Review: ESC Personal Flavours by PlugInGuru

ESC Personal Flavours offers a vast amount of content inspired by the tastes of the 15 talented programmers who contributed to its creation. It’s big, inspiring, and just plain fun.

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Review: ESC Personal Flavours by PlugInGuru

ESC Personal Flavours is PlugInGuru’s followup to the first ESC Tribute Library. This time, each programmer/designer was asked to stick with their own “personal flavour” of sound, resulting in a library that covers a lot of ground and doesn’t focus on one particular style. It’s a big soundset that adds a lot of life to Omnisphere 2, and if you find that your own style lines up with one or more of the authors of this product, you’ll find a treasure trove of useful and inspiring sounds.

ESC Personal Flavours sells for $39 from PlugInGuru

Thoughts

Since this soundset is so focused on the personal tastes of its various programmers, it’s a definite pro that every patch is tagged with the name of its author. This allows you to filter down to only a certain author’s patches if you wish. For example, if I found that I generally liked everything Stephan Baer did, I could easily have Omnisphere show me only his patches by selecting his name in the “Author” column.

There’s a great amount of variety in this preset pack, which can be both good and bad. It works well as a general expansion for Omnisphere, but as I’ve obtained more and more expansions, I find that the ones I go back to most often are the ones with a clear focus on one genre, style, or feeling. I do think all of the sounds are quality, though. Determining if it’s a good buy is just a matter of determining if enough of the patches line up with your own needs. Regardless, this product will add a lot of new content to Omnisphere’s most popular categories. So as I do with all Omnisphere packs, I’ll list 5 of my personal favorite patches and explain what I like about them, just to give a general idea of what you might find inside.

GTR – Money for Something TD: It’s rare that I choose a “standard” instrument patch as a favorite in Omnisphere, but this one just works so well for some reason. It’s a heavily distorted guitar patch with a 5th added in for that instant power-chord feeling. This sounds amazing in the low, chugging, grungy ranges of the keyboard, and I absolutely can’t help but play fun riffs with this patch as soon as I hear it. The tone is rich and dark with a nice high end buzz that keeps it from being overly muddy down low.

BPM Pad – Nice Arytmia WS: This one is a fluctuating, pulsing pad sound that once again sounds amazing down low. It’s like a sea of tumultuous bass energy writhing underneath a rhythmic pulsing high end. It responds very well to the low pass filter, and the modwheel does some additional filter modulation on the high end to keep things evolving and changing.

TEXT – Alien Probe FN: An evolving soundscape with a ton of character and movement. This soundscape seemingly goes on forever, and it has the perfect amount of movement that blends into the background enough to be subtle. It sounds like an ambient recording of nature on a distant, alien world. The modwheel moves some of the higher, buzzier sounds in and out of the picture.

PAD – Approaching Necropolis SB: This patch is a wonderfully dreamy pad with somewhat of a pronounced attack and a lo-fi, dirty sound. It immediately screams “retro sci-fi” to me, but not in a cheesy Flash Gordon way. It’s definitely useful as a more modern, cinematic drone down low, while the higher registers sound like the kind of pad you’d hear in the intro to a really indie pop song.

BPM FX – Primal Bounce SB: I’m always drawn to the ARP/BPM sections first, and this immediately caught my attention as a patch that would get used a lot. This is an atonal percussive pulse that’s grimy and dirty. It starts with a bigger hit that echoes away while a continuous pulse in the upper register drones on. It’s perfect for accentuating strong moments in a rhythmic bed, and it’s not recognizable as any particular kind of instrument, which is perfect for modern hybrid music.

Facts

ESC Personal Flavours features 256 patches, 50 multis, and 45 new samples/sources, all created in collaboration by 15 programmers from around the world. It features presets in various styles to match each programmer. It requires Omnisphere 2.5 or later.

ESC Personal Flavours sells for $39 from PlugInGuru

Demos of ESC Personal Flavours by PlugInGuru

Videos of ESC Personal Flavours by PlugInGuru

Contributor Steven McDonald reviews ESC Personal Flavours by PlugInGuru
“ESC Personal Flavours offers a vast amount of content inspired by the tastes of the 15 talented programmers who contributed to its creation. It’s big, inspiring, and just plain fun.”