High end sample symphonies

Sample CDs aren't just handy MIDI resources for snippet-hungry techno tunesmiths. The higher end examples of the art of sample compilation are essential products for the soundtrack producer too. We asked award winning AV artist Amos Zamorski to take his pick from our selection at Technologica Towers:

I love sample CDs and know all the criticisms. They stifle creativity, it1s Airfix kit music, they make it too easy, they rob musicians of wages and royalties - all of which are true. But remember the days before them? Remember when you had to hang outside music colleges waving fifty pound notes in front of students, hiring expensive microphones, put up with crap sounds on synths, put up with drummers and all this for a pitch for a Frosties advert? In this time of ever decreasing time and budgets, sample CDs are an invaluable tool.

And in the land of CD-ROMs Spectrasonics "Symphony of Voices" is a tool an elephant would be proud of. This epic collection of 5 CDs cover choirs (male and female), classical soloists, choir, fx, boys, choir, Gregorian men and pop stacks. Each CDs is broken up into multi-sampled parts of ohs, ahs, mms, ees, chords etc and sound unbelievably evocative and real.

This is pro quality stuff and as such devours memory. I would advise about 64mb to give it justice but with memory still cheap at the moment it's worth it. Some of the choir FX are out of this world, I really liked the vertigo spins and the cluster and Ligeti swells. There is also a selection of solo soprano and tenor phrases which are recorded and sung so excellently there is no doubt you will be hearing them in many adverts for many years to come. As you would expect, they are marked with their key and bpm.

The Gregorian multi-samples and phrases are what you would expect, if a little unsubtle, but should be extremely useful in the wake of John Tavener's renewed popularity. Similarly, the Boys choirs are going to be handy when the season turns festive. My only slight disappointment was with the pop stacks. They are excellent at what they do (the stacks being made of individual voices, wow!) just a bit new age for my taste.

This is a hugely impressive piece of work, it contains well over 2 gigabytes of samples and with over 500 singers at work. Spectrasonics are to be congratulated on the time, effort and details they have put into Symphony of Voices. If you do any kind of soundtrack A.V. or advert work these CDs are essential. They are going to be as important a tool as the Peter Siedlaczek classical CDs have become and, as such, the £299 begins to look like peanuts.