Review: Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Gh’nuhan is a niche, experimental library, offering Ethnic sounds and textures, which use natural sound sources with added processing to create entirely new “instruments”.

Jump to the Videos of Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Jump to the Demos of Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Review: Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Triple Spiral Audio is a fairly new developer, having only been around since August 2017. Their latest offering in the world of Kontakt libraries comes in the form of Gh’nuhan, which is a niche and experimental library, focusing on creating unique ethnic sounds and textures. The patches come across as a mix between organic and synthesized sounds, and there are 60 total nki files, along with 15 multis.

Gh’nuhan sells for €45.45 ($51.10 USD) from Triple Spiral Audio

Thoughts

Upon loading Gh’nuhan, I was greeted with a very evocative GUI, giving the impression of walking through an ancient, underground tree tunnel, surrounded by winding trees, ferns, and moss (very reminiscent of a Hobbit hole, if you will). Up front and center is a giant green (and sometimes glowing) knob, which controls various effects that you can enable and disable in the GUI, including reverbs, delay, filter, flanger, chorus, imager (stereo width) and phraser. Overall it is a nice design, and it’s really nice they have included the option to reverse every sample at the click of a button. The nki files are all organized nicely, by category, into folders, which include Shorts, Sustains, Percussive, and Pads/Textures.

Starting with the Shorts, each sound is somewhat familiar, yet unique. With some of the patches, you can detect which instruments were used for the samples, ranging from mallets, pianos, guitars and kalimbas, to chimes and prayer bowls. For instance, with the first Short patch, “Addu M’ae”, I can detect a base of piano and harp, maybe even a hint of wind chimes or some mallet instrument. In another patch, I can clearly hear a Kalimba, giving it a distinct resonance, and others capture a more Tibetan vibe, using prayer bowls or chimes, and giving off a soothing and meditative sound. The end results are always unique, and can easily be used in place of more traditional ethnic instruments in your tracks, as long as the client isn’t looking for a very specific instrument.

The Sustain section could almost be labeled as “Atmospheres”, and conjure up some really beautiful textures. In the patch named Addora, you can hear vocal elements and a beautiful wind instrument playing over ambient, evolving pads. Others are more similar to the Short instruments, featuring familiar mallets or plucked instruments, only this time with a long, sustained tail, seemingly mixed with some sort of synth pad. In Kheon, I can hear an Indian Sitar or Tanpura as the base of the sound, again mixed with an evolving, shining pad.

Next up are the Percussives, which are similar to the Shorts, just a but more abrasive. They feature the same formula of mallets or plucked instruments, but sometimes combined with percussion such as a steel drum. While the sounds are not bad by any means, this category is my least favorite out of the bunch, as they feature a lot of steel drum type sounds and are a bit too “synthy” for my personal tastes.

The final category is Pads/Textures, some of which include names of the Short instruments in the title, such as “Adda Gh’un”, which I assume features the same sounds from the Short patch “Adda”. Again we have long, evolving pad type sounds, creating beautiful and sometimes ambient textures and soundscapes.

Neatly placed on the GUI are controls for ADSR, multiple types of reverb with control for pre-delay and reverb amount, delay speed (which syncs to your DAW’s tempo) as well as controls for delay amount and feedback, as well as the big knob which controls of the amount of the effects you currently have selected below the knob. Note that this is a global control for all effects currently enabled.

All in all, Gh’nahan is a very creative and unique library, covering a lot of ground in one package at a very affordable price. This library can easily fill a void for those needing some eclectic instruments, textures, and beautiful, unique soundscapes. The libraries description says it focuses on Ethnic instruments, which rings true for quite a few of the patches, but I also feel this can fit right at home on traditional scores as well, especially in the fantasy genre.

My only critiques are relatively minor: the naming scheme is a bit odd, using made up names to label each instrument, and it may be difficult to remember which one is which, since they can kind of blend together with loads of apostrophes and foreign sounding names. I also believe the Sustains and Pads/Textures could be combined into one category, and to a lesser degree the Shorts/Percussives as well. These are very minor complaints for what is, overall, a very creative and unique library.

Facts

Triple Spiral Audio’s Gh’nuhan requires the full version of Kontakt 5.8.1 or higher (not compatible with Kontakt Player), and comes out to 2.75 GB (NCW compressed – 4.35 GB uncompressed).

Gh’nuhan sells for €45.45 ($51.10 USD) from Triple Spiral Audio

Demos of Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Videos of Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio

Contributor Brian Freeland reviews Gh’nuhan by Triple Spiral Audio
“Gh’nuhan is a niche, experimental library, offering Ethnic sounds and textures, which use natural sound sources with added processing to create entirely new “instruments”.”