Review: Stratos by Hypersamples

The processed vocals can sound otherworldly in parts, especially with the right amount of reverb and delay. It’s beautifully constructed and, personally, I appreciate it more for its meditative properties.

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Review: Stratos by Hypersamples

To date, Hypersamples is a small, independent developer with one sample library, Stratos, which is a Kontakt library utilizing the free Photosynthesis engine. The library contains processed vocals in single instrument .NKI and multi-instrument .NKM files. The library is ideal for ambient underscoring, trailer music, and meditative inspiration.

Stratos normally sells for $47.50 from Hypersamples

Thoughts

While I consider Stratos a sort of niche kind of library (by niche, I mean concentrated around a single deliverable, thus being processed vocals), it doesn’t mean that each Kontakt instrument is singular in construct. What you get are a multitude of presets that can be used as Pads, Plucks, Textures, Leads and Motion. In addition, the developer has carefully layered several of the instruments into multi-layered instruments that combine the aforementioned features. What makes Stratos a reasonably versatile and flexible library is the engine that the samples come wrapped in, namely the Photosynthesis GUI developed by Jeremiah Pena. The engine can accommodate up to three layers and is multi-tabulated including a “Main” instrument layers, and FX layer, a dual motion layer and an Output layer.

Statos Main Page

The Main Page is quite simplistic, yet effective in its approach to manipulating each sound layer, globally. Unfortunately, the Photosynthesis engine does not allow one to manipulate layers individually with the exception of gain, pan, and tuning. It also does not allow one to swap out individual layers so, in essence, it is what we used to call in the trade WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). When you first load one of the .NKI’s and depress keys on your controller, you can pretty much tell how many layers are associated with the .NKI by seeing how many of the volume meters light up in the center of the Main Page GUI. There are many .NKIs in Stratos that are single layer and many that are multi layered though this isn’t apparent by the name of the instrument. From a global perspective, you have several ways in which to influence the sound. ADSR envelopes for Pitch, Amplitude and Filter in addition to a High Pass / Low Pass filter gives you quick and easy control over the overall the sound. To me, this is the heart of the entire Photosynthesis engine, the place where you get to tweak the preset into something you can call your own.

Stratos FX

As an aside, I want to point out that within the engine when a radial is “dark” it is off; when it is “white” it is on. So, in the above example, the Delay, Reverb and Convolution Reverb are all on or engaged. As typical with a lot of Kontakt libraries, I’m not particular wild with the embedded FX. In this case, I think the developer did a more than acceptable job putting together the Convolution. All of the reverbs here are distinct and add incredible color to the instrument however, from personal experience, be careful with the Size vs Gain ratio as you can end producing unwanted distortion. For the other FX, personally, I would reach for a 3rd party product as there are much better ones on the market. Lastly, as one can see in the above example, this is an example of a multi-instrument. The .NKMs are no more than stacking multiple .NKI files and, if you want to modulate the sound, you’ll have to do so within each .NKI; there are no global Macros to do this.

Stratos Movement.

The Rhythm portion of the engine contains both a Step Sequencer and a Dual Filter Sequencer. The Step Sequencer is synched to your DAW and ranges from 1 to 16 steps. In addition, there are 3 LFOs in which to modulate Gain, Pitch and/or Pan. Several presets are included for each LFO and can also be synched to your DAW. By using the AMT radial, you can select how intense you want the LFO to modulate the applicable parameter and, in addition, you can load balance how much of each wave pattern you want to employ. The other portion of the engine includes 2 filter sequencers, one that effects the sound pre-FX and one post-FX. Each Filter Sequencer ranges from 1 to 16 steps and can be synched to your DAW. Lastly, there are 2 Pre-FX LFO’s which can totally transform the preset sound into something totally unrecognizable, if you so wish.

Stratos Filter Sequencer

I’ll make no bones about Stratos, it is a superb library if you are looking for adding that special ambience to an existing composition. The processed vocals can sound otherworldly in parts, especially with the right amount of reverb and delay. It’s beautifully constructed and, personally, I appreciate it more for its meditative properties. You can just get immersed in its gentle beauty for stretches of time and let it take you to places away from the maddening crowd.

Facts

Stratos for Kontakt contains 120 patches and 24 Multis. It downloads as 695 MB. The library requires the full version of Kontakt 5.8 or later. It is not compatible with the free Kontakt player.

Stratos normally sells for $47.50 from Hypersamples

Demos of Stratos by Hypersamples

Videos of Stratos by Hypersamples

Contributor Raymond D Ricker reviews Stratos by Hypersamples
“The processed vocals can sound otherworldly in parts, especially with the right amount of reverb and delay. It’s beautifully constructed and, personally, I appreciate it more for its meditative properties.”