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Company: Audio Verge
Product: Zero Dawn
Our Rating: 4.2/5
Price: £19.99
Zero Dawn, the latest sample library from David J St Hill at Audio Verge provides Composers and Sound Designers with a variety of Cinematic Loops both Rhythmical and Tonal. After grabbing our review copy we made a quick cue to put the library through it's paces and gather some insights, hear that below:
Starting From Zero
When initially opening the files, it was nice to see the wide range of formats available. Kontakt, WAV and Apple Loops are provided, giving users a lot of sound editing capabilities. For the review I used the loops within Kontakt (the full version is required). This library has beautiful graphics and a user friendly interface which doesn't clutter you with options, allowing inspiration to roam free. The backdrop is nice but I would have liked to see nicer looking knobs for twiddling and maybe another page for further loop mangling, however the low price point reflects this. I would have also liked to see tuned patches and velocity sensitivity. A further addition to speed up the workflow could have been to sort patches keyboard mapping by their frequency content, having low elements on one side and high on the other would have worked great.
It Dawned Upon Me
Now for the most important part, how does it sound? Each loop and element has a level of quality that will please composers old and new. They are mastered in a way that sounds great out of the box but also leaves room for additional processing. A blend of truly modern audio assets, some offering unheard sonic textures and others offering bread and butter elements used to inspire and begin score cues. There are a nice blend of pulses, percussion, arps, drones and pads which cover a lot of ground for a low price point. I particuarly like the warm and fuzzy sounds of the atmospheres which have vocal layers, bringing that widescreen sound to your cues. The percussive patches give a gritty and dark glitchy texture to your 8 bar loops. I like that the atmospheric pads and arps have been mixed rather brightly, allowing the user to control the clairty via a mod wheel filter, which adds further variety and movement to the patches. The sounds here are most suited to Sci-Fi, Horror, Action and Drama cues, offering basic tweakability within the Kontakt engine. I like to pitch certain sounds by a couple of octaves to discover new ways to use them; adding distortion can range from a subtle crunch to walls of noise.
The Bottom Line
Loop libraries have a bad reputation for encouraging laziness but I don't think this library promotes that. It is clearly an inspiration tool and should be treated as such. Cues can be started and enhanced within minutes and I would encourage users to process the sounds to find new sonic ground like I did in the demo track. The price point makes this library a steal for all Composers, especially those who want that Cinematic sound without the huge price point. The quality of sound far outweighs the small gripes I had with the workflow. You also get Audio Verges great customer service and support included.
Inspire a new cue today and visit Audio Verge to purchase Zero Dawn with our 20% off code: zero344