Ain’t That Grand! Pianoverse Gains a Yamaha C7 – Sounds and Presets
Plus Nord Lead sound packs and dystopian noises for your productions
5,0 / 5,0 | 
IK Multimedia’s Pianoverse expands with the addition of the Grand Piano Y7, a deeply sampled Yamaha C7 Grand.
Sounds and Presets
IK Multimedia Grand Piano Y7 for Pianoverse
When IK Multimedia launched Pianoverse, it was a piano sample library with a difference. Firstly, it promised an ever-growing collection of high-quality, precision-sampled pianos of varying types. It also promised detailed control over almost every aspect, such as tuning, tone, effects, lid positions, mechanical noise and tone.
Mic type and positioning, as well as EQ, allowed even further sculpting of the sound. But one of the more adventurous and interesting aspects was the Spaces feature. Spaces is exactly what the name implies. A wide collection of spaces in which to place your piano and benefit from the most common room environments to the wild and wacky.
You can go from Club, Ballet Studio and Garage to Iceberg, Old Forest and Sea Floor. These more elaborate spaces deliver representations of how your piano might sound in such environments. I’m pretty sure the team from IK Multimedia didn’t take a piano down to the bottom of the ocean just to capture some impulse responses.
Nevertheless, it means that the pianos of Pianoverse can be treated in many unique and interesting ways. And now there’s a new piano in the library, and it’s one of my favourites. the Yamaha C7 Grand is a renowned and much-loved instrument and one that I particularly love for its versatile tone.
With over 27GB of samples and 25 detailed presets, this is a very welcome addition to what is becoming a superb suite for lovers of tinkling the ivories. But it isn’t just the piano that’s new. There have also been three additional spaces added to the Pianoverse application.
These spaces are Northern Lights, Mirrors and White Loft Spaces, each with their own unique, adjustable characters.
The best way to dive into the Pianoverse is to buy Pianoverse Max, which gets you all of the pianos in the collection for just €115, but you can purchase individual instruments if you prefer. In my very humble opinion, €115 for nine superbly sampled pianos is an absolutely cracking deal.
Ocean Swift Dystopia Diary and Scanners Simply
Just last week, I introduced you to a very interesting collection of audio samples of famous 20th-century speeches from well-known people of that era. The company behind cleaning up and making these public domain audio clips available for free download was Ocean Swift.
And here they are again with a couple of unique packages, the first of which is Dystopian Diary. Primarily created for film and game composers, this sample-based instrument allows you to conjure up a range of dark, mysterious and foreboding soundscapes with ease.
It features six layers, each of them customisable and can create a wide range of soundscapes that have a sinister and mysterious edge. Recently updated to v1.1, it contains 1,900 samples and are made available to use either in Kontakt or the platform of your choice.
Dystopia Diary works with the free Kontakt Player and is also NKS compatible. There’s even the ability to import your own sounds to truly personalise the instrument to your needs.
In a similar vein to those audio samples from great 20th-century speeches, Scanners Simply is a collection of recordings from police, fire, emergency medical service and rail radio transmissions. All of these have been curated and prepared for professional use and definitely provide that extra layer of authenticity to certain productions.
Scanners Simply gives you 110 files of scanner chats in 16bit.44.1kHz WAV files that are free to use how you see fit.
The content of Scanners Simply is hugely reminiscent of some of my favourite relaxation websites, L.A. Vue and You Are Listening To. These sites blend live emergency service radio broadcasts with ambient electronic music from Soundcloud. Coupled with night time imagery of cityscapes, they really are amazing to listen to.
Whilst I’m not sure if Scanners Simply was inspired by these, it certainly enables users to create their own similar works. You can pick up Dystopia Diary here for €40, down from €60 and Scanners Simply for just €5 here.
Throb and Pulsing for Nord Clavia Leads
Another returning sound design house to Sounds and Presets is Kulshan Studios, this time with a couple of banks for the Clavia Nord Lead 2 and 3, respectively. Named Throb and Pulsing, I’m betting this article might trigger some overly sensitive profanity or smut filter!
Joking aside, they’re quite apt names for these sound sets. Throb is for the Nord Lead 2 and 2X and is squarely focused on the Industrial genre. Inspired by artists such as Rammstein, Front Line Assembly, Rob Zombie and Skinny Puppy, these sounds use all of the Nord Lead’s powerful modulation capabilities to serve up some pounding sounds.
Pulsing, on the other hand, is for the Nord Lead 3 and is aimed at the Techno market. You won’t find any acoustic-style patches here. This is full-on electronic splendour, designed to keep dancers rooted to the dancefloor.
There are blissful pads, chord stabs, powerful basses and much more. If techno is your thing, and you’re rocking one of those lovely Nord Lead 3’s, you can’t go wrong with this sound set. Check out the demo video below.
You can pick up Throb here for your Nord Lead 2 and 2X and Pulsing for your Nord Lead 3 here, both for just €23 each.
If you don’t have either of these synths, the Nord Lead lives on in the shape of the Nord Lead A1 which can be had for €1,444 at our affiliate partner.
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