Chiptune Patch-Fest: Sounds and Presets
From Chiptune to classical strings, and a prepared piano!
3,4 / 5,0 | 
NAMM had been and gone for another year. We get back to our sounds and presets with a selection of goodies covering lots of bases, including Chiptune!
After last week’s hiatus for NAMM 2025, I’m back with a veritable feat of sounds and presets covering a broad range of styles and genres. From Chiptune to classical, we have something for almost everyone. Rest your show-weary eyes and legs and fill your synths with these beauties!
Sounds and Presets
Chiptune Trilogy for BA-1 by Baby Audio
Baby Audio’s BA-1 has been a bit of a hit since launching nearly two years ago. It’s a brilliant take on the fantastic Yamaha CS-01, which essentially was one CS-80 voice in a mini keyboard. Of course, the BA-1 takes the concept beyond that of the original hardware an does it with aplomb.
All the usual improvements are there, such as polyphony, a proper filter and FX. And it has its own quirks built right in with an adjustable battery voltage to mess around with the overall performance of the instruments. Clever stuff for Baby Audio’s first ever synth plugin!
Now, you can add 192 new presets into the mix with their Chiptune Trilogy! Now, full disclosure… I’m not a huge fan of chiptune. I mean, I ought to be as I was a teen during the days when chiptune wasn’t chiptune but the very latest sounds made by our home computers!
I marvelled at what game composers like Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Ben Daglish could squeeze out of Commodore 64’s and the like, especially Galway’s work on Wizball. But I’m not entirely convinced of the resurgence the genre has had. But what do I know? It’s incredibly popular and lovers of the genre will adore this collection
There are three separate libraries included: Chiptune Futurism, Chiptune Legacy, and Chipwave. Each has 64 presets, for a total of 192! All three were created by big names in the business. While they may not float my boat, they are very well constructed and will make Chiptuners very happy!
Ambient Frost for Vital by Tom Wolfe Presets
I’ve featured Tom Wolfe’s sounds in this column before and no doubt will again after this. Tom has just brought out his latest pack, entitled ‘Ambient Frost, this time for Vital, the spectral warping wavetable synth from Vital Audio.
Vital has a slightly different path to ownership, offering itself at different price points from free to Pro which costs $80. There’s an in-between price point of $25 or there’s a subscription option which, if we are being honest, is probably what the developers would prefer you choose.
Whichever version you decide on, Tom’s ‘Ambient Frost’ pack will work on it. Which is nice! As the name suggests, these sounds are of an icy, frosty nature and very well-suited to give your ambient tracks a real chill.
There’s an introductory offer that lasts until the 4th of February 2025 so you can pick these up during that period for just £15.99. After that, they’re £23.99. They’re also included in Tom’s Vital bundle as well as his ‘Complete Collection’ bundle.
Cremona Quartet Ensemble for Kontakt by Native Instruments
This next product is as far away from Chiptune as you could possibly get! Joining Native Instrument’s Cremona Solo package, where each of the instruments, a Cello, Viola and two Violins were presented as individual examples, Quartet Ensemble throws them together into, yup, you guessed it… an ensemble!
But why? Surely I can play each part on the Solo versions? Sure, if you want to have to meticulously arrange each one to sit nicely with the others. Something special happens when musicians play together, and the Cremona Quartet helps you recreate that magic.
There’s a new Auto Divisi feature that effortlessly distributes all the parts across the ensemble and rather than modelling the articulations as they do in Solo, elements such as sustain, marcato and vibrato are actually sampled. This ensures a really human feel.
The instruments sampled are some of the finest made in all of Italia, including Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù, all played by performers from Cremona’s Auditorium Giovanni Arvedi. they have been, as you might expect, sampled meticulously from the collection at the Museo Del Violino in Cremona. The locals even stopped the traffic during the sampling process to eliminate any external noise!
The Cremona Quartet is available now for £269.00 and NI are doing a bundle deal on the Quartet and Solo packages for £449.00, a saving of £179.
Studio FX Piano by Vienna Symphonic Library
Staying on an orchestral theme, we have a new piano library from Vienna Symphonic Library. The Studio FX Piano is VSL’s attempt at recreating a ‘Prepared Piano’, as pioneered by the great John Cage. When not composing pieces of music that contain, Cage liked to mess around with a piano to extract something unique from it.
By attaching a variety of objects to the strings of a piano, Cage found that he could illicit a wide variety of unique sounds from the traditionally mono-timbral instrument. Screws, rubber, paper, bolts and all manner of other items were placed on the strings in various places to come up with something truly different.
This sort of thing has been done before, most notably, in my opinion, by UVI with their IRCAM Prepared Piano. VSL, however, have really gone to town on theirs, adding custom FX, including their convolution reverb, all recorded at their studios in the Austrian capital.
Playable via the Vienna Synchron Player, Studio FX Piano is for the adventurous composer, allowing them to experiment with a prepared grand piano without needing a grand piano and the space and time to create their own preparations.
But don’t see this as the exclusive domain of the orchestral and avant-garde. A prepared piano is a lot of fun to play and could easily work with any style or genre of music. Let your imagination run wild!
VSL’s Studio FX Piano is available now in two different versions, Standard and Full, the latter having double the mic positions than the former. Prices start at €189 for Standard and €299 for Full, both on a limited introductory offer. Add €60 and €100 on each after that expires.
Aurora for Lush 2 by D16 Group
Bringing up the rear this week is a bank of sounds for D16’s excellent Lush 2 software synth. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the last 40+ years to not know where D16 got the inspiration for Lush from. Now in its second iteration, Lush 2 may still look like an SH-101, but it goes way beyond.
Aurora is one of those packs that attempts to cover the gamut of sound types, from basses to leads, pads to plucks and more. But this pack boasts the ability to go beyond the sounds you’d expect to hear from such a synth. D16 say that some sounds in Aurora are almost acoustic in nature.
A bold claim but just listen to the demo below and you will see they can back that claim up with receipts and paperwork…
But that doesn’t mean they’ve forgone the types of sound you DO expect. Trust me, this thing can sound as electronic as it does acoustic. This pack really does show off Lush 2 to be the powerhouse the PR says it is. All sounds were programmed by acclaimed Romanian sound designer, Cipryan B and he’s done some stellar work here!
Aurora for Lush 2 requires Lush 2 v2.1.0 or higher and retails for just €29. If you own this synth, you owe it these sounds.
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