Plugin Boutique Staff Picks - Simon
In today’s advanced age of music tools that seek the "cleanest," most "perfect" sounds, there has suddenly been a desire for the gritty sounds of the machines of the past. One such quest has been the acquisition of old, primitive samplers and sample drum machines.
The sound that producers and artists seek in these boxes is usually the low bit rates and sample rates resulting in an "aliased" sound or "artifacts" as we now call them. These limitations of the vintage machines have now become very desired and sought after sound. Just sample rate reduction and 'bit crushers' have yet to actually sound like old machines.
Beatskillz went on a quest to study the actual circuitry and found each and every step right from the A/D converters, preamps, analogue and digital filters and processes involved to recreate each stage and bring you a plugin that can not only emulate a sampler but many, and also lets you design your own sampler or vintage chip!
BeatSkillz has also created a very accurate emulation of a well-known ladder filter with resonance, this gets you the "Warm" filter sound of a very desired analogue synth. They have also carefully emulated the input drive of the S900 to give you all the parameters needed for multiple variations of the sound!
Best Feature
It’s easy to focus on SampleX V2’s bit-crushing potential, however, one of the best features for me is its analogue-modelled filter. It emulates the vintage ladder filtering found in old-school samplers and it just sounds great. I am a big fan of the emulators inside of Ableton’s auto-filter but SampleX V2 takes it to another level and lets you get more granular with sample rates, bit-crushing, and aliasing.
Run a break through it, crank up the resonance a little, tweak the bit & sample rate, and go wild with some automation! There is a ton of possibilities with SampleX v2, and I can not think of many other plugins that have similar functionality. A truly unique tool to have in your library!
Learn more about BeatSkillz SampleX V2.
Find more of our staff picks here.
