Review PSI Snare from Paper Stone Instruments
Loads of Control! Great sounding and thoroughly sampled. A very well thought out GUI and instrument.
At first I was disappointing there were not any roll samples, but with tones of round robins and up to 56 velocities, every "programmed" roll I created sounds better that 99% of my other percussion libraries.
Get PSI Snare at: http://Sampleism.com page
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PSI Snare from Paper Stone Instruments
The Facts
When Sam Brown from paper stone instruments was fed up with scrolling through endless snare samples and loading up heavy load multi drum kits to find the perfect snare he took matters into his own hands.
So he went about sampling one high-quality snare in 35 different playing styles and the the PSI team went to work crafting a well thought out interface with tons of controls all in an pretty straight forward interface.
PSI Snare is a 1.02GB instrument containing 5736 sample which requires the full version of Kontakt 4.0.2 or higher.
The instruments have up to 56 velocity layers with controls for playback of 5 microphone positions with a Close in mono, Bottom in mono, Tube in mono, Over- head in stereo and a Room in ambient stereo configuration.
The 12 Kontakt instruments included in the library contain 6 tunings, muted snares samples, open snares samples, hand played samples, buzzes samples, flam samples, brush samples, hot rod samples, rim shots samples and rim click samples.
The Instrument was recorded in Studio 2 live room of Paper Stone Studios, Nottingham, England, using purely audiophile quality signal paths.
My Thoughts
If all Sample Libraries were this meticulously sampled and well thought out you wouldn’t need to watch my reviews!
I got a copy of the PSI snare from paper stone and to be honest I wasn’t too excited about a virtual instrument that was nothing but 1 snare, let me say that again . . . ONE snare sampled for the in tire library.
You think a simple library of just one snare drum “how exciting can that be?” But I can tell you after reviewing the instruments, listening to the sampling detail and the controls that this has become my go-to snare for nearly all purposes from orchestral to replacing rock snares.
Paper stone set out to create a kontact instrument that gives you a lot of flexibility to make the response sound like that of a real sounding snare drum and of that they have succeeded.
Loaded with plenty of articulations, HUGE round robins (up to 56 velocity layers) using different styles of playing techniques PSI has captures the nuance and detail that push this instrument above and beyond the norm.
The five Mic positions alone give huge variations on sound. The interface gives you control of all of corresponding volume of the mic positions.
I commend Paper Stone for adding the transpose and attack and release right on the front of the interface I am finding that with just a little adjustment of pitch my snare playback takes on new character and blends right into the track I am working on.
No matter which of the instruments I had loaded up while checking out PSI snare I knew exactly what I was triggering because the interface face has a simple read out the tells you the name of the sample you are triggering as you trigger them.
The Hi-pass/ low pass filter on the front of the interface is easy to use it’s just two knobs it’s great to have that ability if you want to clean up you sound just a little bit one way or the other or add it as an effect.
The kicker on the interface is the ability to manipulate globally, across every sample that you’re playing back, on locally with just the key you are pressing when you manipulate the sample playback.
In addition the instrument comes with a number of effects loads of verbs from small studio plates to medium plates as well as a couple effects reverbs including a reverse and a lo fi.
At first I was disappointing there were not any roll samples, but with tones of round robins and up to 56 velocities, every “programmed” roll I created sounds better that 99% of my other percussion libraries.
Paper stone really thought this instrument out and it shows. It’s easy to use all the instruments as they are clearly mapped on the keyboard. When you trigger a sample you see the name of the sample that you’re playing back right on the interface leaving no guess work for you as you program or perform you parts.
Get PSI Snare at: Paper Stone Instrument’s Sampleism.com page
