REVIEWS
GYPSY
Developer: EastWest them – approximately 11GB. The solo instruments have They are, for example, brilliant for liquid D&B in the
Platform: Mac, PC unprecedented detail, and will be great for musical vein of music on the famed Hospital label. This kind
Format: Logic, Pro Tools / Cubase / Nuendo / dance music producers, who like to work with lots of of product is therefore aimed at the seasoned music
Ableton / FL / Garage Band / Performer / Sonar / effects and detail. producer looking for something a bit different. It’s
Standalone not the kind of thing you’d buy as your fi rst sample
Prices: £175 (www.dv247.com) Inside the Gypsy, you also get violin with true legato instrument, but if you’ve already got a fair selection,
intervals being played in classical and gypsy styles, as want to mix it up a bit and have some cash to burn, then
You should already know about the PLAY technology well as – more specifi cally – classic guitar, fl amenco why don’t you go to
www.eastwestsamples.com and
behind Gypsy (as it’s something we’ve already covered guitar, django guitar and Spanish steel string guitar. listen to what Gypsy can do?
in our review of EastWest’s Voices of Passion and Fab Want weird instruments? Check out the Campana
Four), so let’s bore straight into the meat of what this accordion, silvestri accordion, excelsior accordion, PROS
feature-stuffed product offers. It’s avant-garde – a bandoneon, trombone and hammered dulcimer. Think Hordes of unusual samples
bit unusual – something for producers who want to you’d never use an accordion? Well, if it’s good enough Vibrant ethnic vibe
experiment with crisp ethnic-styles, like Timbaland [I for Slick Rick, and the Neptunes on their ‘Momma I’m Samples work well with liquid drum & bass
know I bang on about Timbaland a lot, but, come on, So Sorry’ track from Clipse’s classic ‘Hell Hath No Fury’
he’s the production king, is he not? Speaking of Timbo, LP, then it’s good enough for you. CONS
check out this month’s cover CD interview with Matrix If you produce kill-your-granny drum & bass, this won’t
& Futurebound – they remixed him!]. The horns, guitars The sounds keep on a-comin’: one can expect fl amenco be for you
and general instruments in Gypsy conjure images of dancers (!) and the somewhat less bizarre gypsy In big arrangements, instruments have a certain MIDI
The Godfather movie, so they do, and there are plenty of percussion. All of these types of sounds are versatile. tinge to them
UNWRAP
Developer: TC Electronic Moving away from vintage rock ‘n’ roll; what about stereo mix to 5.1. Consequently, UnWrap has become
Platform: Mac / PC classic, old jungle and hardcore records? Look on the industry standard for up-conversion. The principle
Format: VST, AU and RTAS the internet for classic rave music, and the info and is very simple – the better your stereo mix, the better
Prices: £175.00 (www.dv247.com) audio is few and far between. Someone, somewhere, your surround mix. UnWrap uses the mono part of
at some point will want to catalogue these classics, the signal [the correlated part] and the uncorrelated
In a perfect world, all the music in the last 50 years whether it’s the individuals who made them, record [stereo] part of the signal to feed the different
would have been recorded on multitrack tapes designed labels they were signed to or by fans who loved them. channels of the 5.1 surround mix. Unwrap boasts a
to last for centuries and stored in underground vaults. A lot of the great hardcore recorded only survived on user-friendly interface allowing you to adjust your up-
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, so a battered vinyl plates, and some of them do in fact conversion with a few decisive parameters. So, if you
lot of these recordings have been made on two-track exist on multitrack tapes. Also, there’s another great want to reconvert your classic hardcore records with
and three-track tapes, and some of these recordings reason why you might want to restore the quality of a bit more width than limited vinyl allows, UnWrap is
have longevity problems. Now, why shouldn’t some of these old gems. Many modern, forward-thinking DJs your new baby. You can narrow or widen the image as
these musical gems see the light of day again, maybe are converting their classic records into digital fi les if you were working with a multitrack tape and not a
in surround formats? If you have the original source so that they can mix them in Serato or Traktor or quite single stereo fi le.
tapes – and of course the budget – the best solution simply play them off of a CD.
is to do a complete surround remix. But there could be Throw in fi lters, envelopes and EQ and contour styles
several considerations pushing you to do a high-quality So, when you’re in a situation where you want to do an for centre and surround channels optimisation and
up-conversion instead. Maybe the original recordings up-conversion and re-render music for the 2000s, you control, and you’re looking at a rather versatile sound
are damaged, or perhaps you’re such a purist that you should look at the high-resolution processor called engineering tool not just suitable for music but for fi lm
wouldn’t even consider a remix. Take ‘Strawberry Fields UnWrap, because up-conversion is not a one-size- scoring, effects and video games. Those studying on
Forever’ by The Beatles as an example. Who would want fi ts-all process. UnWrap offers a palette of options to sound design courses should check this software out,
to retouch that classic, add new effects or alter that complement different types of program, thereby giving because it lets you take full advantage of the 5.1 fi eld
bizarre mix where two sections of analogue tape were as much creative freedom as possible to the engineer with regular sound fi les.
sewn together at the behest of John Lennon? striving to translate the intentions behind an original
www.kmag.co.uk
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