Review: SamplerBanks Neo DJ FX Sample Collection
SamplerBanks have just released a new collection of sounds and samples aimed at electronic musicians, game developers and film composers. Neo DJ FX includes 645 MB of edgy loops and samples, like harmonic and enharmonic Synth Atmospheres, Dopplers, Rising and Falling Drones, Swishes, Impacts, Metallic Hits, as well as glitchy crackles and noises.
This is a strong collection of sounds that will appeal to Dubstep and Tech House producers who are on the lookout for distinctive offbeat samples, which are musical enough to ease into tracks without effort. The sounds “sit well in a mix” according to one of our evaluators with the only drawback being some of the samples are “sopping wet” with effects that “take away from the clarity of some of the samples.” Although there’s plenty of drone pads to utilize, both of our testers gravitated to the One-Shot 24bit WAV samples.
Our reviewers especially liked the “Upwards” and “Downwards” selections. “Neo contained several unconventional build ups and breakdowns which were different enough from the usual fare to stand out, but not too bizarre to take your head out of the track.”
Neo DJ FX contains 38 Seamless Noise and 55 (both harmonic and enharmonic) Synth Atmosphere loops plus the following one-shots: 42 Combined FXs, 30 long Cymbals, 20 special Doppler sounds, 51 Rise/ 52 Fall Drones, 50 Swishes, 48 thundering Impacts, 30 metalic Hits and even 20 glitch-sounds recreated from the Transformers movies. For those of you still twiddling your thumbs for the long-awaited Mechanical Morph collection by Jim Stout and Richard Devine, this will certainly keep you occupied until Hollywood Edge get’s their act together.
For those of you who have soft-samplers in your arsenal, SampleBanks makes everything very easy by delivering all sounds as presets for Kontakt, HALion, EXS24, Reason NN-XT and sfz samplers. One reviewer dropped Neo into Native Instruments’ Kontakt and was instantly off and running. “The sampler presets is a great add-on
Cheers:
Sound Quality
Very Usable Sounds
Sampler Presets
Jeers:
Some sounds too wet
Off The Record:
“Completely dry versions of the sounds would have served me well.”
—Garth Fields
“Loved the crescendos and downward spirals!”
—Andrew Jones
FutureMusic Power Rating: 80%
Samplerbanks Neo DJ FX costs $32 / £19.95 / €22.95 and is available now as an instant download. More information on Samplebanks Neo DJ FX.
