Nine Volt Audio Taiko | 1.04 GB

You’d wish to be bloody serious about Taiko to not to be present 2.3GB of multisamples, but the instrument’s ubiquity in high-octane film and TV scores has led Nine Volt Audio to take it self-same seriously indeed. They put four Taiko drummers forward a concert-hall stage and recorded one and the other with nine mics, hitting the drum head and shell; smacking the sticks into union; growling and shouting blood-curdlingly Asian syllables; and stomping their feet. At up to 90 quickness levels. If ever an engineer deserved a box of painkillers attached expenses…

In Kontakt, if you true want specific sets of velocity-mapped multisamples during particular performance techniques and mic positions, in the same state that you can manually construct your concede ensembles, you should be restrained until appropriate medication can be administered. Er, I base, you should browse the Ensemble Constructor Instruments. For a thing more playable, Drum Instruments blend the mic signals conducive to a specific performance technique to accord. more immediate gratification. A set of Effected Drum Instruments takes you into profound-design territory using Kontakt’s mental processing, but although interesting, I guess they won’t be the enormous reason anyone buys a multisample Taiko library…

What ~ numerous users will be looking for is the archetypal multitude of bald, sweaty drummers in loincloths, courtesy of the Multi Instruments. The quickest road to Narnian battlefields (assuming you be seized of no wardrobe to hand) is by way of the dozen Performance Multis, each accompanied by a multi-channel MIDI trigger toothed. These conjure all manner of breathless tribal pursuits and epic conflicts.

So does it strong the business? Yes. And the developers accept covered every sonic angle I can imagine needing, plus a lot I can’t. The Performance Multis sound very authentic, and include good specimens of the 5/4 and 7/4 meters that as a common thing crop up in Taiko-garnished media score. Given the quality and quantity on offer, the price is reasonable too. Were it not for some incidental slightly flakey Kontakt programming and audio editing I’d gain awarded this five stars.

As I’ve declared, if you plan to buy this library, you be in actual possession of to be serious about Taiko, and not normal in terms of money and face space. While I was testing single in kind of the Performance Multis, Kontakt’s polyphony meter threatened to come off successful 500 voices, so CPU munch decision be a concern (unless you system to write a lot of solo pieces in quest of Taiko… in which case, I fellow-suffering your neighbours). So, as good being of the cl~s who this library is, busy or turn into money-strapped media composers might be tempted to forgo more of its flexibility and try the like company’s excellent, and more wieldy, Action Drums Taiko Edition link library.