Review: Shocking Signal by Sampletraxx
A collection of distorted, disturbed, alarm, feedback, ping, glitched and otherwise mangled loops.
More of a wish than a con; I would have liked longer feedback and amp sounds and more variety overall.
These sounds can be luscious and evil, driving and hateful all at once. They are full of stark contrasts and industrial flavors. Shocking Signals is a collection of mostly short, glitched, distorted, amped and tweaked sounds. Imagine the sound of your alarm clock, run through a guitar amp, cranked to 11 and re-recorded as it plays in a storm drain. This is not to say every loop is an over-modulated reinvention of sound but, listen to the demos, and you’ll instantly see… uh… hear what I mean.
Jump to the Videos of Shocking Signal by Sampletraxx
Jump to the Demos of Shocking Signal by Sampletraxx
Review: Shocking Signal by Sampletraxx
SampleTraxx was founded by Alessandro Romeo, an accomplished sound designer and mix engineer with over 20 years of experience in the audio field. You’ve probably heard his work through collaborations as a sound designer with companies like: Zero-G, Audiomodern, Samplephonics, Sample Magic, Zenhiser, HBO, Last Sonic Frontier and Universal. Sample Traxx sounds and products have been used in creating movie trailers, soundtracks and video games such as: Alien Covenant, Blade Runner 2049, Battlefield, Overwatch, Inhumans JigSaw, Geostorm, Halo 5 and more. Their latest offering is Shocking Signals
Shocking Signal sells for €29 from Sampletraxx
Thoughts
These sounds can be luscious and evil, driving and hateful all at once. They are full of stark contrasts and industrial flavors.
Shocking Signals is a collection of mostly short, glitched, distorted, amped and tweaked sounds. Imagine the sound of your alarm clock, run through a guitar amp, cranked to 11 and re-recorded as it plays in a storm drain. This is not to say every loop is an over-modulated reinvention of sound but, listen to the demos, and you’ll instantly see… uh… hear what I mean.
This is not the loop set to buy for your cousin’s weekend wedding DJ gig! It’s aimed at hardcore, gritty, dirty, grimy, industrialism. Machine sound. You know… Robo-locomotion anthems!
Ok, I may be over-reaching with that last phrase, however, that does somewhat describe the feel of this set. It’s mechanized, battle-hardened grit, topped with smattering of synthetic charm and industrial density. These sounds would be just as at home in the musical soundtrack of a sci-fi space thriller, modern warfare bio-pic or, gothic horror and suspense film while they could work equally well as elements in sound design for simulating broken communications, or damaged robotic movement. They are design elements aimed at designers with the potential to be used in a musical context. And, like spices in your favorite foods, they can work to enhance, compliment or completely change the flavor of the dish.
It would be hard for me to produce a demo of these sounds in the context of say, a broken robot, since the many layers of sound might obscure the individual sounds in this set so, instead I decided to make what I’m calling “music.” Stop it. I can hear you snickering.
In the first demo, you’ll hear 3 loops (in 2 tracks) not included in this set. They are two heavy metal guitar loops and a drum loop that are included with Logic Pro. The rest of the sound all come from Shocking Signals. You’ll hear the blistering feedback sounding like a lead guitar as it devolves into several other loops from the same set. There are no special processes or plugins used. Everything is straight out of the box. There are sounds that signify the beginning, middle and end of the demo as well as those used to seem lead-like in the “song.” This should provide at least a glimpse of how musical Shocking Signals can be.
The loops are arranged in 4 separate folders residing inside the Shocking Signals title folder. Each sub-folder is labeled; Alarm, Distortion Reamp, Feedback Glitch and Ping. You’ll be able to see a little exploration of these folders during the video for Demo Two. In the folder, you’ll also find the list of loops and sound miner data in both .txt and .csv formats.
Arranging these loops to become musical is a simple task in most DAWs. Choose a project tempo and key signature and then import the loops through experimentation. By arranging loops within say, a four-bar grid, you can program repeatable patterns that can be easily copy and pasted to the desired length of a project. In Logic Pro, you import the loops into Logic’s Untagged Loop Browser window for quick access to the sounds.
When previewing loops, you may get different results depending on the project, DAW and system sample rate settings. These loops are provided to you at 24bit/96k so during preview, I sometimes found that loops sounded completely different when previewed than they did once actually imported into a project. This can be good – and bad. Although I was rarely disappointed by a sound, I did have to change my initial thinking about the piece I wanted to design.
The results of my experiments were surprisingly fast and satisfying. These sounds can be luscious and evil, driving and hateful all at once. They are full of stark contrasts and industrial flavor.
Perhaps most surprising was discovering the musicality of this collection of, let’s face it… noises. In no time at all, I was able to create several different pieces of music that feel vastly different, yet share an industrial vibe that I hadn’t found in another loop sets.
About The Other Loops & Instruments Used In Demos: A few people may want to know what other loops were used in these demos I created. In Demo One, the aforementioned, 2 guitar and single drum loop I used come with Logic Pro. In Demo Two, I used a solitary drum loop from Heavyocity’s rhythm title called, “Damage.” In Demo Three, I used a simple pad from Sample Logic’s “Cinematic Guitars Organic Atmospheres.” In Demo Four I used a pad from Absynth, A guitar loop from Heavyocity’s Evolve Mutations 2 and a bass line generated by InSession Audio’s Riff Generator.
For Demo Three, you can see I used the same rhythmic creation process to build out a calm, yet unsettling bed, perfect for horror narration or building tension with contrasting clock-like precision and stretched tones. I can see this as backing a number of applications for big screen or small.
Final words: I’m a buyer at just €29, but your mileage may vary. It would be easy to overlook this collection as pure noise. If you are just starting with sound design, focused on pop music or working with symphony scores alone, maybe this isn’t exactly your cup of tea. Personally, I found it to be a great little collection that pushed my creative boundaries a bit. As a creative professional, pushing the boundaries is what it’s all about. You can listen to the demos available here at SampleTraxx.com and be sure to check the other excellent products from SampleTraxx while you’re there.
See the Review Examples Video at the top of the page to hear the demos created while working on this review.
Facts
Shocking Signals breaks down to 170 WAV files in 24bit/96k HD resolution, suitable for use in just about any DAW. Each file is tagged with Sound Miner compatible metadata. A list of sounds is also included in both .csv and .txt formats. The entire collection is downloadable as a single compressed file of 232 MB. Uncompressed it occupies 278 MB of hard disk space.
Shocking Signal sells for €29 from Sampletraxx
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