Bass Machine was in essence an attempt to revisit a commonly used trick of the trade whereby the warm roundness, power and motion of the Minimoog’s bottom end was blended with the bite and clinical accuracy of FM bass.  The result is a nice example of where the whole is greater than sum of its parts…

In order to capture as much of the Model D’s character as possible, four patches were dialled into the instrument complete with filter envelope.  Since such a process would probably have rendered rather inflexible results another four patches were captured with the filter wide open.  Every white key was captured as four random round robins resulting in over 800 samples from Hideaway Studio’s beloved 1976 Minimoog No.7751.

Eight patches were then dialled up on a classic 4-OP FM synth.  Four sounds were lightly tweaked and four were programmed to offer a wide range of sonic palette that suitably complemented the patches from the Model D.  Over 280 samples were captured from the instrument on every white key.

At the heart of the Bass Machine is a superb dual voice synth engine which was implemented by Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun) and scripting guru Mario Krušelj thus permitting samples from each instrument to be layered complete with independent filters, envelopes and LFO’s for each channel.

Over 50 example patches were programmed during the course of the project and are bundled with the download.

A quick walkthrough of some of the example patches below..

Download Contents:

– Bass Machine Dual Channel Synth Engine
– 8 Model D Multi-Oscillator Waves (sampled on every white key with 4 round robins)
– 8 4-OP FM Oscillator Waves (sampled on every white key)
– 1104 24-bit Samples (**and one other!??)
– 52 Editable & Savable Example Patches
– User Manual
– Demo

“A wonderfully crafted musical instrument. I was able to step sequence some crazy DAF – style basslines that were as enigmatic and unstable as the real machines I was using three decades ago. Also covered are Sub Sine creations that add weight and character to the bottom end in an extremely subtle way. It’s a full – on bass synth studio for Kontakt that i will use a lot i am sure.” 

Harvey Jones, Synth player with Sex and Sorrow, Nadia Ackerman, and Blow Up Hollywood.

“The Bass Machine has an awesome analogue sound to it! Loving what you can do with a bit of tweaking. Congrats on a great product.”

Phil Meadley (aka Lucidity Lo-Fi)

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

Bass Machine features a performance / FX page which is worth a mention…

As well as a useful array of effects including saturation, Bass Machine features a number of functions well suited for bass timbres.  The unison control permits several voices to be stacked with variable detune and spread.  Similarly the glide function with legato and retrigger switches is ideal for recreating various performance styles.

Bass Machine also features an extensive velocity mapping and routing function.  The user may setup velocity map based on exponential, linear, logarithmic or S-curve laws. The remapped output is then routed in varying degrees to overall volume, filter amount, filter attack phase and VCA attack phase.  In conjunction with the significant degree of movement already present in the Moog’s triple free running oscillators and the round robins, the performance functions really help to breath life into live performances and programmed sequences.

Several of the demo patches also make use of the mod wheel via the LFO mapping function to bring in various vibrato and filter effects.

D.A.Wilson – Sound & Patch Design, Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) – GUI Design & Graphics, Mario Krušelj – Synth Engine Script.

**There is one mystery sample included.   It holds a secret…   the lucky one is the first to break the secret by sending me a screenshot of their discovery and they shall be rewarded… 

HS-4KL-A009 (08/09/13)

Constellation: Apollo 203A was in many ways a celebration of yet another successful resurrection of an old classic saved from the grave… This time it was a 1976 Polymoog model 203A most definitely rescued from a fate worse than death!…  she could have become a coffee table! Well ok, maybe not…

In a similar manner to Monopolyphonix I really didn’t want to sample the poor beast to death simply to produce another virtual offering so instead I captured over 500 samples directly from No.3211’s mix output, often a sample per key, and set about trying to make something a little different.   To add to the mixing pot I sampled a number of patches I’d recently created on my SE Omega 8 which I thought was kind of fitting in a way as it almost felt like a celebration of the last 30+ years of polyphonic synthesis.   In order to make the two sing a little more sweetly together I decided to wash the Omega through an old analog stereo chorus unit and a tube equaliser.

Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun) and Mario Krušelj really outdid themselves this time with a superb GUI based on the 4-voice layering engine but now complete with independent velocity sensitivity controls on each channel…

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

Download Contents: 660Mb library  for Kontakt 4.2.4 and above, 551 Samples in 24-bits, 24 multi-sampled voices available in 4-Voice layering engine with ability to save patches, 32 Demo patches, 16 Demo Multis, Demo & User Manual with more on project background.

Credits:

– D.A.Wilson Sound, Patch Design & Demo

– Stephen Howell GUI Design & Graphics

– Mario Krušelj GUI Script

HS-4KL-A008 (14/07/13)

The project started off by acoustically recording 21 tine actuations from a disassembled music box mechanism placed on a wooden sounding board using both conventional condenser and contact microphones. The sound of the clockwork motor and air brake mechanisms was also captured. A synthesized halo effect was created to blend with the tines by capturing several beating sine waves from a 1960’s tube based dual tone generator which were fed through the filter stages of a Minimoog with the filter in near resonance.

A user interface was devised to implement a randomised delay feature between two groups of acoustic tine instruments to create a plink effect and to blend the halo and motor effects together to form The Cosmic Music Box…

A second page was developed to permit the user to dial in various effects such as chorus, phaser, delay and reverb…

Download Contents:

-51 Samples
-Cosmic Music Box GUI
-5 Example Instrument Patches
-User Manual
-Demo

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

Credits:

– D.A.Wilson Sound, Patch Design & Demo

– Stephen Howell GUI Design & Graphics

– Mario Krušelj GUI Script

HS-4KL-A007 (15/06/13)

Warm Evocative Synth Strings….

 I have always had a bit of a soft spot for evocative cinematic synth strings and especially pseudo realistic string ensembles. Probably as a result I’ve almost subconsciously amassed (and sometimes restored) a small collection of historically important string synths over the years and found to my delight that they blend and layer very nicely with one another. These include my 1938 Novachord, arguably the world’s first polyphonic string synthesizer, the 1972 Eminent 310 Unique which features an early incarnation of the Solina Strings and its direct relative, the ARP Omni. I have also been playing with a number of discrete methods to generate exponential sawtooths, passive tube buffered L/C formant resonators, analog chorus circuits and tube processing. The way most of these early polyphonic instruments worked was very different from the later voltage controlled synths and they very much have a tone and texture of their own. The triple parallel analog BBD based chorus stages with multiple free-running LFOs on the Eminent 310 and Solina alone are significantly more lush and complex than the single stage chorus sections found on later synths. A number of tube processed layers and blends were brought together to form the basic 16 instruments loaded into the layering engine to form the The String Collection…

“This instrument is really made with the creative musician in mind , simple , efficient, reliable and inspiring…”   Claude Samard-Polikar Musical director, musician and arranger for Jean Michel Jarre and award winning film/video games composer. www.claudesamard.com

“I have Gforce VSM, K8U, Synth Magic, Tronsonic, etc. But after playing the demo song against a few of my fav’s, I feel like hideaway really has its own identity and spin on a familiar territory. I like the sound of its playability. It just works! Check it out.”  KK, Chronic Audio NYC www.chronicaudionyc.com

“Just to let you know – I hate you.  I was really only going to look at your page and admire the work.  Suddenly my mouse started clicking away.  Now I have spent all my “play” money and part of my food allowance.  Expect me for dinner at some point if I can ever get away from my computer.  This stuff is just Gorgeous!”  hueynym, KVR Forum

“This is startlingly beautiful! Well done – it’s a privilege to own such a great collection of synths, and I’m happy you share them with the world. I love the sound of real orchestras, but there’s something about the synthetic voices of the 1960s and 1970s that really works well with modal and minor key pop music.”  Ray Savage

“Thanks so much for yet another great sounding, great looking and very cleverly programmed instrument! The price is equally great.  11 stars (of 10)…”  Tpot, KVR Forum

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

Download Contents:

•244 generously long 24-bit samples
•16 multi-sampled voices/partials
•4-Voice Layering Engine with ability to save
•12 editable example instrument patches
•2 example layered multi patches
•User Manual

System Requirements:

•Requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
•Around 600Mb Free Hard Disk Space

Credits

D.A.Wilson (Hideaway Studio) Sound Design, Sample Set & Example Instruments. Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) Layering Engine Concept, GUI Design & Graphics. Mario Krušelj Layering Engine Script

HS-K4L-A006 V1.01 05/05/13

© D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2013

Monopolyphonix was in many ways a celebration of another successful resurrection of an old classic saved from the grave. Much like the Minimoog, ARP Omni-2 and Novachord left their sonic fingerprints on S-VX and The Orbitone Collection, a recently restored Farfisa Syntorchestra manufactured in 1974, gave its all to the creation of Monopolyphonix…

Why the name? Well the Syntorchestra comes from a strange era quite early on in the history of affordable portable synthesizers where manufacturers were quite experimental and tended to do their own thing. This was especially the case with early polyphonics. The net result is that weird and wacky user interfaces and synth architectures were quite the norm in those days!

What makes the Syntorchestra quite unusual is that it features a complete polyphonic divide down section running in complete isolation in parallel with a basic monosynth each of which capable of producing similar timbres. This is quite unlike the paraphonic synth sections of the ARP Omni for example. The result is a rather odd combination of the perfect pitch characteristics of a polyphonic divide down synth beating, phasing and interacting with the far from perfect pitch tracking of a monophonic synth. With some careful front panel tweaking the two sections can be brought together to produce a surprisingly big sound. It also boasts one of the warmest analog synth pianos I think I’ve ever heard. It’s a very basic sound but really quite beautiful through reverb. The monophonic section can produce an array of chime, twang and almost Theremin type timbres too.

I was really very keen from the start not to let this library turn into yet another virtual offering of an old classic and therefore treated the instrument more as the raw material for an array of new sounds that reached beyond the original.

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

Equipment Used:

All sample material captured from a recently restored 1974 Farfisa Syntorchestra. Analog Chorus Unit, RME Fireface.

Download Contents:

•165 generously long 24-bit samples
•16 multi-sampled voices/partials
•4-Voice Layering Engine with ability to save
•34 editable example instrument patches
•12 example layered multi patches
•User Manual

System Requirements:

•Requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
•Around 250Mb Free Hard Disk Space

Credits

D.A.Wilson (Hideaway Studio) Synth Restoration, Sound Design, Sample Set & Example Instruments. Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) Layering Engine Concept, GUI Design & Graphics. Mario Krušelj Layering Engine Script

HS-K4L-A005 V1.01 01/04/13

© D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2013

 A selection of twelve unique synthetic choirs made up of 215 hand crafted vocal formants. At least 50% of the samples in this collection were created using little more than a handful of discrete circuits and vintage lab gear all processed with vintage classic analog and tube technology and brought together in the same proven 4-voice layering engine as the Orbitone library….

Passive L/C Resonator Formant Circuits based on the 1938 Novachord….

The Celestial Choirs featured in The Pentodian Choir started off life as little more than a series of short pulses created by an old hand-configured analog lab signal generator. The frequency of the pulse train was gently modulated using the swept oscillator function to act as a vibrato. The pulses were converted into exponential ramps using a passive wave shaper circuit similar to those found in early string synths and the resulting sawtooth fed into a Triple Passive L/C Resonator circuit based on the 1938 Novachord formant resonator section. This is little more than three coils of wire and three capacitors! The resulting waveform was then impedance buffered using the entire vertical signal path of a 1968 Tektronix 545B tube oscilloscope! The output from the vertical signal output socket was then fed into a prototype tube overdrive unit and into a tube equaliser.

Well over 100 samples were painstakingly captured by hand configuring the equipment for each note and then sampling the results. The samples were further EQ’d and loaded into multi-samples.

Some of multi-samples were further processed with an analog chorus unit.

Polymoog Formant Resonators…

Two of the choirs were created by feeding the brass organ stop from a 1972 Eminent 310U into a rehoused 1978 Polymoog Resonator Section. This proved remarkably effective and a similarly successful choir was made by feeding a string patch from a Matrix 1000 into the resonator. A third choir was the result of recording the previous results hot onto a 1967 Revox G36 tube tape machine and resampling.

The Vox Box…

A curious solo vocal effect was created using a prototype concept consisting of a triode based relaxation oscillator feeding a passive L/C resonator passed into a tube band pass filter modulated by the same LFO as the pitch vibrato.

Equipment Used:

Hand configured analog pulse signal generator modulated by LFO, DIY Passive pulse to exponential wave shaper circuit, DIY Passive Triple L/C Formant Resonator Circuit based on 1938 Novachord impedance buffered with Y-amplifiers from a 1968 Tektronix 545B tube scope! DIY Tube Overdrive, 1972 Eminent 310U fed into rehoused 1978 Polymoog Formant Resonator Section, prototype analog chorus, 1967 Revox G36 tube half track tape machine, prototype Tube VoxBox, Hideaway Studio TEQ-9B Active 9-Band Gyrator Tube EQ, TL Audio EQ-2011 Tube EQ.

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

“I love the The Pentodian Resonator Choir library. I thought it would be good, but I seem to be reaching for it every time I need a choir-like sound at the moment.”   Shangsean, KVR Forum

“Pentodian Resonator Choir … Love it, absolute no brainer!!”  don1thedon, KVR Forum

“Love this thing, and not the first I bought from Hideaway and really clicked with it straight away. Keep up the good work!”  Vicshere, KVR

Download Contents:
•215 generously long 24-bit samples
•12 hand made multi-sampled resonator choirs
•4-Voice Layering Engine with ability to save
•12 editable example instrument patches
•8 example layered multi patches
•User Manual

System Requirements:
•Requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
•Around 500Mb Free Hard Disk Space

Credits

D.A.Wilson (Hideaway Studio) – Equipment Design, Sound Design, Sample Set & Example Instruments. Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) – Layering Engine Concept, GUI Design & Graphics. Mario Krušelj – Layering Engine Script

Usage Restrictions & Copyright Notice (see below)

HS-4KL-A004 V1.01 (09/02/13)

An Electronic Engineer, Sound Designer & Vintage Synth Specialist with a particular interest in combining vintage tube, classic analog and modern digital technologies working as a synth engineer looking after a very considerable amount of vintage studio equipment for Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) and a number of other notable musicians and producers. D.A.Wilson has undertaken several major restorations and produced custom electronic designs for a number of major artists including Jean-Michel Jarre and is also known for fully restoring two out of the world’s four remaining 1979 Crumar GDS and partially restoring 1938 Novachord 346 (the only known operational Novachord in the UK) to playable order.

For Demos & Test Recordings Visit Hideaway Studio on SoundCloud

For more on Novachord 346 please visit www.novachord.co.uk.

You Can Never Have Too Many Tubes!

General Usage Restrictions & Copyright Notice Applying to All Hideaway Studio Sound Libraries…

Purchasing any Hideaway Studio sound library grants a single user license. Further users are required to purchase their own copies even if they are based on the same site.  The libraries may be used in their distributed form as instruments in any music composition, both commercial or otherwise.  Under no circumstances may the raw sample data, voice groups, example instrument patches or indeed any new instruments created in these products be used as the basis for another sample library or musical instrument. The sample data in these products is protected under copyright.  No third party patches or samples have knowingly been used to create the oscillators or raw samples within these libraries.

– Hideaway Studio sound libraries are only legally available for purchase exclusively from :

Loot Audio powered by KontaktHub

– Any product or manufacturer names or brands mentioned or implied are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information

If you have any questions please email me at:   dani at  hideawaystudio dot  net

© D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio 2012-2023

The Layering Engine

The S-VX Hybrid Library for Kontakt is £10 and can be downloaded here:

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

“It’s a very well thought instrument, a very useful and inspiring tool.  Very user friendly, the GUI shows the essentials, all the needed knobs are here and the presets give a good idea of where this VI goes.  The general tone is analog and “tuby” and I could easily find the “hot spots” for the pads to cut through after a little tweaking from the VI knobs. It s really a steal for £10!!!!  With such a street price and power it’s definitely a winner !!!”    Claude Samard-Polikar (Musician & Musical Director for Jean Michel Jarre)

“a truly inspiring, deep and unique treasure trove of organic sound. In fact, I got stuck on preset #1, Apollo Strings, and time just flew…”    Joachim Smith

“I bought S-VX yesterday and am liking it a lot. I have only just scratched the surface but I can see lots of warm, moving tones and plenty of mangling opportunities. Well done. I look forward to more from you. And the Multis inspired me to try out a few of my own – there are loads of possibilities.”  DarkStar, KVR Forum

“just bought this, and been playing around for a bit, and every single noise that comes out of this beast is warm, lush, and straight-up INSPIRATIONAL!  i have a suspicion i’ll probably be (over)using this beast for quite some time!”  Funky Lime, KVR Forum

Complex Analog Oscillators with 12-bit Crunch into Curtis Filters….

In the mid 80’s AKAI released the infamous S900 which was to be one of the first of a new generation of highly affordable professional samplers.  The S900 and it’s bigger brother, the S950, became big sellers and completely changed the playing field amongst their competitors with their five digit offerings.

The S900 was a 12-bit machine with a tiny 750K memory and a floppy drive for sample storage. At the time it was a revelation but it’s now really very basic by today’s standards.

However….

Like so many early samplers such as the E-mu Emulator II, the SCI Prophet 2000 and the Ensoniq Mirage, the S900 has sonic character in bucket loads and still has a following to this day.

One feature of the S900 that was often overlooked was a curious 13 pin connector on the rear panel marked “VOICE OUT”…

The Mystery 13 Pin DIN

AKAI had released a small number of polyphonic analog synthesizers during the same era as the S900. These included the AX73 keyboard and the VX90 rack mount.  They have often been overlooked over the years possibly due to their rather control-free front panels and menu driven user interfaces. This is a perhaps a little unkind as these instruments feature genuine Curtis VCOs and filters unlike many offerings of the time such as the Juno-106 which was a DCO synth.  To this effect they drift out tune with temperature like the best of them!

Thank god for the auto-tune button!…

The infamous 13 pin connector permitted the sampler to be used as a complex oscillator source driving the filter stages and VCAs modulated by the envelope generators.   In short, you get to mix 12-bit digital crunch with the warmth of analog filters!

S900 & VX90 As One

The Sampling Process…

The instruments in the S-VX Hybrid Library were constructed using several vintage analog sound sources acting as complex sampled oscillators feeding the VX90 synth.

1976 Model D – Lending it’s Oscillators!

This formed the basis of an unusual albeit somewhat clunky hybrid synth…. Sound sources were mostly Minimoog model D but also included 1938 Novachord, 1967 Philicorda GM751, 1978 ARP Omni-2 string section, Roland JUNO-106 polysynth and 3  tube waveshaped 1960’s tube oscillators beating in parallel.

1938 Novachord #346 Lending it’s Sheer Organic Warmth

32 ten second long raw oscillator sources were captured in 12-bits using a recently refurbished S900 fitted with a new backlight and a (superb!) Lotharek HxC virtual floppy drive.  The results were stored on SD card as part of a bank of 79 virtual disks.

ARP Omni-2 + Novachord – Basis for Gorgeous Synth Strings!

The resulting interim sample set acted as oscillator sources for the VX90. Several patches were programmed on the VX90 to filter the oscillators transposed over five octaves from the S900 and the results from the VX90, including it’s gorgeous analog chorus, was multi-sampled direct from the output in 24-bit stereo.

376 samples were captured in this manner for the library.

The result?…

Complex warm analog oscillator sources transposed over 5 octaves with a touch of 12-bit crunch shaped with classic Curtis VCFs and VCAs!

System Requirements:

• The S-VX Hybrid Library requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
• Around 700Mb Free Hard Disk Space

A Quick Demonstration

Here are a few example improvs of some of the more cinematic sounds from the S-VX library in action:

Played live directly from the library in Kontakt with no additional Instruments, EQ or FX….

Download Contents:

• The S-VX Hybrid Kontakt library consisting of 376 24-bit stereo samples
• 4 Voice Layering Engine with save facility
• 32 multi-sampled instruments acting as voices in the layering engine
• 32 editable example instrument patches (in .nki format)
• User manual

Credits

D.A.Wilson (Hideaway Studio) – Hybrid Concept, Raw Oscillator Design, Sample Set, Example Instruments & Demos
Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) – Layering Engine Concept, GUI Design & Graphics
Mario Krušelj – Layering Engine Script
Jean-François Del Nero – For helping me to install his superb HxC floppy drive emulator in the S900

A big thank you also goes to Petri Alanko for his positive feedback after kindly offering to beta test the library.

HS-K4L-A001 V1.01 (06/12/12)