Altsounds.com Review Of SFX01 by Wave Alchemy

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review 2009-11-19

Altsounds.com Review Of SFX01 by Wave Alchemy

The field of Digital Sounditry (I just made that up) has come far in the last couple of decades. I still remember the fun my friends and I had with my 32-key Casio SK-1 Digital Sampler back in grade school. The 8 bit bundle of joy would hold a whopping 1.4 seconds of sampling, and it was extremely difficult at times to get the timing right in order to fart directly into the tiny microphone (grade school, remember?), just so we could hear what the intro to Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” sounded like comprised of nothing but flatulence.

Let’s forgo the further embarrassing moments in Luigi’s past and jump ahead a bit. As a novice (and part-time) musician (and, by “musician,” I mean “I mix bastard pop / mash-up / bootlegs, and occasionally write my own compositions that nobody ever hears”), I have spent more than a few good dollars on several different sound libraries. A few of these “libraries” resulted in me discovering an interesting sound or two, but they were all a waste of money for the most part (although some did sound suspiciously like a kid farted into a Casio SK-1).

Fortunately, the folks at Wave Alchemy seem to take their business a bit more seriously than their no-name (not to mention nameless) competitors, and the SFX Collection 01 even manages to include a little pride with each purchase. The relatively new sound design company Wave Alchemy has been making a splash on both sides of the Pond lately with their collections of loops and samples, one of which -- SFX Collection 01 -- has already earned itself an award.

Rightfully so, too.

Assembled with dance music in mind (although I’m sure just about anyone can make use of this assortment of sounds), SFX Collection 01 features over 1.5GB of 24bit sound samples, all of which are royalty free and were manufactured with modern and vintage equipment alike -- from antiquities like the ARP Odyssey and Roland Juno, to the to the Sherman Filterbank and the Prophet 08 (you have no idea how relieved I was to learn that the Casio SK-1 was not amongst the machinery used in developing this set). Styles included in the set are Textures, Impacts, Stabs & Acid Hits, Sweeps & Drones, Short FX & Hits, Cymbal FX, Downlifters, and Uplifters.

Of course, the best way to determine whether or not you’re going to like Wave Alchemy’s SFX Collection 01 (and you probably will) is to hear some of these samples before you spend any of your hard-earned cash. And, in order to do so, you can visit Sample CDs & Sample Packs - Wave Alchemy and take a listen to a variety of free samples.

What's included in the Sample Library?

Textures - Ethereal beds, disturbing ambience & sublime pad FX
Impacts - Reverb-washed collisions & thunderous drops
Stabs & Acid Hits - Rustic stabs, chords & minimal synth effects
Sweeps & Drones - Distorted tones, drones, luscious sweeps and short transitional effects
Short FX & Hits - Over 250 short FX & processed hits
Cymbal FX - A unique collection of processed crash cymbal sound effects
Downlifters - Noise drops, synth swirls, downward transitions, essential intros and progressive sweeps
Uplifters - pitched rises, affected noise & up-rising tones

Tech Specs:

Over 1.5GB (before file conversions) of 24-bit 100% royalty free sound effects which include:
32 Cymbal Fx
97 Downlifters
80 Impacts
266 Short Fx and Hits
75 Stabs and Acid Hits
111 Sweeps and Drones
32 Textures
89 Uplifters
9 Ready to play Patches for Soft Samplers, Kontakt, Halion, Exs24, Nnxt and SFZ formats.

Overall the Wave Alchemy SFX Colletion 01 is an excellent collection of samples that would be suited for most types of music but would excel in club music and potentially for film scoring.