Review: Los Andes Pan Flutes by Soundiron

Soundiron brings at your fingertips the sound of the Argentinian pan flutes with this brand new sample library. Not only being an acoustic instrument library; thanks to a 4 layer engine you can easily get any kind of sound out of it and even turn this into a great sound design tool.

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Review: Los Andes Pan Flutes by Soundiron

As a result of the collaboration with the Argentinian Pan Flute master Alejandro Fatur, Soundiron brings on your keyboard a collection of four traditional pan flutes, each of them covering a different range: from low to high – Toyo, Zanca, Malta and Ch’ulli. The library comes with 13 master NKI instruments in open Kontakt format, also including phrases, plus 20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient presets. It runs in the full version of Kontakt (5.5 or above), therefore it doesn’t work in the free Kontakt Player. It doesn’t support the NKS protocol, so you don’t need to activate it via Native Access.

Los Andes Pan Flutes normally sells for $79.00 (now on sale at $59.00) from Soundiron

Thoughts

I’m always excited when a new ethnic library comes out. After the Ancient Greek series including Strings, Percussion and Winds, Soundiron this time makes your imagination fly above the highest peaks of the Andes.

The GUI follows the footprints of the latest Soundiron’s releases: as you load the NKI file a picture showing three women playing pan flutes inside an Andean landscape appears and right at the bottom of the interface is the 4 layer engine. In the first two layers you can select the instrument (besides the 4 flutes listed above, you have access also to a full ensemble patch), Ambiences in the third and a Sub-Synth in the fourth. I personally like this engine because it lets you expand the sound palette way far from the single acoustic instrument: you can mix two flutes together and at the same time add a kind of electronic and sound design vibe.

Just beyond this layer, you can see a few parameters controlled by knobs. This section is layer-based, which means that you can control each layer differently. We’ve got here a Volume, Attack, Offsets (which cuts the head of the sample), Release (available in Normal Mode or Pad Mode, which creates a very long fade-out time), Vibrato, Pan and Pitch. On the right side you can select the articulation, choosing a macro-group in the upper slot (Sustains, Staccatos or Expressions) and then the actual articulation in the lower slot. All the articulations have two variations available, piano and forte, which determine the blow’s intensity and therefore the dynamics, which are not controlled by velocity nor is the ModWheel apparently assigned to anything. In my opinion, this reduces the expressivity real time, but you can still assign the Volume knob to CC1 to make crescendos and diminuendos, even though the timbre seems to be the same. All the knobs are indeed CC assignable, which is pretty useful to easily control them real-time using an external controller or to draw automations inside your sequencer.

You can either decide to activate keyswitches or not to change articulations. Even the articulation slots are CC assignable which works great if you are not a fan of Keyswitches but at the same time you are using a sequencer in which creating an expression map for libraries with a lot of articulations is not helpful. And this library has indeed several articulations, especially if you consider that almost all of them are double.

By clicking on the main picture, you access a window showing an LFO, a Filter and an Arpeggiator. Below the LFO section you can check a button to enable Keyswitches, that will appear at the very low end of the 88 keys of the keyboard, so you have to pitch one or two octaves lower to use them while you are playing.

The Scale Lock feature is quite interesting: it basically allows you to lock the playable notes only to the ones belonging to the scale and key selected. You need to click on the padlock icon to enable your choice. The light guide will not be affected but if you press a key that doesn’t belong to that scale it will repeat the lower note next to it. The Legato Design window lets you activate the legato mode, make the curve wider or tighter and decide the legato speed between normal legato and portamento.

In the FX Rack window you will find several effects, such as Reverb, Flanger, EQ, Distortion, Chorus, Rotator, to shape the sound even more directly inside the box. You can then create your own preset, save it and recall for future projects.

With the library also come several phrases. I’m personally not a fan of using pre-recorded phrases inside a composition but they can be a very useful starting point to develop more articulated ideas. This library has a nice engine though that lets you assign a phrase to a certain step to play them one after the other. You can also shorten the length of the sample by reducing the start and the end, decide the sequencer’s behavior (like to play the steps in loop, or randomly, forward or backward) and pitch each phrase in the sequencer itself. This is interesting because anyone can get completely different results out of it, as far as possible. In order to make the sequencer play you have to trigger the purple note on the keyboard.

In conclusion, this is a pretty good library and if you are a fan of ethnic instruments you’re going to love it. The sound itself is very realistic and detailed and the several articulations available help you make your compositions more realistic. The samples are very dry which is great to add the convolution reverb of your choice at a later step. The only thing I personally don’t like is that you cannot trigger a different velocity layer while you are playing. A strength of this library is the 4 layers engine which lets you fully customize your sound and experiment with it to expand your palette and something completely different, combined with the LFO, Filter and Arpeggiator features. The step sequencer on the phrases patches is also a nice addition that allows you to create something new starting from pre-recorded melodies.

Facts

It includes 13 master NKI instruments
It runs in the full version of Kontakt (5.5 or later)
24 bit / 48 kHz uncompressed PCM wav samples
6.83 GB installed
20 Custom Sound-Designed FX and Ambient Presets

Los Andes Pan Flutes normally sells for $79.00 (now on sale at $59.00) from Soundiron

Demos of Los Andes Pan Flutes by Soundiron

Videos of Los Andes Pan Flutes by Soundiron

Contributor Giuseppe Corcella reviews Los Andes Pan Flutes by Soundiron
“Soundiron brings at your fingertips the sound of the Argentinian pan flutes with this brand new sample library. Not only being an acoustic instrument library, thanks to a 4 layer engine you can easily get any kind of sound out of it and turn this even into a great sound design tool.”