PERFECT QUADRUPLE 10 RATING!

Distorted Reality Vol. 2 is the third release that we've looked at from the sample CD producers Spectrasonics. Spectrasonics are headed by Roland's Chief Sound Designer, Eric Persing, and have built up the highest reputation for their sampling products from a sonic quality, presentation and creative standpoint.

Distorted Reality Vol. 2 is described by Spectrasonics as "...an audible feast of colors created with the very latest in sonic sculpturing technology. After three years of intense development, you can be sure that fresh inspiration is in abundance. Spinning metallic textures, singing oceans, vast amounts of unique loops (50-480 BPM!), crushing impacts, glorious pads, crystalline galaxies, subsonic low-end and the many joys of feedback only begin to describe the wonderful noises in this collection. Sound Design techniques include: neural network processing, Meta synthesis, physical modelling, transform multiplication, enharmonic and cellular morphing, sonic dispersion, additive, convolution, Hyperprism, transwave cycling, phase vocoding, harmonic stretching, and Virtual Analog synthesis." Phew !

The collection sits firmly in the "weird collection of sounds" category and is a full price release, typically $99 for the audio version and $199 for the CD-ROM version. We're reviewing the Kurzweil CD ROM version, the other CD ROM versions are essentially similar, but vary in the number of patches etc., and all versions contain quite a lot more material than the audio version. Spectrasonics specialise in the CD ROM versions of their sampling products and do offer an upgrade from the audio to the CD ROM version if required. I would certainly recommend the CD ROM version if this is an option for you, apart from getting more sounds, the programming on the CD-ROM versions opens up whole vista's of sonic manipulation. Virtually every sound was effected in some way by use of the modulation wheel or slider.

The CD has been produced by Eric Persing. Persing as mentioned above is the main sound man at Roland who know a thing or two about synthetic music production and lists credits with such acts as Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, Celine Dion and Chaka Khan. The CD comes double shrink wrapped with a separate licence agreement inside the first shrink wrap. Much better than the ones you can't read until you open the CD which includes the line "By opening this CD you agree...". It's pretty standard except that the product requires a specific written credit in any liner notes.

The documentation is excellent, there is a general booklet that includes the contents of the Audio/ Akai/ Roland format disk and in this case there is an extra Kurzweil booklet that contains the specific contents of that CD. Although mostly the same there are a few subtle differences between each of the formats. Each sample is listed out with a descriptive title and the sample size, then categorised by sub-genre and genre. There are also lots of notes, instrument information, background data and so forth. Very well put together.

Despite the complexity of many of the sounds in most cases the memory requirements for the samples is pretty modest. Certainly you can get most from the CD with 16Mb of memory as there are only two programs over 16Mb (and even then you can load the individual components). As ever with memory, more is better of course.

The equipment list used to produce the CD will put most professional studio's to shame and stretches to two pages, in particular there are lots of software programs used as well as the outboard gear you might expect to see. A trend I am sure will increase in the future as computers get ever more powerful. The synthesizer list is pretty impressive, just about all the Roland synths as you might imagine, plus modulars and beasts like the Waldorf Wave, perhaps the only surprising omission is no Korg Wavestation.

The CD is broken down into 28 categories of sounds, many of these are further broken down into sub-genres. For example Ambient has sub-genres of Discordant, Distant, Fallen, Radiant, Sombre, Spherical, Tranquil and Vistas. By using this detailed categorisation of the sounds it does make finding sounds of a certain type much easier.

Ambient (54.2Mb)- The CD starts with a collection of 50 or so slow ambient pad type sounds that are simply brilliant. The CD subtitle of Darkness & Light can almost be heard deep dark tones contrast with bright shimmers of sound texture. Light ethereal tones to distant disturbing distorted pads. Lots of subtle movement and complexity, some of the nuances only really appear when you really listen closely. The most incredible thing is that only one sample is over 3Mb in size, a testimony to Eric Persing's programming and production skill. Spent quite literally hours just playing with this section, and this is just about one tenth of the collection. Sounds like "Unsettled", "Void" or "Vapour Chimes are just brilliant mood setters. Excellent.

Bells (22.3Mb)- No less than 16 different "bell" samples, Carillion, Gothic Towers and Strange, or more descriptively Actually bell like, big dark powerful menacing bells and once was vaguely related to a bell type sound. Very good, Dead Ringer in particular, perfect for when someone asks for a "big dark bell".

Beats (150.2 Mb)- Although not detailed in the inlay card specifically the beats section comes in two section. Firstly "Groove Menus", using a vaguely similar system to that employed in Chemical Beats basically for each of the four "Groove Menu" programs different samples are loaded into across the keyboard. Different BPM programs are given, though these do alter pitch. You then just hold down 1, 2, 3 or more keys together and you have dozens and dozens of different loops in no time at all. It's a lot of fun and in to time you can come up with a dozen track ideas. There isn't too much in the way of orthodox percussion as you might expect, but perfect on their on own nonetheless or layering with a more orthodox loop. Excellent.

If that wasn't enough there are another 120 or so "regular" loops from 57 - 480 BPM, though most are in the 70-130 range. These carry on the theme of the collection, light on anything orthodox but lots of brilliant ideas and sounds, either on their own or in conjunction with another loop. The loops tend to fall into 2 camps, either quite light sounding loops that would be ideal used as layers, or loops that were I suspect quite ordinary sounding once and then processed beyond recognition. Certainly felt this section is an improvement on Distorted Reality Vol 1, the Groove Menu programs in particular are a great source of inspiration. (Note: The Groove function doesn't work on EMU samplers)

Beds (14.2Mb) - 17 bed sounds that have an aquatic feel to the section, somewhat more aggressive in nature than say the Ambient section. Haunting whale song and dolphin type sounds mixed in with some bubbly type effects. Definitely not from Flipper though, very good. Behemoth in particular would be perfect for a deep sea monster thriller, perfect deep, ominous drone with a water bubbling, washing type sound.

DJ FX (1.6Mb)- Just three odd samples a mutated voice and a couple of distorted melody lines that you might find a use for.

Drones (44.5Mb)- Real foundation shakers, deeper and darker than the Ambient section, though every bit as good. The deeper tones drift into subsonic depths, while the slightly more upscale versions offer vista's of dark sonic texture. Modulation in particular in this section colours the sounds significantly, usually from a stutter to a slowly evolving texture. One or two of the sounds have a degree of "sameness" about them but still an excellent collection

Fuzz (31.4Mb)- I've got a fuzz box meets synthetic textures to produce a whole range of sounds, from whale song to a siren like sounds and all sorts in-between. Blow-out sounds like a synthetic rendition to the beginning of Hawkwind's Silver Machine, very good, perhaps the most abstract sounding of the sections.

Hits (10.3Mb)- Huge hits, some are orchestral based, others of the sledgehammer on concrete type, all with interesting decay effects. As a contrast there are also 7 "retro" hits, perfect for that 60's cinema commercial sound.

Human (1.3Mb)- Three off the wall distorted once human voice samples, not bad.

Mallets (7Mb) - Several cymbal/gong type samples with a couple of soft gong like hits ideal for spot effects.

Metals (26Mb)- Nice variety here, simple metallic hits, deep slow complex pads with a metallic edge and shearing grating walls of metallic sound. Very good.

Misc FX (4.7Mb) - Four oddballs that don't fit anywhere else, the most useful of which will be the "cartoon boings", a collection of samples ideal for comic "hits" or "falls". Noise (10.7Mb)- Perhaps the harshest processed of the sounds on the collection, grating ambiences and noisy textures, the least musical as well, though still very good.

Orchestral FX (4.3Mb)- Four samples of what was once something orchestral, processed beyond any real recognition, interesting. Pads (22Mb)- If possible even better than the Ambient collection, powerful, thick complex pads, samples like "Organic", Reflection", Gesture" & "Shiner" are simply brilliant sounds. Rich walls of sounds, with enough movement and evolution in the sounds to keep the user interested in the soundscape being created. Excellent.

Percussives (56.3Mb) - A whole range of percussive sounds, booms, drips, distorted effects, odd hits, clangs, bangs, whooshes and fat splats. Not a regular percussive sound in sight, if your looking to produce some original loops or spot effects there is a wealth of material here.

Plucked (0.4Mb) - Just a single sample, rapid pluck and interesting decay sound

Pulsating (2.5Mb) - Again just a single sample, possibly making use of Roland's random sample and hold feature found on some of their synths, metallic edged pulsating sound.

Reverse (5Mb) - Several slow reverse sounds that evolve into a loud crescendo, not quite sure how useful these are, but I'm sure someone will find a use for them.

Sci-Fi FX (19.7Mb)- Whole abstract collection of alien and space like sounds, some excellent sustained tones, mixed in with some weird textures, short shimmers and so forth. What I found particularly clever about this section is that you could almost picture a use for every sample, ideal Star Trek XX soundtrack material.

Sequences (0.5Mb)- Just a couple of heavily processed short sequences that almost seem more like pads than sequences.

Sound FX (10.1Mb) - Not dissimilar to the other "FX" sections, whole range of offbeat processed sounds, rather more noisy and motor like, though if your car sounds like any of these your in serious trouble ;-). Very good

Speech (4Mb)- Just four short, where once speech samples, that have been processed to produce something quite manic, ideal for a babbling madman effect!

Sweepers (16.8Mb)- Around 20 swept samples, from slow ups and downs, to whizzing around your head, very clever use of the stereo spectrum in places, just another very good collection of sounds.

Synth Bass (29.5 Mb) - I'm not too sure how many of these you could use as an orthodox bass sound, most might be a bit too complex for that, but nonetheless an excellent collection of lower pitched synth sounds. Viral Deep and Deep Space Bass being my favourites here, DEEP bass sounds.

Synths (9 Mb) - Some nice fat synth sounds here, from air raid sirens to thick sounds ideal for bashing out power chords, perhaps the only part of the collection where I distinctly preferred the Distorted Reality volume one sounds.

Tekno (6.9Mb) - Eleven shortish spot "techno" effects, you know the sort of thing. Not terribly exciting, perhaps the weakest part of the collection, and that's being mean as I have to write something negative !

Voices (2.9Mb) - Four samples again vastly processed from what they once were, interesting effects, but only Tunervox I suspect you could tell was from a voice unless you were told so otherwise. Phew !, a lot of sounds, and hardly a rogue one amongst them.

Summary - Audio quality is excellent. A few samples have "noise" as an effect, but this I am sure is totally intentional as otherwise the production is faultless. There has been a lot of effecting of the sounds throughout the collection, though in the majority of cases this it's reasonably subtle, more as if the source sound has been modified rather than a ton of reverb or distortion applied. The sounds in the main do retain a "musicness" to them. It's difficult to describe, but usually with "Weird stuff" collections there are lots of sounds you wonder "well how could they actually be used", with Distorted Reality Vol. 2 (and 1 for that matter) that doesn't apply so much.

Distorted Reality Vol. 2 is a work of genius. It's taken me ages to review, firstly as there is an awful lot of material to get through, and secondly so many of the sounds just invite you to play with them. Even though a sound can be so abstract it still sounds musical in a way, and ten minutes later..... unlike many CD-ROM's where the sounds are essentially just preloaded for you, here there has been a lot of effort put into actually programming the sounds so playing with the modulation settings, slider, twenty minutes later.....

The first volume was very good indeed, Volume 2 is even better, it's difficult to pin down exactly why, but overall that was the impression I felt. The amount of effort that has gone into the collection must have been tremendous, almost every sound has subtle movement, complexity, depth and evolution to it. The end result is a stunningly brilliant collection of sounds. Certainly if your going to buy only one volume I'd suggest Volume 2, but save up for Volume 1 as well as they are an ideal compliment to each other. All of the sections of the collection are very strong, I particularly liked the pad like sections, ambience, pads, drones & sweeps, the groove loops are brilliant and the loops in general I thought very good, perhaps a little more usable that the first volume, though if that is good or bad is a matter of opinion. The other sections are just a notch behind in what is a truly excellent collection. Down sides...having to write this instead of playing around with the sounds !

If your making ambient, space, new age, soundtrack type tracks in fact almost anything that you'd like a synthetic sound in then I would but this No.1 on your shopping list. A masterpiece in sample production, as a sign of how much I like this collection, and I've got more than most people !, is that this is now my favourite sample CD of all time. A very clever, well constructed and usable collection of unusual sounds.

Overall - Value for money 10/10 - Usability 10/10 - Documentation 10/10 - Sonic Quality 10/10. Makes you happy you own a sampler - 10/10