Review of Cakewalk/Digital Sound Factory's EMU Mo-Phatt Soundset
[
the following is a copy of the post that I submitted at KVR]
SO...
I was a little skeptical as most modern-huge-gb-library-rompler-lovers would be of any sound bank less than 4 gigs in size and especially so when I saw the release of Cakewalk and Digital Sound Factory's EMU units in sfz format with dimension pro/le patches (seeing as it only requires 100mb of space per disk) I assured myself that this would be another one of those things I would pass on. I wrote something to this effect on another post (one actually started by Tim who created Digital Sound Factory) that I thought the money could be better spent - as a package - on a much larger library.
Well, he responded by offering to send a package in for me to review to prove me wrong! I was a little taken aback because I'm not used to that kind of generosity...but I enjoy giving anything a chance so I said of course.
I started out with the Mo-Phatt unit. Most of the EMU sets are similar in that they each give you a selection of a large variety - keyboards, keys, strings, synths, effects, etc. True to the name, it is essentially the exact same thing as purchasing an actual one of these units which (I have many times almost bought one of these things anyway of ebay) usually go for a few hundred dollars apiece. I found that, as I started auditioning the patches, it indeed has a sound that is much more filled with character than the more typical samples, riffs, and loops you might find have (and most of you who have used any of these units know that the programming is superb).
I'm usually not used to this as I normally do much more subtle programming with much more unassuming sets of sounds. There is not much that is held back about the Mo-Phatt soundset though. Everything is old-skool, classic sounding, and more than anything, it's a lot more fun to play than other banks. I decided that I would try my hand at designing a song completely out of Mo-Phatt patches - no external effects whatsoever (okay, so I put a limiter on the end of the chain - shame on me).
First thing I grabbed were the basses. Nice. Some sweet acid basses, some-ultra sub types, and a whole plethora of ones that I didn't have a chance to fully check out. That's because I found exactly the one I wanted - one of those resonant ones with lots of emphasis on the harmonics and a full sustain. Reminded me of a percussive organ bass.
Then, I went and checked out the drums. I pulled out a set of kick drums from the percussion section and immediately felt very satisfied. Typical EMU fashion - not a crappy sounding kick to be found. Layered that with a full kit from the "kit" section of banks and boom - had my drums.
I went through the keys (good stuff) and then out of curiosity checked the vox samples. Wow. This is where I started to have fun. Man - some of those vox samples are sooo funny. I think I was laughing as I starting shoving more and more crazy sounding "ooooh yea's" and "owwwhnn!"'s in the mix. It was starting to sound hilariously (and ridiculously) "old-skoo'".
Finished it off with a one of those funky guitar two-note passing tone slides (I think this with the vox is what made the song...), strings (I like those too), and some padddds and a really awesome slap bass (geez, the one I found was cool sounding), and some weird fx (plenty of those too).
I showed the result to my sister. She immediately bust up laughing when the vox cut in. She told me it was the most ridiculous song she had heard. But when she says something like that - it means it's really really good.
So, my initial assumptions were wrong - and the following song (which Tim is going to use for Cakewalk's and his own website) was really dang fun to make.
"Mo-Phatt Demo" http://www.box.net/shared/n4oka2373v I think the biggest strength here (which I really was kind of side-stepping when I initially critiqued it) was that I had forgotten that EMU's stuff is always top-notch. Every sample is usable. I really hate sorting through lame sterile snare taps and utterly stooopid voice samples or even really crappy pianos (I don't know where some people get their programming skill from...ugh
) and, with the Mo-Phatt set, there is no ultimately uninspiring sounds to browse through just waiting to kill your creativity. It's got character - so I'll definitely be sticking more of the instruments from this set back into songs as much as I can - especially if they start to get too predictable (which sometimes happens to me).
- Josh Hunsaker