New Hollow Sun Strings Synths II for Kontakt

You know the old saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?

Well, I beg to differ. I remember having many lengthy conversations with Steve Howell about “modern technology” and how it was all a pile of rubbish compared to the hardware of old. We would pontificate about how software synthesis and sampling was the realm of lazy “musos” who were probably using ripped off samples and things like software samplers were not even samplers and just plain old playback devices with FX.

But not too long ago, Steve started to dig into Kontakt, the application from Native Instruments, and began to find that it had begun to become a far more powerful tool than first thought. This exploration was made for a number of reasons. Firstly, there was the economic choice, given that so many people were using Kontakt, it was a market that couldn’t be ignored, especially as the predominantly hardware markets had begun to significantly dry up. Secondly, there was the issue of security. An Akai S5000/S6000 sample pack is made up of 2 or 3 types of file; an Akai Program and/or Multi and the .wav sample files. These can easily be taken and dumped into any sampler and with no proprietary format to break before doing so. Finally, the level at which you can manipulate samples in Kontakt now, especially with it’s new scripting features, puts it up there as a “cannot be ignored” sonic tool.

Having seen the incredible work done by Tracy Collins at Indiginus and the fantastic use of Kontakt to bring his sounds to life, Steve set about converting and creating material in this format. The Novachord package was one of the first and certainly the biggest Kontakt project undertaken and now Steve is slowly, but surely, transferring his legacy material into this format. And it’s not just a straight port either. Steve is having great fun using Kontakt’s unique features, all in the relative and increased safety of a proprietary format with a greatly reduced risk of piracy.

And so, here we have the latest of these ports. The Hollow Sun String Synth II Library. I remember first hearing these samples many years ago and they were some of the first samples I gravitated to when Hollow Sun was still running it’s highly altruistic free sample library. For me, string synths were some of the first and certainly most evocative synthesizer sounds I had heard. My first real love of synths came from Jean Michel Jarre and his use of the Eminent 310, featured in this very package with a very authentic phaser effect as an option. These sounds were intergalactic in nature and conjured up all sorts of audio induced imagery.

In addition, we have the Solina String Ensemble, Moog Opus and Roland RS202 which Steve has coupled up with a Roland VP330 for some vocoded formant loveliness.

Using Kontakt’s scripting, Steve has enabled a wide range of FX on each instrument, and there are other layers that can be brought in to beef things up or lend a new sonic quality, such as the brass samples included with the Solina.

And to top this all off, Steve has included 3 classic PolyMoog programs, Strings I, Strings II and the incredible signature sound of Gary Numan, the Vox Humana preset. Start layering these sounds with some of the other instruments for truly mind blowing results.

Better still, this package only costs a paltry £16 / €19 / $25 and is also available in Akai & EXS24 formats, albeit without the bonus PolyMoog programs.

Another small, yet perfectly formed package from the true master of vintage synth sampling. Check out the audio demo…..

[audio:https://www.failedmuso.com/audio/StringsSynths.mp3]