Ensemblia2 Industria and Elektronika by Cinematique Instruments

by AMM

interesting sounds and 100's of presets
highly versatile beat arranger for complex rhythmic patterns

Electrifying and heavy-hitting. A pair of processed and unconventional percussion libraries for creating sophisticated beats.

Jump to the Demo Videos of Ensemblia2 Elektronika by Cinematique Instruments

Jump to the Demos Videos of Ensemblia2 Industria by Cinematique Instruments

Review: Ensemblia2 Industria and Elektronika by Cinematique Instruments

Two libraries which belong together. Industria and Elektronica are special shadings of the highly evolved Ensemblia2 engine unveiled in Ensemblia2 Percussive. Industria and Elektronika are great together, even featuring on each other’s demos on the Cinematique Instruments site, so we decided to combine the reviews for each into one super review. Both also utilize the same sophisticated engine as Ensemblia2 Percussive, and all 3 libraries (Percussive, Industria and Elektronika) can be purchased at a special bundle price:

Ensemblia2 Industria sells for €75 and Ensemblia2 Elektronika sells for €55 from Cinematique Instruments

Thoughts

I think of Industria and Elektronika almost like expansion packs of Ensemblia2 Percussive, but you don’t have to have Percussion in order to use either of these libraries. (Repeat: you can get just Percussive or just Industria or just Elektronika). We decided to combine the reviews for Industria and Elektronika because they use the same engine, work very similarly and even overlap in each other’s demos and manuals, so it made sense to discuss both together and to pinpoint what exactly is in each one.

First, let’s talk about the engine. Be ready to spend some time learning this one as there is a lot it can do.

There are 4 main windows in the UI: Arranger, Mixer, Preset Browser, and Options.
On the right are four slots labeled A, B, C, and D. When you first open the instrument there will already be different samples selected in these units. The samples shown will perform the pattern laid out in the Arranger Window. You can swap out the instruments in either the Arranger window or the Mixer window. A, B, C, and D units are each their own distinct sequence, with their own beat configuration and sample selection. The idea is that you can quickly change to one of them using the corresponding key (the four red keys at the far left) to trigger the unit you want. This allows you to build sections of a piece such as verse and chorus and quickly alternate between them. One of my favorite features of this engine is the ability to copy an entire unit and paste it to another unit. It makes the workflow much quicker when I want to have a pattern with some variation of the previous one that I don’t have to input every detail of the first pattern again.

Mixer window on startup: there are already samples selected and they have a pattern configured in the Arranger window

The startup samples and beat configuration is just a sampling of what the instrument can do. You can remove everything and build from scratch, tweak the startup setting or load one of the hundreds of presets from the Preset Browser window. To start from scratch, go to the Preset window and choose reset.

You can have up to seven instruments selected to play simultaneously. To swap out an instrument in the Mixer window, you need to click on the name of it in the bottom of the strip (if you can’t see this, expand the window using the double arrow at the left to reveal the bottom part of the window).

Expand the Mixer window using the double arrow at the left to reveal the additional features

Also in the extended view, you can see that each strip has a button to enable distortion. If you click the instrument icon in the top part of the strip, you can now adjust the envelope, turning, 3 band EQ, reverb and delay for that instrument strip. A really neat feature here is that each strip has a 3D panning capability—which I enjoy for creating an immersive experience. 3D panning is activated in the top of the mixer when an instrument is selected by clicking 3D. Note that it will affect all instruments in that unit (the ones labeled A, B, C, D).

When you click the instrument name, a new window will open and here you can use Try Out mode so that you can audition a sound within your pattern before you actually commit to swapping it out (using the Assign button). You can use the green keys to trigger one-shots of each instrument slot.

Instruments can also be changed in the Arranger window. For some reason, you can swap instruments from the Arranger window but you can’t add new slots—this has to be done in the Mixer window.

The engine contains an 8 beat arranger, which can be accessed in the Arranger window. Each beat can be divided into 16th, 32nd, 8th note triplets or sextuplet 16ths. This confused me initially because there are no 8th notes—there is a key to make the pattern play at twice the speed, so you can get eighth notes essentially by rearranging your pattern so that everything else is twice as long. The beat arranger is capable of playing complex rhythms and odd meters such as 3/4 and 5/4. Just a note; the manual and walkthroughs talk about changing meter, but what they are referring to is changing the rhythmic subdivision within a beat (unit that is also referred to as a tuplet). When the Link Tuplets button is not checked, you can change each beat’s subdivision, thus enabling complex rhythmic patterns. Supposedly you can change the number of beats to something other than 8, but I have yet to figure out how.

Beat Arranger window with Link Tuplets turned off: this enables complex rhythmic patterns

Click on an instrument icon to reveal the additional menu options. The Arranger window lets you copy and paste to an existing slot, which can save tons of time if you have multiple instruments with the same rhythmic part. You can also have it generate a pattern for that instrument, which can be really useful to brainstorm ideas. My favorite feature of this instrument is the Freeze button (the little snowflake next to Cinematique Instruments in the bottom). Freeze lets you play your pattern continuously while you tweak it, change out instruments, change the subdivision etc. It is a very useful feature to work quickly and spontaneously as I became inspired by the sounds themselves.

Arranger window with instrument slot selected: this reveals additional menu options

The blue keys control the arranger’s playback: double time, half-time, random, repeat first step, repeat third step, repeat fourth step and repeat fifth step.

There are five live effects which are playable on keys (red keys at the right of the keyboard). The live effects can be adjusted in the Options window.

The Options window is also where you can route the instrument slots and export MIDI (so that you can work with single notes in your DAW

Now that we’ve explored the engine, let’s delve into the actual sample sets. What exactly is Industria? Industria is massive, harsh sounds captured on location in an industrial environment while dodging enormous pounding, scraping and whirring machine parts (OK maybe the field recording sessions weren’t quite that dramatic, but that is what I imagined). Industria includes hammers, wrenches, metal bars, saw blades, cans, drums, plates, steel cabinet drawers, a giant telescope and electronic hums, buzzing and glitch noises. Industria has 200 presets; 123 samples in categories of Metallic, Forge, Industrial, Machines and Miscellaneous. These are further grouped as Strikes, Deep N Low, Mid Sized, Bright, Eroded, Glitch, Movings, and Effex.

Although we’ve been looking at screenshots from Industria, the engine for Elektronika is the same, just with a cool, after-dark kind of dressing.

Elektronika engine: functions the same as Industria, but has a cool look with dark background and electric fuchsia accents

What’s in Elektronika? Elektronika doesn’t want to be bound to any one genre. With over 300 presets spanning 10 genres, Elektronika is a great asset for Minimal, House, Futurebass, Techno/Trance, Breakbeat, of course Electronica and more. Elektronika contains 215 sounds, including hi hats, bass drum, snare, toms, claps, crash cymbal, ride cymbal, shaker, blip, noise, glitch, tone, noise tones and some downright funky sounds. Elektronika really brings fresh sound to any track, pairs well with Industria and can even hold its own in trailerized or hybrid orchestral styles.

While the engine is complicated, its capabilities far outweigh the time spent figuring out its nuances. I love that I can now go into these libraries and quickly be making music rather than programming drums.