We all love the organic juice of analogue oscillators, and their sharper successors, the DCOs, but as time has passed many of the sounds of the fully digital synths have been reassessed and looked upon with the respect they are due.
Whether its wavetables or samples, these beasts of the 80s and 90s deliver sounds that you just can't get near with a room full of modular units, and nor would you want to!
What you need to know
This sample collection offers a set of loops in four tempos (85, 110, 120 and 128bpm) across three main synth sound areas that digital synths have excelled: bass, pads and polysynths.
The base instruments were the Kurzweil K2600r (sample based), the Arturia V Collection (CMI V and Synclavier V) and UVI's Synth Anthology 3 (mostly PPG, Waldorf, Korg and Yamaha models). These were programmed into a basic form for each instrument as the three lines were written in MIDI. Once the parts were settled on the patches were tweaked, plugins added and the analogue chain was addressed.
This consisted of the Thermionic Culture Rooster valve preamp/EQ/distortion and a G-SSL bus compressor (DIY SSL style VCA compressor). Both were adjusted heavily for each instrument, starting with the Rooster for EQ and sometimes a touch of the Attitude (distortion) knob.
All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.
The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!
Example sounds
Sample-based synth samples: click to download
Sample-based synth samples (246MB)
These samples originally appeared in Future Music Magazine. Check out the latest issue for many more.
Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 80,000 more free samples.
