“These Blue Zone sound libraries are some of my favorites. Shimmering, murky, distant, distressed, and very evocative. I love sounds that feel like they’ve been through hell on their way to the speakers, and these are right on the money. Highly recommended, and such a bargain!”

Charlie Clouser, Film & TV Composer.

“when I first came across them, I spent a whole afternoon listening through in absolute wonder. They are without a doubt, some of the best tones I have ever heard & so meticulous in their detail. I’ll look forward to using them on up coming film & media production cues and in a variety of other projects, too.”

Simon Power, Composer & Sound Designer for BBC’s Doctor Who audiobooks

The Blue Zone, was originally incrementally released as an on-going series of one-off experimental electronic textures and instruments which grew over a year to form a unique sound library. It proved to be extremely popular with well over 4000 releases sold to date and now being used in TV, Film and Media studios across the world.

Since release The Blue Zone Series instruments found their way into a number of high profile projects…

Most of the sounds in the series have been created from scratch using unusual combinations of custom tube hybrid equipment, experimental analog circuits, tape delays, ring modulators, vintage analog gear and test equipment. These sounds and textures in this series are mostly but not exclusively aimed at Ambient, New Age and Sound Score genres. Each instrument is presented with a basic subtractive synthesizer interface permitting the user to further tweak the sound to suit his needs.

In celebration of the first year of the series a Special Edition release of the first 25 incremental releases are presented as one library along with their original audio demos. The instrument names have been prefixed to indicate their release number. 44 bonus layered multis have been included that span across the library – these have been prefixed with TBZxx and include several complex arpeggiated offerings. A “rogues gallery” of much of the equipment used to make TBZ01-25 can also be found in the documentation folder along with some production notes giving clues on what gear was used for each sound.

The Blue Zone 01-25 Special Edition presents all of the original incremental releases in the series and some extras…

Download Contents:

A full pre-installed download of all 22 instruments officially released to date along with the following extras is now available:

• 1GB of 24-bit samples
• TBZ13 Area_13 “The One That Got Away”
• TBZ24 Crystallum Modus
• TBZ25 Snow Flakes
• 44 New Layered Multis blending cross library textures with TBZxx prefix
• Original 78 .nkis & 56 .nkms now prefixed for easy identification of release
• Original demos for the first 25 releases (in mp3 format)
• 28 minute long compilation of select demos from the series (mp3 format)
• “Rogues Gallery” of much of the equipment used in the making of the series
• Production release note summary for clues on how each sound was made
• List of instruments and layered multis along with original release dates

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

System Requirements:

• Approximately 1.2GB of free hard disk space is required (full library)
• Kontakt 4.2.4 (full version)
• A Velocity Sensitive Keyboard is Highly Recommended
• A Sustain Pedal will prove very effective in many instances

Credits

• D.A.Wilson  Custom Equipment, Sound Design and Audio Demos
• Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP)  Conceptual GUI Design & Graphics
• Mario Krušelj  GUI Script

HS-4KL-BZ99 (SE) & HS-4KL-BZ98 (BP) (25/11/13)

The Hideaway e-Grand…

The 1938 Hammond Novachord, 1974 Farfisa Syntorchestra  and 1976 Polymoog 203A are all examples of three early polysynths capable of producing piano like timbres. The Novachord was without question the world’s first commercial all electronic polyphonic instrument designed to emulate the piano amongst other timbres.  To design something that electronically synthesized anything even remotely sounding like a piano in 1938 is nothing short of miraculous and a huge credit to the incredible ingenuity of Laurens Hammond and his fellow engineers!!  If you think I ever overstate this then look up his patents from the era – one of which is pretty much the definition of the basis of the modern analog synthesizer.  All have one thing in common in that they rely on formant synthesis to produce these tones. As is often the case, such instruments tend to exhibit sweet spots over relatively narrow registers. For while now I thought it might be interesting to try and carefully blend the best of these registers captured from the three instruments in an attempt to try and create something where an evocative, expressive and playable nature was more the end goal than realism. As it turned out the grainy organic nature of Hideaway’s very own and rather infamously “vintage calibrated” Novachord #346 provided a special ingredient in the lower registers, the Polymoog added much of the mid-range warmth and the really quite beautiful highs were thanks to the Syntorchestra with the help of the Omega 8. After much play testing the samples were carefully layered and tube equalised.

After bringing together such a rare combination of instruments I thought it might be quite fitting to introduce some equally unusual signal processing technology. I recently rescued a 1960’s Baldwin all tube “Panoramic” stereo spring reverb. After building a high voltage power supply and modifying the spring to be centrally excited with a piezo ceramic transducer a pseudo stereo signal could be picked up from the two ends. What is particularly unusual about Baldwin’s patented design is that the signal is AM modulated at 20KHz and passed over the spring as an ultrasonic wave. The signal at the end of the spring is then received and demodulated back to audio.

The advantage of this technology is that the spring, rather bizarrely, is nothing like as sensitive to vibration as a normal spring reverb tank. It is also much less prone to the usual ricochet effects caused by high energy transients. The frequency response is a little flatter too. Although I found the reverb was a little noisy, it sounded surprisingly dense and complex so I created a series of impulse responses and was very excited to hear they worked remarkably well as a convolution reverb.

Almost by luck it turned out that the reverb worked nicely not only on vocals but also with piano. In Kontakt some careful velocity to filter and attack mapping was applied along with sustain damper emulation. All in all, an unusual combination of instruments resulting in a nique electronic piano with quite a lot of heart.

Please note this instrument ideally requires the use of a sustain pedal.

Equipment Used

1938 Hammond Novachord #346
1974 Farfisa Syntorchestra
1976 Moog Polymoog 203A #3211
Studio Electronics Omega 8
1960’s Baldwin “Panoramic” stereo ultrasonic tube spring reverb
Two Hideaway Studio TEQ-9B Rackmount Active 9 Band Tube EQs

Sampled in 24-bits and presented in a simple but effective GUI along with 8 example patches which the user may edit and save.

Download includes a user manual and demo mp3.

System Requirements

Kontakt 4.2.4 or above
Sustain Pedal (not essential but strongly recommended)
62MB free hard drive space

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

D.A.Wilson Synth Restoration  Equipment & Sound Design
Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP)  Conceptual GUI Design & Graphics
Mario Krušelj  GUI Script

HS-4KL-A012 (11/11/13)

Orbitone Collection II was conceived very much as an extension to the original release of complex warm electronic textures made with unusual combinations of vintage technologies…

Featuring The Worlds Oldest String Synth That Never Was!…

The 1972 Eminent 310 Unique was a very unusual mix of combo organ and string synthesizer in its own right but what was particularly special about it was the triple parallel analog chorus processor with 6 free running clock modulating LFOs better known as the Orbitone. It is this complex multi-path analog effect that makes the famous strings on the 310U so very special and slightly simplified technology was later used to good effect in the Solina and ARP Omni string synthesizers. It was originally developed to effectively make one rank of sawtooths become three with a high degree of movement without resorting to the very significant expense and complexity of three full divide down chains with independent master oscillators.

Being a self confessed boffin it suddenly occurred to me one day that I had a fantastically rare opportunity on my hands to attempt to feed 1938 Novachord 346  through the Orbitone stages on the Eminent. After consulting the 310U’s sea of schematics for some time I determined a potentially suitable point to inject an external audio signal. To my delight this resulted in quite simply some of the most organic synth strings I’ve ever heard..

All those lumps bumps and imperfections are thrown into a rich soup of analog processing and the result is truly delicious!

Now armed with this monstrous analog effects processor I got curious and fed a number of other sources through it including one instrument that is known to be a little weedy in isolation namely the little CS-01 monosynth. As well as the Novachord I sampled offerings from new patches I dialled up via the 310U Orbitone stages from the Juno-106, CS-01, Crumar Bit One and Omega 8. In addition to this some new sampled material was taken from the instruments via an analog chorus unit including a series of brass and guitar timbres.   Some of the guitar sounds were also created by passing Minimoog 7751 and the Bit One through a 1960’s Echo-Reverb featuring a tube buffered electrostatic Tel-ray “Oil Can” delay unit. A further resonator choir was made by feeding the Juno-106 through the rehoused Polymoog Formant Resonator. In addition, a combination of organ stops were sampled directly from the Eminent and a further harpsichord patch was dialled into Polymoog 203A 3211 courtesy of Will Gregory of the electronic music duo Goldfrapp.

Orbitone Collection II utilises the same proven 4-voice layering engine as the original release but operating on a brand new sample set constructed using a different combination of source instruments and techniques.

Combined Libraries…

As well as the new library featuring 40 example patches and 40 layered multis, a further 40 combined layers have been created that combine patches from both libraries together to form new layered instruments and textures. The new sounds have been presented as a merged installation thus permitting the user to access and walk through patches from both libraries as one.

*Equipment Used:  1972 Eminent 310U, 1976 Minimoog, 1938 Novachord, rehoused 1978 Polymoog Formant Resonator Section, 1960’s Echo-Reverb tube “Oil Can” Delay, Polymoog 3211, Juno-106, Crumar Bit One, Studio Electronics Omega 8, CE-300 chorus, CS-01.

The Orbitone Collection requires Kontakt version 4.2.2 or higher.

More Details & Purchase via Kontakt Hub

*NB: For existing Orbitone Collection customers still wishing to upgrade please contact me.

“GREAT JOB!!   I love these new old sounds. Wobbly, retro, noisy as hell in some  
cases, worn, distressed, evocative of a bakelite world…

Death to the Giant Silver Workstation…

Just great programming from an enviable source library. Unique. Saliva- 
prompting. Above all a profoundly musical collection of refreshingly  
flawed tones.”

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

Download Contents: 

• The Orbitone Collection I & II consisting of 607 generously long 24-bit samples
• 4-Voice Layering Engine with ability to save user patches
• 48 multi-sampled instruments acting as voices/partials in the layering engine
• 80 editable example instrument patches (in .nki format)
• 40 editable example layered multis (20 combining Orbitone II and 20 combining both libraries)
• User Manual

System Requirements:

• Both Orbitone Collections require Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
• Around 1GB Free Hard Disk Space for the combined library

Credits

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

Demos and background on the original Orbitone Collection

 A selection of complex warm electronic textures made with an unusual combination of 1972 Eminent 310U, a rehoused 1978 Polymoog Resonator Section, 1976 Minimoog Model D and 1938 Novachord all processed with vintage classic analog and tube technology and brought together in the same proven 4-voice layering engine as the S-VX library….

Please Note: The Orbitone Collection has since merged with Orbitone II as a combined product.

“First, the Noble Horns would make any soundtrack maker very happy. It has exactly the right blend of “almost acoustic” and “ageless” and “epicness”. I really, really dig the “grrraaaawwwwrr” of the sound. Amalfi Strings… yum. I think you’re at something that speaks to me in the exact right words. I cannot describe it better.”  Petri Alanko, Game & Film Score Composer (Xbox 360 game, Alan Wake)

“Listened to the demo, concluded it was a bloody lovely sound library and bought it on the spot.  Great bargain!  I think it’s a lovely set of sounds.  Really.  Right in the zone for the work I am trying to do.  Gorgeous.  You have a very good ear.”  tropicalontour, KVR Forum

“Dan,  I saw your website on Rekkerd.org recently and checked out your demos. I got thru the first Orbitone example and immediately bought both of your sample sets. From earthy to epic, it’s all there. What really impresses me is the warmth of the samples.  I’ve had some real fun combining both the Orbitone and S-VX Hybrid patches. I think the best thing that can be said of your sample sets is that it inspires me to make music!  Great work!!! Keep them coming!”  Rick G.

• The Orbitone Collection consisting of 226 generously long 24-bit samples
• 28 multi-sampled instruments acting as voices/partials in the layering engine
• 4-Voice Layering Engine with ability to save user patches
• 40 editable example instrument patches (in .nki format)
• User Manual

System Requirements:

• The Orbitone Collection requires Kontakt version 4.2.4 or higher
• Around 500Mb Free Hard Disk Space

 Equipment Used:

1972 Eminent 310U (strings, pads, resonator choir, e-piano, organ), 1976 Minimoog (brass, pads, bells, chimes), 1938 Novachord (strings, e-piano), rehoused 1978 Polymoog Formant Resonator Section (choir), 1976 Revox G36 tube half track tape machine (g36 choir), Panoramic tube Dual Tone Generator (chimes, e-piano), two 1967 Heathkit EUW-27 tube signal generators (chimes, e-piano), ARP Omni Chorus section (strings), Hideaway Studio Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser (evolving pads, phased chimes) and Dual Tube Hybrid Filter (underwurlde sweep), Tube Ring Modulator (bell ratios), Discrete Dual Exponential Sawtooth Generator (french horns), Tube Overdrive and Passive Triple L/C Resonator buffered with Y-amplifiers from a 1968 Tektronix tube scope! (deep resonator vox), All sound sources captured via two Hideaway Studio Type TEQ-9B Active Tube EQs in 24-bits with the RME Fireface.

A Quick Demonstration

Here are a few examples made using only instruments from The Orbitone Collection:

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

 Warm Textures In the Making….

 Rather than simply making yet another virtual instrument, the arrival of a recently restored 310U was the perfect excuse to bring together a taster of a number of combined sound sources and techniques I’ve been working on to create rich, warm and complex textures.  In particular I’ve fallen in love with the sheer musicality and magic of tube oscillators and wave shaping coupled with rediscovering classic analog synthesis and effects.

 This has formed the basis of a new follow on to the recently released S-VX library and created very much with the idea of the two libraries being used in tandem to offer a very significant degree of opportunity for layering and blending new sounds.

 The Orbitone Collection features the same proven 4-voice layering engine but operating on a brand new sample set made using a very different set of techniques to S-VX but with the similar timbres and textures in mind.

 Like S-VX, Minimoog 7751 was both sampled directly and also washed through the Triple Tube Hybrid Phaser to form a number of looped textures with movement.  Similarly, although the 310U was sampled in isolation, it was also passed through the rehoused resonator section of a Polymoog to magically turn brass formants into a choir!

 Several tube wave shaping circuits, an L/C resonator based on the Novachord and vintage signal generators were utilised to produce deep vocal formant drones.   The Tube Strings and were a blend of Novachord, ARP Omni and Discrete Tube Synthesis.  The e-Piano was created by layering piano like timbres from the Novachord, the 310U and three tube oscillators mixed and tube wave shaped.

The Arrival of 91-0071750…

 Over the past few months a dedicated chap from Holland called Albert Steenbergen has been doing a wonderful restoration job for me painstakingly cleaning and recapping a monster.  Albert is best known for keeping Jean Michel Jarre’s infamous fleet of 310’s alive and well for use on tour and simply must win the title of World’s Best and Most Patient 310U Guru!

 The beast recently safely arrived in the UK in a large crate in the pouring rain which resulted in a manic struggle with a friend to drag her inside through a hastily unhinged doorway – disaster narrowly averted when the 240lb crate very nearly toppled over backwards off the door ledge!

 Some Background on the Eminent 310U

The Eminent 310 “Unique” is largely considered to feature the world’s first commercial string synthesizer section (although that title really ought to go to Laurens Hammond’s incredible 1938 Novachord!).

 The 310U was designed and manufactured in Holland by Eminent and released in 1972.  This boldly unusual combination of electronic organ and polyphonic synthesizer probably would have probably slipped into historical oblivion if it wasn’t for Jean Michel Jarre discovering its potential and using it to great effect in 1976 on his hugely successful and pioneering album, Oxygene.   Although this is common knowledge, what is less understood is that far more than simply the infamous string section was put to use in the making of this landmark release.

 Although the instrument itself didn’t become hugely popular outside of Holland, Eminent licensed out their string synth technology to ARP to become the successful Solina and Omni range. The 310U boasts really quite an unusual architecture permitting a mixture of sustained and percussive envelopes to be applied to combinations of all of the timbres which can be layered together.  There is also a gorgeous swirly six-stage analog stereo chorus “Orbitone” section and built in spring reverb.   The instrument was significantly more complex than most combo organs of the era due to in the main to the polyphonic percussive and sustain controls using discrete analog technology throughout.

 In fact, having studied the workings of both instruments in detail, I’d have to say the 310U is in many ways the closest successor in ethos, character and architecture to the 1938 Novachord and marks an historically important crossover between electronic organ and polyphonic synthesizer technologies.

Credits

D.A.Wilson (Hideaway Studio) – Equipment Design, Sound Design, Sample Set, Example Instruments & Demos

Stephen Howell (Hollow Sun, RIP) – Layering Engine Concept, GUI Design & Graphics

Mario Krušelj – Layering Engine Script

A big thank you also goes to Petri Alanko & Claude Samard-Polikar for kindly offering to beta test the library.

HS-4KL-A002  (Originally released 29/12/12, now superseded by HS-4KL-A011)

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)