any origin story then we got something going...
I'm at least glad I have hardly any interests despite the sound so I have a pokerface emotionally while reading about the instruments 

I'm at least still waiting for raw unprocessed instrument examples before even having an opinion so I'm not saying it's not that amazing, only briefly looked into walkthrough but wasn't a fan of the way the presets were designed sonically despite promising some very interesting instruments behind it.

Well 14:52 and 17:55 sounds ridiculously great, I think that's mostly the raw instrument hehe.
Amazing organic timbre and sonic scale/depth.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> A bit of psychology - I think it's a bit of a trap to get too focused on the origin of a sound.
> I'm sure when being too impressed by the source the sound itself can become way more impressive than it is.
> So I'd just try to imagine everything you hear is just me sampling random string textures run through paulstretch. If it holds up without any origin story then we got something going...
> I'm at least glad I have hardly any interests despite the sound so I have a pokerface emotionally while reading about the instruments
> ...



I posted all of the core sounds above. Post #106. Or did you mean something else? 






New Spitfire & HZ Library? (Mercury)


Guess I'm going to instabuy this. I don't know, this just sounds spacious. Price is also not too high. Great release and all of that without much marketing tamtam. Like it!




vi-control.net


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## ka00 (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I posted all of the core sounds above. Post #106. Or did you mean something else?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I too missed this. Thanks for posting them! If you add this to Resonate, together they seem to cover some great amount of ground.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 26, 2022)

ka00 said:


> I too missed this. Thanks for posting them! If you add this to Resonate, together they seem to cover some great amount of ground.


Yes. Good call. As I bought Mercury, it is necessary that I buy Resonate!

Well, that can wait for a bit! But I did like the demos for Resonate a lot.


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## KEM (Aug 26, 2022)

ka00 said:


> I too missed this. Thanks for posting them! If you add this to Resonate, together they seem to cover some great amount of ground.



Resonate is next on my list, just from watching the walkthroughs I could tell they would pair very well together


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## Alchemedia (Aug 26, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> A bit of psychology -* I think it's a bit of a trap to get too focused on the origin of a sound.
> I'm sure when being too impressed by the source the sound itself can become way more impressive than it is.*


Lionel's words of wisdom should be permanently plastered at the top of every page of this site.


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## ka00 (Aug 26, 2022)

Alchemedia said:


> Lionel's words of wisdom should be permanently plastered at the top of every page of this site.


Yes, agreed! And in my opinion “origin” can be the creative person behind it, the performer and their list of credits, the room and it’s list of well-known people who’ve recorded in it.

The same goes for phrases like “Hollywood’s secret weapon”. If the secret is no longer a secret, then what did you just buy?

The sounds and their usability should come first.


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 26, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I posted all of the core sounds above. Post #106. Or did you mean something else?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


oh, awesome thanks! I missed it because it looked like a demo track.


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## becolossal (Aug 26, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> A bit of psychology - I think it's a bit of a trap to get too focused on the origin of a sound.
> I'm sure when being too impressed by the source the sound itself can become way more impressive than it is.
> So I'd just try to imagine everything you hear is just me sampling random string textures run through paulstretch. If it holds up without any origin story then we got something going...
> I'm at least glad I have hardly any interests despite the sound so I have a pokerface emotionally while reading about the instruments
> ...



When you take a few more spins around the earth, you’ll come to understand storytelling is the point of just about everything. While Mercury might not be my jam, the stories and history that someone like @charlieclouser has taken to share in this thread about a man he deeply respects is far more valuable than any endless debate about any of the other nonsense that takes place around here these days. 

You can have your poker face when reading about Chas’s instruments, but then you’re missing most of the point. I don’t like Spitfire’s particular flavor of marketing either, but it’s pretty easy to ignore and not even remotely close to the point of this thread anymore.


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## becolossal (Aug 26, 2022)

Trash Panda said:


> No worries. I had no plans to do so.


It’s possible to not want a product, and also not be a dick to a respected member of the forum.


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## KEM (Aug 26, 2022)

Spitfire didn’t even really market this, which is honestly crazy to me as they’ve had much more elaborate marketing campaigns for products FAR less exciting than this, so that made me much more willing to buy this, and I’m glad I did


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## Trash Panda (Aug 26, 2022)

becolossal said:


> It’s possible to not want a product, and also not be a dick to a respected member of the forum.


Calm down, Princess. It was some light-hearted humor.


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## CT (Aug 26, 2022)

Princess? Is that a bad thing now?


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## Trash Panda (Aug 26, 2022)

Han Solo didn’t think so.


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## ka00 (Aug 26, 2022)

becolossal said:


> While Mercury might not be my jam, the stories and history that someone like @charlieclouser has taken to share in this thread about a man he deeply respects is far more valuable than any endless debate about any of the other nonsense that takes place around here these days.


He’s not missing the point though.

These are two separate questions:
1) should a person find the stories valuable or entertaining? (IMO, yes, and we should be grateful Charlie is sharing them with us)

2) should a person buy the library? (IMO, should be based on other factors than the above)

The answer to one question shouldn’t impact the answer to the other. And the second question is what he’s looking to decide on. If he decides to answer no to question 2, you shouldn’t feel the need to defend anything on point 1. They don’t need to be entangled.


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## ka00 (Aug 26, 2022)




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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 26, 2022)

becolossal said:


> When you take a few more spins around the earth, you’ll come to understand storytelling is the point of just about everything. While Mercury might not be my jam, the stories and history that someone like @charlieclouser has taken to share in this thread about a man he deeply respects is far more valuable than any endless debate about any of the other nonsense that takes place around here these days.
> 
> You can have your poker face when reading about Chas’s instruments, but then you’re missing most of the point. I don’t like Spitfire’s particular flavor of marketing either, but it’s pretty easy to ignore and not even remotely close to the point of this thread anymore.


Please try making points without taking into account the age of the person you're responding to, that's really irrelevant. There are very wise young people and very dumb old people and overall everyone will come to different conclusions after taking spins around earth. Would be pretty boring if everyone would have the same views after the "spinning" 

And no, storytelling is absolutely nothing when it comes to *whether to use or buy a library*.
You are actually demonstrating my point I'm afraid :D
You say it's not up your alley but appreciate the history and stories. That's exactly my point, you are basically having the right mindset according to my point haha.. seems like this isn't enough to bias you into wanting to buy/use the sounds. 

This isn't meant to speak again or disrespect the comments by Charlie, in fact I don't even mean to reference them at all (I have zero time actually, just procrastinating, so I just briefly overread everything, which might be the main reason I can remain cold'ish haha) it's just a general note on avoiding getting influenced by bias. One can still appreciate the backgrounds and stories while trying to be cold and objective with the sounds.
In a year the excitement about the origin may have faded but the sounds are still the same in your track so they better be the main reason for using them rather than the origin.
I try to approach it the same way when recording/designing stuff myself, so I don't get to biased by how cool the sources or the process is while having forgotten in a half year and being left with half-decent stuff.


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## redlester (Aug 27, 2022)

ka00 said:


> I didn’t read everything so not sure if this was talked about… but the engine is called Solar, and the first release is Mercury. I guess we’re going to get a series of releases in this engine named after all the planets? And we have Earth for Kontakt, so I assume that will be ported into Solar. Could be an interesting series.


I think this is most definitely the case. When I downloaded and installed I was confused to find that although the product is named Mercury the install folder is called “Solar” and not “Mercury”, but not only that - the plugin itself appears in the DAW under the name Solar. Not Mercury. 

So I anticipate this being similar to Abbey Road One in that future additions will be made, but running in the Solar plugin.


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## CT (Aug 27, 2022)

Should I get this? I want to get this, but it's money. I want to keep money. Difficult choice. Thinking.


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## KEM (Aug 27, 2022)

Michaelt said:


> Should I get this? I want to get this, but it's money. I want to keep money. Difficult choice. Thinking.



Money can always be reacquired


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 27, 2022)

Michaelt said:


> Should I get this? I want to get this, but it's money. I want to keep money. Difficult choice. Thinking.


Do you have enough to cover food, utilities and housing and other bills? Do you have enough to cover support for any dependents? Do you have enough for gin/chocolate? If the amount you have exceeds all of these expenses by $/£/EUR 99, have at it! If not... Have you considered crime as a supplementary source of revenue? If so, you too could make extra money as an out of country delivery agent!

If you are interested, just send me an email at [email protected]

(Warning, this career may involve lengthy terms in a foreign prison system.)


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## RudyS (Aug 27, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Well put. That "always tonal yet still atonal" aspect is something that's a big part of a lot of Chas's instruments. Sure, there's plenty of pure pitched tones that don't have any "cluster" aspect and thus are easy to use for melodic purposes, but the atonal + cluster stuff still has a tonal aspect that's present and that's the thing that comes from Chas's knowledge of microtonalalities, nodal points, etc. The black art of which he is a master. And THAT is one thing that doesn't happen by accident. It only can happen when lengths and ratios are precisely calculated and fine-tuned.



Now I have played a bit with it, I can 100% relate to this. For me the sounds are like using a choir, as in, having the same depth, movement and emotional response, but without it sounding like a choir, as in: being in the foreground, directly recognisable as human and taking op too much space of the music. It is literally the kind of sounds I always hope to get out of wavetables, granular and also EDNA earth.


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## Living Fossil (Aug 27, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I posted all of the core sounds above.


Thanks a lot for doing it.

It's interesting that listening to your track gives me the desire to actually _play_ these instruments in real much more than using the samples... 
So basically, I think I'm in a similar boat as @Lionel Schmitt ... I thought the walkthrough (and the SA demos) were pretty underwhelming. It's like taking unique sounds and turning them into rather generic pads etc. (as heard in libraries like Kinetic Metals etc etc).
The key question remains how flexible one is in using the raw sounds. (E.g. how they react to dynamic playing etc.)


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## Ricgus3 (Aug 27, 2022)

Michaelt said:


> Should I get this? I want to get this, but it's money. I want to keep money. Difficult choice. Thinking.


Sales will come again. Don’t stress it. I decided not to get this. Too atonal for my taste. But I like the sound of it enough though to pick it up later at a sale


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## Scalms (Aug 27, 2022)

Ricgus3 said:


> Sales will come again. Don’t stress it. I decided not to get this. Too atonal for my taste. But I like the sound of it enough though to pick it up later at a sale


Also, keep in mind it will probably drop to this same price around Black Friday. And usually Spitfire has some other incentive going on around then (like buy $100 get $20 GC, spend more than $300 get X library, etc)

ANyway, that's what i'm thinking. On the fence about this too. i thought the demo was okay, but the sound is what got me, just sounded sooo enveloping and deep around my head compared to other pads. But i fear when I get it and play with it, that sense of deepness and space will be lost, or my perception will be different or whatever. Plus it sounded like 1 type of sound in the demo, plus a bunch of scrapes and dropping off metal, but it's the best type of this sound i've heard. Plus I like the Spitfire GUI too here, but perhaps i'm in the minority. 

hmm, decisions...decisions...arg...


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 27, 2022)

Living Fossil said:


> Thanks a lot for doing it.
> 
> It's interesting that listening to your track gives me the desire to actually _play_ these instruments in real much more than using the samples...
> So basically, I think I'm in a similar boat as @Lionel Schmitt ... I thought the walkthrough (and the SA demos) were pretty underwhelming. It's like taking unique sounds and turning them into rather generic pads etc. (as heard in libraries like Kinetic Metals etc etc).
> The key question remains how flexible one is in using the raw sounds. (E.g. how they react to dynamic playing etc.)


The sound-designed presets do rise above the generic for me, due to the sound quality of the initial samples. But yes, it is very much those samples that are really impressive here.

The Solar platform is a step up from eDNA in Kontakt. But I don't think it quite turns these samples into conventional playable instruments (Novum could do that).

That said, these samples, these instruments, are their own kind of thing. To me, they are worth the price to use as they are. There are enough other melodic instruments out there, after all.


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## redlester (Aug 27, 2022)

I can't work out what's "new" about the Solar part of this. The porting of the eDNA to their own plugin has already been done previously in Polaris, and in Orbis which was released over three years ago.


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 27, 2022)

redlester said:


> I can't work out what's "new" about the Solar part of this. The porting of the eDNA to their own plugin has already been done previously in Polaris, and in Orbis which was released over three years ago.


I don't have those, so there may have been changes; but I suspect that what is new is establishing Solaris as a named platform to house other libraries. Whatever this may mean for the future, those earlier libraries probably helped them arrive at the decision to organise and categorise it this way.

As @redlester pointed out above, the plugin is called Solaris, even though the library is called Mercury; so I really hope that they intend that there will be future libraries that combine into one Solaris player, so that you can combine samples from multiple libraries inside one plugin. Like downloading a new Labs library into the Labs player; but with the possibility to combine two banks at once.

Of course, I have no idea about their actual plans and intentions.


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## ka00 (Aug 27, 2022)

Some of the raw sound demos I’ve heard sound somewhat mono and distant. Is this the case?


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## Bee_Abney (Aug 27, 2022)

ka00 said:


> Some of the raw sound demos I’ve heard sound somewhat mono and distant. Is this the case?


Some do sound distant; not mono though. And the samples are very detailed sonically.


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## blaggins (Aug 27, 2022)

redlester said:


> I can't work out what's "new" about the Solar part of this. The porting of the eDNA to their own plugin has already been done previously in Polaris, and in Orbis which was released over three years ago.


I never even knew about Orbis! They do seem to have a tendency to release very similar players but as totally separate standalone plugins, instead of consolidating into a unified player experience with a functional preset browser. I get that it's probably harder to get that right (for numerous reasons including backwards compatibility testing when you update the player) but as a consumer it is nicer to have a unified experience (like LABS for instance) rather than a dozen standalone plugins (Originals I'm looking at you) that all look and work exactly the same... The more of these they release the harder it will be to ever release any big features across the fleet of them (like sample purging, wow would that be handy).


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## charlieclouser (Aug 27, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> A bit of psychology - I think it's a bit of a trap to get too focused on the origin of a sound.
> I'm sure when being too impressed by the source the sound itself can become way more impressive than it is.


Yeah, I've fallen for that more than a few times... "Recorded with 1,000 violinists in the Grand Canyon!" and then you get it and it's just a phase-cancelling super-saw mess.

I hope didn't come off like I was saying, "This man put in WORK so you must Add To Cart!" What I was trying to say was, "The *reason* this stuff *sounds* the way it does is *because* this man put in WORK." 

... and, conversely, "The reason so many epic-cinematic-drone-pads libraries sound like a Juno-106 through a slow Leslie and a filter is because they don't have the experience to know that their first experiment with mod-wheel-crossfading between three scanning-granular samples, as amazing as it sounds to their young ears, is old and tired."

After I first got my hands on some of Chas's samples about 20 years ago, I knew they were something different, and were more usable in more contexts that so many other "similar" textures I had accumulated over the previous 20 years, but I didn't know *why*. It took a while for me to understand that microtonality isn't just wind chimes with 144 notes per octave, but was a whole science unto itself, and when correctly applied by an expert, is applicable far beyond the atonal.

I'm glad that other posters are finding that his sounds possess that "it's pitched and un-pitched at the same time, tonal yet atonal, dissonant *and* consonant." That's the magic right there.


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 27, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah, I've fallen for that more than a few times... "Recorded with 1,000 violinists in the Grand Canyon!" and then you get it and it's just a phase-cancelling super-saw mess.
> 
> I hope didn't come off like I was saying, "This man put in WORK so you must Add To Cart!" What I was trying to say was, "The *reason* this stuff *sounds* the way it does is *because* this man put in WORK."
> 
> ...


It definitely didn't come off that way. 
It was just a general comment/note that seems to apply here. 

I'm also fairly tired of basic pads and textures and hear the unique character of these sounds.


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## Lionel Schmitt (Aug 27, 2022)

So, conspiracy theory....


is Chas behind these famous sounds that are heard all over the world??

And is Spitfire planning a sample library with them?





(yea, some fakes are out there, like 5:26 - but I think some are realistic)


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## Otonal (Aug 27, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yes, it was rather sudden and I remain quite saddened by his death. I'd known him longer than all but a half-dozen people who are still in my life - since the early 1980s. We were quite close and he worked on many of my scoring projects in recent years, and Peter worked on many of Thomas Newman's scores as well. They'd call him up to do a session and he'd ask, "What are we doing? What should I bring?" and they usually told him something like, "We don't know what we need, but it has to be interesting, so bring whatever you think..." He'd show up with a bass or two, an Eventide h8000, maybe a laptop or an iPad or a small modular rig, and off they'd go. From his bass through his processing, they'd wind up with dreamy clouds, percussive pulses, and ghostly whistles... but almost never an actual bass line. And his work with Jon Hassell was in a similar vein. He worked in the studio and performed live with Jon for many years across many albums.
> 
> Peter was literally the only person whose ears I trusted more than my own. With everybody else, if they declare that some piece of gear or some piece of music "sounds good", I usually disagree by some amount. Not so with Peter. He always stated that most software synths were garbage, and most emulated filters sounded like trash - until the U-He synths hit the streets. Those were permitted. If I stated that I thought something "sounded good", he'd explain exactly why I was wrong! We shared the same snarky sense of humor and had many multi-hour phone calls that only ended because our faces hurt from laughing so much.
> 
> ...


Many thanks for further deepening my appreciation of Peter Freeman’s work, as well as the links to his Kudoboard and album, all of which I’ve relished reading through and listening to.

Listening to his amazing K3CS record, yet again confirms how integral his contributions to the Jon Hassell records were to the final sound and style, seemingly at the level of co-composition really, and in particular thinking of the last two ‘Pentimento’ albums, both of which are a brilliant showcase of their collective talents.

So many great tributes on the Kudoboard too and even noticed Brand X’ bassist Percy Jones there, who also played on Hassell’s Possible Musics from 1980.

Must have been great to know and have him as a friend, and since I’ve been listening to Hassell from the very beginning, including all of the excellent records that featured Peter Freeman, all of your stories and new information carry a lot of special personal resonance, including the Chas Smith one at the top.

Interestingly and coincidentally, just weeks ago and prior to this discussion, I was musing privately about what Peter Freeman might do following the passing of Jon Hassell and thinking that he was definitely someone I wanted to continue to follow, not knowing until now that he too had passed.

Yes, without question, they both will definitely be missed.


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## charlieclouser (Aug 27, 2022)

Otonal said:


> Many thanks for further deepening my appreciation of Peter Freeman’s work, as well as the links to his Kudoboard and album, all of which I’ve relished reading through and listening to.
> 
> Listening to his amazing K3CS record, yet again confirms how integral his contributions to the Jon Hassell records were to the final sound and style, seemingly at the level of co-composition really, and in particular thinking of the last two ‘Pentimento’ albums, both of which are a brilliant showcase of their collective talents.


Yup. Peter operated in the most rarefied atmosphere of discerning high-brow, high-art musicians - and he could absolutely hold his own. He did not suffer fools gently, and we shared a vicious and unforgiving view towards gear, art, and artists that we considered unworthy. It's an attitude that translates better in person than typed out into forum posts, so I try my best to tone down my venom online (except in that one diatribe a few posts up about unworthy sound designers!). But for those who were considered worthy, he had the utmost respect, admiration, and affection.

He adored Jon, although he was a bit prickly to deal with (apparently), his art was so good that Peter would crawl through broken glass to help and contribute.


Otonal said:


> So many great tributes on the Kudoboard too and even noticed Brand X’ bassist Percy Jones there, who also played on Hassell’s Possible Musics from 1980.


Percy is another who Peter considered more than worthy. Peter had long helped PJ out on various aspects of his professional and personal life, and considered PJ one of the true greats - which he is. Peter was a serious gourmet when it came to bass guitars and bass players, with a few unbelievable instruments in his collection, like Wal and Ampeg Scroll basses, etc. At one point he flew to the UK with a Wal bass in hand to personally deliver it to be modified by Pete Stevens himself. Peter had unobtainum objects like a Modulus graphite neck for his Stingray, custom electronics in his Wal basses, etc. A true tone chaser.


Otonal said:


> Must have been great to know and have him as a friend, and since I’ve been listening to Hassell from the very beginning, including all of the excellent records that featured Peter Freeman, all of your stories and new information carry a lot of special personal resonance, including the Chas Smith one at the top.
> 
> Interestingly and coincidentally, just weeks ago and prior to this discussion, I was musing privately about what Peter Freeman might do following the passing of Jon Hassell and thinking that he was definitely someone I wanted to continue to follow, not knowing until now that he too had passed.


Towards the end of Jon's life, Peter singlehandedly took it upon himself to sort and organize Jon's archives, take him to doctor's appointments, and provide whatever care and assistance he could. A super generous guy.


Otonal said:


> Yes, without question, they both will definitely be missed.


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## Reznov981 (Aug 28, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> Do you have enough to cover food, utilities and housing and other bills? Do you have enough to cover support for any dependents? Do you have enough for gin/chocolate? If the amount you have exceeds all of these expenses by $/£/EUR 99, have at it! If not... Have you considered crime as a supplementary source of revenue? If so, you too could make extra money as an out of country delivery agent!
> 
> If you are interested, just send me an email at [email protected]
> 
> (Warning, this career may involve lengthy terms in a foreign prison system.)


It seems like every other day there's an entire dimension of your character or history that emerges. You really must have quite a few stories, Queen Bee 🐝😂
As a side note, Queen Bee would be an awesome female mafia boss codename


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## redlester (Aug 29, 2022)

Regarding people being underwhelmed by the walkthrough, I see this as a bit of a trend with Spitfire lately, and I wouldn’t blame the individual presenters of those walkthroughs.

In the “old days” (pre-covid) a new product would have a quite detailed walkthrough usually by Paul or Christian - sometimes several walkthroughs for more complex instruments - followed a few days later by one or two contextual pieces from Oliver or Homay actually producing a short composition with said instrument. 

I feel these days the walkthroughs just provide a flavour of the presets without going into much detail. This may be to do with the fact that they are coming out with more synthy, ‘cinematic’ and ‘hybrid’ releases rather than the orchestral libraries of old. But it certainly has a different feel to the process making these libraries - however good they sound - feel more like a basic product launch rather than a lovingly crafted artefact being set free into the world. I may be totally wrong, but just the vibe I get.


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## Baronvonheadless (Aug 29, 2022)

redlester said:


> Regarding people being underwhelmed by the walkthrough, I see this as a bit of a trend with Spitfire lately, and I wouldn’t blame the individual presenters of those walkthroughs.
> 
> In the “old days” (pre-covid) a new product would have a quite detailed walkthrough usually by Paul or Christian - sometimes several walkthroughs for more complex instruments - followed a few days later by one or two contextual pieces from Oliver or Homay actually producing a short composition with said instrument.
> 
> I feel these days the walkthroughs just provide a flavour of the presets without going into much detail. This may be to do with the fact that they are coming out with more synthy, ‘cinematic’ and ‘hybrid’ releases rather than the orchestral libraries of old. But it certainly has a different feel to the process making these libraries - however good they sound - feel more like a basic product launch rather than a lovingly crafted artefact being set free into the world. I may be totally wrong, but just the vibe I get.


100% and I got into them (& midi) during Covid and already have noticed this. However Paul and Christian seem to be in the delegating stages of their spitfire careers. Which makes sense. However the detailed walkthroughs are missed, cut corners are noticed and the products seem to have less control and feel more like here’s 300 presets for $300. 

That said. This library sounds fucking fantastic and I don’t use half of the older spitfire library sounds with more control and lesser sounds. 

So 🤷🏻‍♂️ I guess my point is an existential nihilistic loop that ends as vague and uncertain as it started confident and self assured. Also it’s 4am and I’ve been drinking


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## doctoremmet (Aug 29, 2022)

The Paul and Christian walkthroughs are still there. The Solstice release was a huge event. So were Hammers and Appassionata for instance. I think what you feel is mostly caused by the fact that Spitfire's been releasing new (sample based) synth libraries far more frequently than in the past.

That said, I distinctly remember a live stream with Homay and Christian for the Heirloom release, but I can’t seem to find it anymore. Maybe I misremember and Christian was only there in the live-chat.


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## Markrs (Aug 29, 2022)

Christian has also moved to a more healthy work-life balance with regular not long hours and sounds much happier with that move. He also still composes a lot for TV and film. A consequence could be that he has less time for detailed Walkthroughs that can take many hours to make.


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## Spid (Aug 29, 2022)

Also, when a company gets bigger and popular, it can count on crowd ressources… like having walkthrough and demos done by youtubers and such… it creates a market for them and then the company can focus on what they know and do best: making sample libraries.

So yeah, at first, the main youtubers were Christian and Paul, but now there are many other people can do just as well as them for walkthrough and demos. So it gave them more time, maybe even more healthy time… that’s important too.


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## d4vec4rter (Aug 29, 2022)

redlester said:


> Regarding people being underwhelmed by the walkthrough, I see this as a bit of a trend with Spitfire lately, and I wouldn’t blame the individual presenters of those walkthroughs.


The problem I see with demonstrating this library is that, in my opinion, they are very much sounds that need playing contextually. Although they are acoustically complex in their own right they are very much complementary to a composition rather being the core substance. Layering them onto other pads, drones, etc. adds an extra dimension and depth and seems to work well. The only time I see them working well on their own is if they were played in context with an appropriate visual - sci-fi, cyberpunk, fantasy being the logical channels.

Of course, if I possessed the talent of Mr Zimmer, I'd probably have a much easier time composing something which made exclusive use of this library and I applaud the composers who created the demos on the Spitfire website. Not an easy job as I see it.


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## redlester (Aug 29, 2022)

Markrs said:


> Christian has also moved to a more healthy work-life balance with regular not long hours and sounds much happier with that move. He also still composes a lot for TV and film. A consequence could be that he has less time for detailed Walkthroughs that can take many hours to make.


Definitely, and who can fault him. I think Paul is doing similar.

The thing I miss most though are the Oliver & Homay contextuals, those were more like tutorials than demos and I used to find them quite inspiring.


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## ka00 (Aug 31, 2022)

How are those who’ve had this for a week or so finding it? Not a lot of playthroughs trickling out on YouTube.


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## Instrugramm (Aug 31, 2022)

I got it a few days back and am a bit split on my first impressions. I tried to write a piece with it but found that I definitely needed other libraries to make it sound "focused". It's got a lot of pads and is maybe even more atmospheric/etherial than I'd hoped for.

If you got a lot of synths already it's not a necessity, especially if you have some Albions already. It's a nice addition with some new colours for you to play with but don't expect a second Albion Solstice in terms of flexibility, you get what's written on the tin/it features exactly the sounds you expect.


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## KEM (Aug 31, 2022)

ka00 said:


> How are those who’ve had this for a week or so finding it? Not a lot of playthroughs trickling out on YouTube.



Love it!! I started writing a super heavy metalcore track after messing around with some of the raw textures, the stuff in here sits perfectly under heavily distorted, downtuned guitars. I’ll hopefully have the full track out soon but I can post a small clip in the meantime


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## charlieclouser (Aug 31, 2022)

Found a recent pic on Facebook of Chas's ancient Serge modular, which now lives at Danny Carey's studio. He's the drummer in Tool and has a pretty ridonkulous collection of hardware. E-Mu modular, Chas's Serge, and in the corner of the pic you can see a VCS3 lying on its back....

And you just know Chas fabricated that enclosure from scratch as well.


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## KEM (Aug 31, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Found a recent pic on Facebook of Chas's ancient Serge modular, which now lives at Danny Carey's studio. He's the drummer in Tool and has a pretty ridonkulous collection of hardware. E-Mu modular, Chas's Serge, and in the corner of the pic you can see a VCS3 lying on its back....
> 
> And you just know Chas fabricated that enclosure from scratch as well.



I like that you decided to specify who Danny Carey is


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## KEM (Aug 31, 2022)

This library was just made for metal, makes everything super dark and eerie, it really works perfectly in that context!!

View attachment Mercury Metalcore Teaser.mp3


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## RudyS (Aug 31, 2022)

KEM said:


> I like that you decided to specify who Danny Carey is


haha, for me he is also a bit of an icon, but I can imagine that is not the case for the average person on this forum. 

I like the metal snippet!


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## Michel Simons (Sep 1, 2022)

KEM said:


> I like that you decided to specify who Danny Carey is


But what is Tool?


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## charlieclouser (Sep 1, 2022)

KEM said:


> I like that you decided to specify who Danny Carey is


Well, everyone in the world of heavy bands knows who he is, as does everyone in the LA music scene - film music or not - but there's plenty of proper composers out there who prob have no idea that Tool is even the name of a band who can put out an album once per decade and still sell out a stadium tour in minutes, that Danny is a beast and a legend behind the kit with a custom modular rig on his drum riser, and that his mountaintop lair is stocked with only the finest hardware...


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## zvenx (Sep 1, 2022)

Up to two years ago I had no idea who he was. Then i chanced upon a video of him on youtube and i was left with my jaw opened for as many times I replayed that video and searched for others.
Man breaths polyrythms and multi meters like I breath Oxygen.
Rsp


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## kgdrum (Sep 1, 2022)

Jaw dropping is right.

All of the players in Tool chops and musicality are off the charts!

They are all monsters,GREAT MUSICIANS.

It’s not music I listen to regularly but they are pretty amazing 👍

Since it was mentioned:
I know of Tool and have admired them for several years but I don’t know any of the members by their name.


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## earshot21 (Sep 1, 2022)

Thought I would mention that for anyone who's curious about Chas' own music,
over twenty years worth of his recorded output is available here:








Chas Smith


Chas Smith is a composer-performer-instrument builder who has created a unique musical world—complete with its own instruments. It’s a world of expansive ever-evolving musical tapestries and sculpted textures that display his fascination with both the scientific and the sensual. “With Smith’s...




chassmith.bandcamp.com




(Wondering where to start? I'd recommend "Nikko Wolverine" both for its purity of concept,
as well as for the prominent role played by Copper Box, which probably remains my favorite instrument of his - for what that's worth.)
Finally, for the true connoisseur of exotica, Chas may also be heard on the first CD by free-improv
group TOKYO 77, alongside members Tom Newman, Rick Cox, and myself:


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## BasariStudios (Sep 1, 2022)

WTF is so special about this? Every single Hardware and Software Synth i have can do these Sounds and better. People really believe Zimmer said something like that about another Instrument that is actually worthless.


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## RudyS (Sep 1, 2022)

You are entitled to have that opinion of course, but i suggest you read the rest of this thread and the posts of @charlieclouser . That answers your question what is so special.


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## charlieclouser (Sep 1, 2022)

Wow maybe I should get some of those hardware and software synths....


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## Jdiggity1 (Sep 1, 2022)

Careful, it's a wormhole!


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## mussnig (Sep 2, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> was kind of waiting for someone to rip shit on Chas's library so I could go nuclear, but that hasn't really happened (yet), and I guess that's no surprise really because it's objectively good.


I was expecting you to go full nuclear after @BasariStudios' post ...


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## RudyS (Sep 2, 2022)

mussnig said:


> I was expecting you to go full nuclear after @BasariStudios' post ...


Haha. I was already searching for that popcorn emoticon!


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## charlieclouser (Sep 2, 2022)

mussnig said:


> I was expecting you to go full nuclear after @BasariStudios' post ...


Meh. Those that can appreciate it will dig it. But it's not for everyone. Which is fine. I mean, we don't want every single civilian out there pouring Chas Juice™ all over the place, do we?


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## itsyourself (Sep 2, 2022)

Just caught up with this thread, and I want to thank Charlie Clouse for his wonderful contributions and reminiscences about Chas Smith. I hadn't heard of him until the release of Hammers and the accompanying video with Christian. The standout from that video was seeing and hearing the Chas Smith instrument, which immediately set me off on a quest for more information about him.
So I am beyond delighted that Spitfire and Charlie managed to winkle him out and present some of his work for our pleasure and use. It goes without saying that you can't really capture the impact of these audio sculptures in a sample library, but even a reduced version of them is a wonderful resource.
Charlie has been so generous with his ace posts on the background and philosophy of Chas. It has been an absolute pleasure to read, and given me great insight into this incredible man and his amazing talents. I would really love someone to make a documentary respecting this great catalogue of work and the ideas behind it, so that his insights and knowledge are captured for future generations. I completely concur with Charlie that his life puts all the feeble laptop sound 'designers' into a very small perspective.
Only giants like Harry Partch and Tom Waits, and the great synth innovators and pioneers stand comparison.
Thankyou, Charlie, for taking the time to give us such great reminiscences and anecdotes.


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## davidson (Sep 2, 2022)

BasariStudios said:


> WTF is so special about this? Every single Hardware and Software Synth i have can do these Sounds and better. People really believe Zimmer said something like that about another Instrument that is actually worthless.


Stop sitting on the fence and tell us how you really feel about it!


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## doctoremmet (Sep 2, 2022)

itsyourself said:


> Just caught up with this thread, and I want to thank Charlie Clouse for his wonderful contributions and reminiscences about Chas Smith. I hadn't heard of him until the release of Hammers and the accompanying video with Christian. The standout from that video was seeing and hearing the Chas Smith instrument, which immediately set me off on a quest for more information about him.
> So I am beyond delighted that Spitfire and Charlie managed to winkle him out and present some of his work for our pleasure and use. It goes without saying that you can't really capture the impact of these audio sculptures in a sample library, but even a reduced version of them is a wonderful resource.
> Charlie has been so generous with his ace posts on the background and philosophy of Chas. It has been an absolute pleasure to read, and given me great insight into this incredible man and his amazing talents. I would really love someone to make a documentary respecting this great catalogue of work and the ideas behind it, so that his insights and knowledge are captured for future generations. I completely concur with Charlie that his life puts all the feeble laptop sound 'designers' into a very small perspective.
> Only giants like Harry Partch and Tom Waits, and the great synth innovators and pioneers stand comparison.
> Thankyou, Charlie, for taking the time to give us such great reminiscences and anecdotes.


I too have thoroughly enjoyed mister Clouser’s stories and the background intel about the instruments. I wouldn’t want to introduce some sort of sound designer elitism though. To me a 16 year old kid in late 1980s Detroit with a 4 OP FM synth and a 909 may have been just as revolutionary in terms of sound design.


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## Bee_Abney (Sep 2, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> I too have thoroughly enjoyed mister Clouser’s stories and the background intel about the instruments. I wouldn’t want to introduce some sort of sound designer elitism though. To me a 16 year old kid in late 1980s Detroit with a 4 OP FM synth and a 909 may have been just as revolutionary in terms of sound design.


But I thought you were Dutch.

What was it like growing up in the home of Motown?


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## doctoremmet (Sep 2, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> But I thought you were Dutch.
> 
> What was it like growing up in the home of Motown?


The only thing I have in common with any of the talented Detroit kids in 1989 making techno in their bedrooms, is I owned a 4 OP FM synth back in the day. And I also spent a lot of time in my bedroom.


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## Bee_Abney (Sep 2, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> The only thing I have in common with any of the talented Detroit kids in 1989 making techno in their bedrooms, is I owned a 4 OP FM synth back in the day. And I also spent a lot of time in my bedroom.


Hmm. 1989? I think I was trying to be Alex Lifeson. Or that may have been a couple of years later and I was still in my Tony Iommi phase. Which is why my approach to FM synthesis today is moving all the options up and down until it is really noisy and then calling it a day.

I'm still a bit flabbergasted that Chas Smith let these samples out into the world. I think I'd have preferred a sample pack (I can make my own from Mercury), but Solar is actually rather good too - though I'd rather use it on samples that aren't already more interesting than any of the effects and modulation options!


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## charlieclouser (Sep 2, 2022)

doctoremmet said:


> To me a 16 year old kid in late 1980s Detroit with a 4 OP FM synth and a 909 may have been just as revolutionary in terms of sound design.


Thing is, as interesting or innovative as their results might be, that kid in Detroit didn't MAKE that 4-op synth or that 909. He took pre-existing instruments, designed by a committee, with presets designed by another committee, and a voice architecture that's hardwired to point to a limited set of possible results.... aka guardrails. Guidance. Hell, on a 909 you can't do hardly anything to camouflage the sound's origins, unless you're Alec Empire, and even through two Marshall stacks only a deaf person couldn't spot the 909 in ATR tracks. 

But Chas doesn't operate with guardrails. He doesn't even use the centuries-old 12-tone scale for guidance. He's wandering around in uncharted territory, trying to find or carve a path forward. 

There's a great documentary (called "30th Century Man") about the musician Scott Walker, who started out as somewhat of a sixties pop artist, and in his later years re-invented himself as almost a Stockhausen-like artist, plumbing the depths of experimental, and often... "difficult".... music. His later work involved his throaty baritone, punching sides of beef, and all sorts of avant-garde sounds and techniques. Not for the faint-hearted. But in this documentary, artists from Bowie to Marc Almond to Johnny Marr describe his influence on their work. But I think it was Jarvis Cocker of Pulp who summarized it best, saying something like (I'm paraphrasing here, can't find the exact clip):

"He's like an explorer who goes to the most inhospitable places on earth, like the north pole, and brings back pictures and stories. You don't want to go to the places he's gone yourself, but you are glad he went there."

That's sort of why I like what Chas does - I don't want to wander alone in the microtonal tundra, as he has, but if I can hang a picture he took on his travels upon my wall, that's enough for me.


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## charlieclouser (Sep 2, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I'm still a bit flabbergasted that Chas Smith let these samples out into the world. I think I'd have preferred a sample pack (I can make my own from Mercury), but Solar is actually rather good too - though I'd rather use it on samples that aren't already more interesting than any of the effects and modulation options!


Me too. I know that he was absolutely opposed to just dumping a sample pack out into the world, as the samples would be shared freely within minutes. At least the Spitfire engine offers some degree of copy protection, and of course Spitfire pay a healthy royalty from each copy sold, so that's about the best we can hope for.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 2, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, as interesting or innovative as their results might be, that kid in Detroit didn't MAKE that 4-op synth or that 909.


Exactly my point.


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## gzapper (Sep 3, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Thing is, as interesting or innovative as their results might be, that kid in Detroit didn't MAKE that 4-op synth or that 909. He took pre-existing instruments, designed by a committee, with presets designed by another committee, and a voice architecture that's hardwired to point to a limited set of possible results.... aka guardrails. Guidance. Hell, on a 909 you can't do hardly anything to camouflage the sound's origins, unless you're Alec Empire, and even through two Marshall stacks only a deaf person couldn't spot the 909 in ATR tracks.
> 
> But Chas doesn't operate with guardrails. He doesn't even use the centuries-old 12-tone scale for guidance. He's wandering around in uncharted territory, trying to find or carve a path forward.
> 
> ...


This library is very specific, but very cool.

Chas's instruments tread the line between harmonic and inharmonicity, sounds that contain enough inharmonic upper partials that its harder to identify the fundamental. Its a bit more chaos like than Kraig Grady's Anaphoria, very tuning specific music that works off of combination tones and beating. 

If you're looking for that world, this is it. But its not a library that will make it into every track, but if you're looking for content where you don't want melody/chords/harmony to tell the story, you can really do that here just with timbre. 

From my end the only thing really missing is the ability to use this with non 12 equal tunings, if you could throw these into just tunings, or odd equal tunings it would be super cool. Again, a very specific colour and sound, but very rich in that area. Jamming with this on the lumatone would have been very fun.

And turning off the fx and playing with the original samples is pretty key as well.


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## Bee_Abney (Sep 3, 2022)

gzapper said:


> This library is very specific, but very cool.
> 
> Chas's instruments tread the line between harmonic and inharmonicity, sounds that contain enough inharmonic upper partials that its harder to identify the fundamental. Its a bit more chaos like than Kraig Grady's Anaphoria, very tuning specific music that works off of combination tones and beating.
> 
> ...


I believe Pitch Innovations Fluid Pitch might be of some help to alter the tuning of this, or any other library instrument. You can alter each note of the scale up or down by up to 100 cents.









Fluid Pitch - The Next-Gen Pitch Bend System | Pitch Innovations


Fluid Pitch is an award-winning AU/VST plugin that locks your pitch bend wheel to your chosen scale so you never land on a wrong note ever




www.pitchinnovations.com


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## gzapper (Sep 3, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> I believe Pitch Innovations Fluid Pitch might be of some help to alter the tuning of this, or any other library instrument. You can alter each note of the scale up or down by 100 cents.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I might try that.

It would be amazing if Spitfire released 12 TET patches along with options to use Chas's tunings, which I image have him tuning to match partials or overtones between rods/metal. Along with the ability to import tunings.

I haven't thought that about other spitfire libraries, they are all designed for film/tv and equal temperament.


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## PhilA (Sep 5, 2022)

Charlie’s contribution to this forum is legendary.

And as I’m moving home next week and will then be penniless for a good few years I’ve just had to buy this and sneak it in under the radar before it’s too late(tbh it’s a lot cheaper than the Waldorf Iridum that’s arriving tomorrow 😳😉)


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## SoftSynthLover99 (Sep 5, 2022)

Charlie is a great salesman and Spitfire should double whatever they are paying him lol.

However great stories and great sounds should not be confused. Takeaway Charlie’s stories and the name of Chas smith, would you be as blown away as some of you are? No? Maybe? Yes?

Music is about sound, and if it sounds good it sounds good. If you get there with hardware or software synthesizers, or spoons and forks banging a metal pan, doesn’t really matter.

That said I definitely appreciate the history and stories behind the instruments and his approach to musical instruments. Just be weary of those who put down other sample library creators as “garbage“, and praise this “new great thing” as something completely revolutionary. Way too many great ambient/pad/hybrid libraries out there for that kind of statement to even be taken seriously. Just my 2 cents.


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## Lionel Schmitt (Oct 10, 2022)

Does anyone else get note dropouts?
Some sounds won't play at all, immediately cuts of. Always the same patches and sometimes the higher notes of some patches, while the lower ones work fine. Since it's always the same patches and notes it's likely not my drive probably (running it from a hard drive due to space issues).

For instance: Tower - Drone 1 (Core) stops playing from F4 upwards
Tower - Ambience (Core) stops from C#3 upwards. 
I just hear a few milliseconds of sound, then it cuts of so it's not just the end of the stretched range.
It just a small handful of patches, Just curious if others get that too. Can't imagine this would have escaped testing or not been reported and fixed by now so maybe it's something weird on my end.

Otherwise I'm ridiculously impressed. First library I bought this year. For me it's all about the raw instruments, not too impressed by the processed stuff and presets, although I haven't dug in too much, there are certainly a bunch of great ones too.

But the raw instruments is like a large collection of organic textures, elements, transitions etc that doesn't sound like much else I know.
Worth noting that it's usually one sample for the entire keyboard range as far as I can tell, that's probably/hopefully just the nature of the instruments not producing multiple pitches. Kinda logical since it's not "classical instruments" for playing melodies.
But it sounds great for within about 1-2 octaves around the original pitch, although sometimes it sounds good enough that I have a hard time telling what the original pitch is.

The one shots (hits, scrapes etc) could use round robins IMO. Confused they weren't sampled since it would open a whole new world of possibilities for rhythmic usage without machine gun effect.




SoftSynthLover99 said:


> Charlie is a great salesman and Spitfire should double whatever they are paying him lol.
> 
> However great stories and great sounds should not be confused. Takeaway Charlie’s stories and the name of Chas smith, would you be as blown away as some of you are? No? Maybe? Yes?
> 
> ...


I've made the same argument you did on page 8 but without assumptions personal attacks on Charlie.
Usually I'm the bad guy in forums. I guess I'm evolving!
He actually agreed with the point that it should be about the sounds rather than what it is or backstories.
So you're just saying what has already been said but in a rude manner.

I can answer your question very clearly. I'm the party pooper who first said what you said here, now I bought it and am mind blown by a lot of the raw sounds. Which doesn't happen easily. AT ALL :D
I just see strange interesting names, open the patch, play it and some of it I don't like, a small handful of sounds I wouldn't even open, most ore between great and awesome, some jaw dropping.
There isn't really any bias.

I actually know nearly nothing about the instruments and didn't really read the backstories since I have about zero time. So yea, I shouldn't be here. Bye!


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## Paj (Oct 10, 2022)

@Lionel Schmitt : I got the same results with Tower - Drone 1 (Core) and Tower - Ambience (Core). IMHO, things were becoming ultrasonic anyway at those points but the brief clicks are not cool. Something was left unattended. I haven't come across completely dead patches yet, mostly because I often find myself spending a lot of time on a given patch, exploring the key range and tweaks, exchanging layer samples/sounds, etc. The audition feature is nice to have but, to me, sounds a lot harsher than the loaded patch. The thing does have its own cache. I agree with your other assessments about Solar(Elements). I wonder if Elements it just the beginning of libraries/expansions for the Solar engine. Spitfire could do worse.

I would add that the back story did influence me to buy. The maniacally inventive should always be encouraged away from a life of crime.

Paj
8^)


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## KEM (Oct 10, 2022)

I haven’t experienced any dropouts personally, I’ll have to take another look at this specific patches and look out for any. But I’m glad to see everyone really loving this library sonically, I’m obsessed with it and it’s making its way onto everything


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## Paj (Oct 10, 2022)

KEM said:


> I haven’t experienced any dropouts personally, I’ll have to take another look at this specific patches and look out for any. But I’m glad to see everyone really loving this library sonically, I’m obsessed with it and it’s making its way onto everything


FWIW: The specifics mentioned are most easily located in the sample/sounds dropdown windows, not the patch browser.

Paj
8^)


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## KEM (Oct 10, 2022)

Paj said:


> FWIW: The specifics mentioned are most easily located in the sample/sounds dropdown windows, not the patch browser.
> 
> Paj
> 8^)



I’ll play around with them when I can


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## Lionel Schmitt (Oct 10, 2022)

Paj said:


> @Lionel Schmitt : I got the same results with Tower - Drone 1 (Core) and Tower - Ambience (Core). IMHO, things were becoming ultrasonic anyway at those points but the brief clicks are not cool. Something was left unattended. I haven't come across completely dead patches yet, mostly because I often find myself spending a lot of time on a given patch, exploring the key range and tweaks, exchanging layer samples/sounds, etc. The audition feature is nice to have but, to me, sounds a lot harsher than the loaded patch. The thing does have its own cache. I agree with your other assessments about Solar(Elements). I wonder if Elements it just the beginning of libraries/expansions for the Solar engine. Spitfire could do worse.
> 
> I would add that the back story did influence me to buy. The maniacally inventive should always be encouraged away from a life of crime.
> 
> ...


Thanks, just to be clear - for you it's just clicks rather than samples not playing at all (except a few milliseconds of the start)?


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## Paj (Oct 15, 2022)

Lionel Schmitt said:


> Thanks, just to be clear - for you it's just clicks rather than samples not playing at all (except a few milliseconds of the start)?


Initial higher and higher pitched clicks---maybe a sample being truncated during the attack, maybe the way the player handles a missing sample, maybe mis-set sample end/loop ponts, maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe that's the problem with bespoke players: nospanner/backend access. All you can do is pass the issue back to the developer. Remember what the detective in Spinal Tap reportedly told the bandmates regarding the drummer who choked to death on someone else's vomit: "Some mysteries are best left unsolved."

Paj
8^)


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## KEM (Yesterday at 11:07 AM)

Wrote this quick little track using nothing but Mercury, it really is one of my favorite libraries ever, I use it on almost everything


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## Bee_Abney (Yesterday at 11:27 AM)

KEM said:


> Wrote this quick little track using nothing but Mercury, it really is one of my favorite libraries ever, I use it on almost everything



Like a summer holiday at a re-education internment camp!

There is a lot going on here. You've layered different sounds together in a very narrative, evolving, rich texture.


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## titokane (Yesterday at 11:34 AM)

KEM said:


> Wrote this quick little track using nothing but Mercury, it really is one of my favorite libraries ever, I use it on almost everything



Stellar writing! Can't wait to take some time and really dive deep into this library. Seems like a dream to have for any kind of dramatic cue. Right now I think I've only used it for a quick scrape in a single track.


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## KEM (Yesterday at 11:49 AM)

Bee_Abney said:


> Like a summer holiday at a re-education internment camp!
> 
> There is a lot going on here. You've layered different sounds together in a very narrative, evolving, rich texture.





titokane said:


> Stellar writing! Can't wait to take some time and really dive deep into this library. Seems like a dream to have for any kind of dramatic cue. Right now I think I've only used it for a quick scrape in a single track.



Thank you!! There’s about 20 instances of Mercury in this. It really is the perfect library for dark, ambient cues and it’s the first thing I grab when I’m working on a cue like that, just add some Blackhole reverb (which I did here) and you’re set!


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