ANALOG TO DIGITAL AUDIO SAMPLE CD ••••

This mysterious purple packet containing 800 synth sounds has an impressively wide inventory (ie. almost every synth you've ever heard of, including, at the edges, Powertran, Crumar and BIT 99). Not surprising, when you learn that the progenitors of this audio artifact hail from a music shop in Nottingham specialising in old analogue synthesizers.

Track listings include source instruments, number of samples, whether to set the controls for stereo sampling, and a clear description of what to expect. So far so good. Into the Onkyo for audio evaluation and optical transmission it goes.

Two seconds between samples makes for easy pausing between takes. No BPMs for sequences might irritate some people, though.

Track one has some funky/robotic percussion/wave sequences and Wavestation sounds. Next up come 14 Acid Drops. Hard as nails and fun to work with. Jupiter 8 arpeggiations follow — but not enough, at seven. Deep space is the theme for 15 complex ambient textures. Fragments cut out of these would make good hits or tones. Several loops are well weird and should inspire a trance issue from somebody. Track 5 includes digital hits and buzzes in a 15-sample set. Track 6 has Raw Wave Creations: 28 analogue and digital filter sweeps and bursts have been spawned from a 1 Meg library of many short waves, themselves available on tracks 27, 28, 51, 52 and 53. Reconstruction work took place on board an Emax sampler. The eight pads of track 8 are varied, though the voice pads are old hat and not the best. The rest are good. 'Ambient percussive hits' rely on reverb and have limited value.

'Analog loopy tunes' may be cropped to taste, and are yet another testament to dry analogue synthesis. More airy and spacey pads (some very good ones) take us to 'The Land Of Milk And Honey', described as 'analogue and digital combinations from the far east'. Oriental samples are crossed with analogue synths, and the whole gelled with reverb — interesting. The Waldorf Microwave basses illustrate how digital can come close to, but never equal, analogue in this department. (The 'Lately' bass on the Yamaha TX81Z being the exception that proves the rule.) 'Sequence blips' are more well 'ard ring mods, similar to Acid drops. 'Analog Heaven' is a passable (some would say pointless) attempt to emulate a digital wavestation using analogue synths and digital FX. The drums and FX which follow are OK: the more industrial the better. Analogue and digital synth percussion fares better. 'The sound of drums' offers synthi snares, kicks and toms, including a few Simmons hits. I was not totally knocked out, but will want to test drive some. The snares could show up in a mix. A variety of blippy, resonant loops were of good quality but standard content. Then came some big sustained chords. Ditto.

Random raw waves included a couple of cone-tearing percussive loops. I liked the ring modulated raw waves a lot; these sounds would not slip by unnoticed in a mix. Ragged! Then... Roland JD800 raw waves are, let's face it, not very amazing, even with delay. Analogue basses start off Moogy, and get less easy to finger as the set wears on. Wot? No Oscar? The 303 samples are incremental, but unless you can apply a resonant filter via your sampler, forget trying to get close to the real thing. The preferred route is to sample the 303 playing a part you've programmed in while filter sweeping. The long release set is more malleable, and less cliched.

Some ambient combination 'soundtracks' follow. They use up a lot of space sonically, being relatively dense. (Breathy Wavestation pads are good because they create space, not fill it in). As we move towards 'Sweep success', though, more architecture and less concrete is used. Suddenly, after a regular helicopter pad and analogue pulses you are hit with the sound of an EMS or similar letting rip. Clip out bits of this for arresting the punters in their tracks.

More chords and tones follow, upstaged by yet another filter sweep. The ARP Omni 2 waveforms are classic, and I feel more use should have been made of the synth armoury to create such useful signature sounds. Analogue bell multisamples are similarly authentic, as are the Crumar Multiman strings.

The succeeding 13 effect-processed arpeggiations should perhaps be taken as examples rather than samples, though later, ravier specimens are more relevant.

More ambient combinations follow, notes and chords — useful but not mindblowing. Some 'pseudo-ethnic varieties in 'Digital Loopy Tunes' pleased.

The DX/OB combination is an example of an early and still valid approach to layering: FM attack over analogue sustain. The E-bow acts upon the electric guitar in the next section. The E stood for electromagnetic — or was it electronic? Anyway, it means something else now.

Track 48: layers. You pays your money and you takes someone else's choice. All are loosely based around the same note. Track 49 hosts odds and sods — pick 'n' mix from 13 analogue and digital snaps. Track 50: Microwave pan pad. This only serves to remind me how much better the PPG Wave 2.0 was. Track 51: Moog raw waves, long filtered decaying notes. All you really need is one wavecycle to produce a similar effect from most samplers. The instructions advise you to do this, from whichever point in the decay has the tone you crave. Tracks 52 and 53: ring mod samples. Pulsed rings and burps give way to some caustic scrapes and sawing, followed by evolving tones. You are invited to pick out the pulse that fits your part's requirements.

Track 54: big buggers — filmic 808/Orb-esque atmos. RAM raiders. Some handy synth percussion is followed by what we all know as 'Polysynth', a prime four-multisample example. Some tidy short combinations, OK digital sweeps and strange/typical vocal pads give way to three trancey tracks. Here we find more pads and pulsed landscapes, derived from a variety of sources. Tangerine dream are credited as an influence for some dry analogue arpeggio loops. The real sounds of transport blend with various electronic sources to provide creepy textures on 'Trance 2'. 'Tom and Jerry' is a set of 25 funny chord bends and action noises. 'Vangelis' holds not-as-big-as-you-might-have-expected multisamples with an FM bias. 'Waves World' throws up a fine selection of pulsed backdrops, 'Werking Kraft' some tasty blipping sequences, and 'Classics' a short set of combinations. The CD ends with a sine tone.

Conclusion: this could have been just another synth CD, but a good ear and unusually wide access to some vintage technology has produced a set that is a cut above the norm (the over-use of reverb notwithstanding). The content swings back and forth throughout the one and a quarter hours or so running time. A more incremental approach, with all sequences grouped together, say, would have made for easier sample selection. However, indexing is clear, most samples are in stereo, and engineering is to a high standard throughout. From many of the samples you will be able to derive many more shorter elements. Indeed you are exhorted to do so by the VCM posse. Verdict: Yup! I'll have one of those.

Analog to Digital Sample CD £49.95 inc VAT.

Voltage Controlled Music, (Contact Details).

ZERO-G TECHNOTRANCE •••

This disc opens with 40 mono classic rave synth mini-riffs, each succeeded by a single hit. Noisy, buzzy, and from what I hear coming through the wall from my neighbour Marcus the rave-bunny, relevant to the genre. Names like 'Scalextric', 'Hardorch' and 'Vectorize' give the game away. Next comes a slightly less routine palette of 16 more synths, this time with liberal pitch-bend applied. The 20 rave and hardcore basses that follow are similarly presented, first as a two-second riff, followed by a single for sampling.

Eighty stabs and hooks follow in a like manner. Here the riff is the same sequence applied to all sounds. Again, many are sequenced chords or octaves of grungy, low-tech sounding voices redolent of names like Casio, Kawai and Seiko. Once again, notwithstanding the overuse of the riff, the hits seem on target.

Cross-faded trance filter sweeps use four samples each to enable velocity switching between four settings of the source instrument's resonant filter. Twenty sets mean 80 samples, excluding the obligatory riffs. Vector synthesis/Ensoniq grunge? Whatever the sources, again the domestic rave element should be satisfied.

The next section, called 'acid tests' starts off with filtered basses. Next come 20 acid basses and 30 bubblers. At first I thought we were being treated to a 303 at last, but the sound was grainier and noisier than I would've expected. Other voices were obviously not from pure analogue sources, perhaps sampled analogue, since definitely detected some none-too-smooth tail-end looping.

Next we are regaled with 10 piano chords, 10 more synth chords, and 20 techno synths and FX. Tinny pianos, waspy noises, mostly sounding like they've been through a 12-bit sampler. The 20 breakdown pads that follow are also well dirty, and harmonically simpler than the previous chords. Once again rather untidy looping was in evidence.

Skimming through, there are top-end tinklers (that stop at 15K or lower!). Simple analogue synth tones and FX herald a new era of demo-riff-less samples. There are 20 unjustifiably noisy Moog bass tones, and 30 Juno classics (a 6 or 60 if I'm not mistaken). The Wasp is also featured 30 times. There are 10 sub-basses with bad loops, and 20 Euro tones with demo sequences.

A house/garage set seems to be de rigeur for dance sampling CDs these days, and this is not one of the worst. The sax fares well, as does the multisampled (rare for this CD) trash piano. Ten organ chords pave the way for 25 typical atmos/filter sweeps and 20 short percussion FX.

Ethnic sounds include the shakuhachi, didgeridoo, and eastern flute cliches. The finger cymbals must be the worst looped sample on any sampling CD. That said, there's an unusually decent selection of ethnic percussion hits.

The CD plays out with drums — lots of them, and a good, modern selection, carelessly engineered as usual. I like distortion, but not of the digital variety. Even the sine tone for level setting was clipped, with minor discrepancies occurring between the left and right waveforms.

Conclusion: mono is adhered to throughout the 1200 samples (including the riffs) on board, and yet I heard distortion breaking through occasionally, predominantly on the right output of the CD player. Possibly a CD or DAT mastering flaw?

The whole lot sounds as though it was assembled on a Casio, early Emax sampler, or possibly S900. (No doubt MJ Runne will put me right and insist it was carried out on an S1000). The collection exhibits a grungy texture which hi-fi buffs will find excruciating. However, the sounds are not aimed at them, and in the right hands such digital dirt will be appreciated. (I make a distinction here between the graininess you get from older samplers, which can add presence to a sound, and digital distortion, which is seldom other than horrible. Technotrance has the former in abundance. The latter is not totally absent, either.) Younger dance music proponents tend to have low budget/low memory samplers, and most of these sounds give a good deal of sonic punch in seriously sub-second snippets. I could do without the sequences, but they will help budding samplists to hear what they can do with some well-chosen sounds. Top dance producers who can afford half a dozen choice synth engines will probably want to give Technotrance a miss, though even they might find a missing link or two therein. In which case they should have the low-pass filters at the ready, or sample through a single-ended noise reduction unit. In short: good sounds, poor fidelity.

Technotrance £49.95 inc VAT.

Time & Space, (Contact Details).