Dark Ambient is the second in the series of Analogue Waveforms sound libraries by Ian Boddy. Forming the sequel to 'Distortion & Feedback', it is intended that each volume in this series will focus in on one aspect of analogue sound design possible on modular and vintage synthesisers.

This library contains 300 samples (150 longer looped sounds & 150 one shots) meticulously programmed and recorded from analogue modular & vintage synthesisers.

As you may surmise from the title of the library these dwell very much in the darker realms of ambience & electronic music.

A new custom designed graphical interface has been scripted in Kontakt to provide even more variation & programming opportunities in the way the sounds are presented.

This is rounded out by a set of impulse responses for the convolution reverb taken directly from analogue modules such as spring reverbs & bucket-brigade delays to further enhance the overall sound character.

The sounds & patches run the full gamut from subsonic drones, evolving pads and haunting modulations to weird, surreal atmospheres. The one-shot section contains a range of crunchy, deep, weird short percussive sounds and FX that can be used to spice up any drum kit or add impact to key moments in your musical compositions.

For more detailed info on the contents of Dark Ambient, please take a look at the PDF Manual.

Plus, for a full listing of the contents, check out the full brochure in the PDF of Contents.

Ian Boddy has been producing sample libraries since 1992. His work for Zero-G includes Ambient Volumes 1 & 2, Malice in Wonderland, Morphology, Analogue Sequencer Loops & Outer Limits. Boddy’s musical career actually goes all the way back to 1980. He has a successful solo musical career having released over 30 solo & collaborative albums, performed over 150 concerts in the UK, Europe & the USA and runs the highly respected ambient music label DiN which has currently released 45 CDs. Furthermore he also composes library music for the UK’s largest independent library music company DeWolfe having written 14 such titles for them to date.

Kontakt 4 Interface
The sounds have been mapped out into over 500 Kontakt 4 format patches using the new custom designed GUI. They are grouped into two basic categories - Raw and Treated:
 
Raw
These are the basic raw audio samples (looped where appropriate) presented with all the FX & filter sections turned off in the GUI. For added convenience each folder has an “All” patch for audition purposes. Thus it is easy to play each of the samples as they were recorded or to experiment with the GUI from a default state for creating your own patches.
 
Treated
The same folder structure is used as for the raw sounds but here full use is made of the GUI to further treat & enhance the samples. Furthermore useful collections of similar sounds are grouped into various multi-sets or velocity cross-fade patches. To quickly see how the samples have been mapped out across the keyboard simply click the tool icon in the top left of the GUI to open the Kontakt edit mode. The Mapping Editor should be open by default but if not click it’s button.
 
User Interface:
The GUI is split into two halves. The leftmost one contains the synth shaping controls whereas the rightmost comprises an audio effects chain. Hovering the mouse over any control should show a tooltip in the extreme bottom right of the Kontakt window. The various knobs are colour coded in the different sections for ease of use. The synth controls are comprised of a multi-mode filter with cutoff & resonance controls. The filter type selector switch can continuously morph between all 3 types of filter (low-pass / high-pass & band-pass) and a simple switch is provided for the selection of 2 or 4 pole filter slopes. The filter can be modulated by several sources. To it’s immediate left is a multi-waveform LFO with rate & amount controls. Along the middle of this section are the modulation amounts for envelope 2, modulation wheel & key-track. Note all these 4 modulation controls can have both positive & negative amounts set with zero modulation being set at 12 o’clock. The envelope at the bottom of this section is of the ADSR type. Envelope 1 controls the amplitude of the overall patch and envelope 2 is routed to filter modulation.

Although not shown on the GUI there is an additional LFO set to produce vibrato when the modulation wheel is raised on some patches such as melodic pads. This adds an additional level of playing expression but it was felt it would clutter up the GUI as it’s only used on a relatively small proportion of the overall patches. If you would like to edit this and have the full version of Kontakt simply click on the tool icon to open up the full Kontakt interface and scroll to the bottom. Opening the Modulation window will show the LFO at the very bottom where you can edit parameters such as rate & fade in time.

The effects section of the GUI is comprised of a set of effects arranged in series. First up we have distortion which also includes a cabinet selection drop down menu. This is followed by phaser, flanger & delay line. Lastly there is the convolution reverb which as previously mentioned includes a set of custom recorded impulse responses taken from analogue modules such as spring reverbs & bucket-brigade delays. Each effect has the most relevant controls directly accessible from the GUI but by entering edit mode further tweaks can be made to these and indeed any of the GUI controls.
 
Technical Details:

• 300 samples at 44.1Khz, 24bit in WAV format
• Mixture of stereo & mono samples
• Raw audio recorded from the following analogue synthesisers:
  • Roland System 100-M
  • Serge Animal, Audio Interface, Dual Oscillator, Klangzeit, CV Matrix Mixer,
  • Dual ADSR, Stereo Mixer & custom panels
  • Analogue Systems
  • Analogue Solutions
  • Doepfer A-100
  • Cwejman SPH2, FSH1 & MX-4S
  • Make Noise DPO, Wogglebug, René, Maths & QMMG
  • Livewire, Metasonix, Harvestman & Synthesis Technology modules
  • VCS3
  • Minimoog & Moog Voyager
  • Metasonix TM-2 tube BP filter
  • TLA Ebony A2Stereo Processor
• Recorded directly into Apple Mac Pro using UAD Apollo audio interface
• Samples edited in Bias Peak Pro 5 & Redmatica KeymapPro.

Download Size (RAR file):

• 527 MB