PulseSetter-Sounds releases a large hybrid guitar Kontakt instrument called DYSTOPIAN GUITARS.

Read on to find out what we think about it.

OVERVIEW

MAIN GUI INTERFACE

FX PAGE INTERFACE

(Filter, Distortion, Delay, Reverb, Pan, & Lofi)

ENSEMBLE INTERFACE

(4 INSTRUMENTS, EFFECTS, & ARPEGGIATOR)

REVIEW

Three years in the making, PulseSetter Sounds releases DYSTOPIAN GUITARS for the full version of Kontakt 5.7+, and all I can is wow! It's obvious they didn't rush this out and what you get is a comprehensive guitar sample library that should exceed all your cinematic scoring needs. One thing you'll notice when you load up this library is how many categories and snapshots it contains. Six folders include Ensembles, Pads+Ambiences, Pulses, Shimmers, Solo Instruments, and Tools+FX. Within the Pulses, Shimmers, and Solo Instruments, you'll find sub-folders. Pulses contain one sub-folder that is called Pulse Designer Examples, Shimmer contains Natural and unnatural, and Solo Instruments include four sub-folders (Metal Sequences, Natural, Sequences+Arpeggios, and Unnatural).

There are two MAIN interfaces. There is one that contains four instrument Ensembles and one that includes a centered Macro knob. On the Ensemble GUI, you'll find four instruments each, with an independent arpeggiator. Any instrument can be activated or deactivated within the interface. The ensembles ran very smoothly on my CPU, and it was when I ran multiple instances within Kontakt using four ensembles when I noticed a spike in my CPU, which was a total of 16 instruments. So, as you can see, it took quite a bit to tax my CPU that has an i7 processor with 32GB memory. The only feature I would have like to have is the ability to swap out each instrument and create my ensembles. However, the amount of versatility in this library makes up for the lack of that ability. The quad sequencer on the third page offers powerful customization by letting you create some intricate sequences between the four layers.

The guitars in this library vary in sound. You get incredible natural-sounding guitars, dark textures, evolving pads, beautiful shimmers, ambient guitars, and an array of heavy metal muted grooves which, was ultimately a surprise. The library consists of 334 loops, 33 Natural Solo Instruments, 86 unnatural solo instruments, 39 shimmers, 110 ensembles, 101 pads, 68 bonus sequences, and 30 tools & fx instruments. For the natural and unnatural solo instruments, they multi-sampled a variety of guitars and stringed instruments, including an acoustic guitar or slapping an electric bass with an assortment of sticks. PulseSetter also included some powerful trailer fx sounds created from guitars like risers, downers, guitar impacts, scrapes, chords, a feedback machine, and more. There is 21.32GB of content that is around 16GB using Kontakt's lossless compression.

This library has incredible potential for not only film scoring and trailer scoring but also many other types of electronic music. For some sample libraries I own, I have to dig into the controls to develop the sound I want. To be clear, I was frankly overwhelmed with the amount of satisfying presets that came with this library right out of the box. The diverse nature of Dystopian Guitars is vast for any composer, and the production is exemplary. I also partnered this library up with their recent 'Cello Ibrida' and even Re:Coil for Omnisphere 2 and was amazed at how well these libraries work together.

I have no doubt PulseSetter Sounds poured their heart and soul into this library. I've always been impressed with their releases and high standards. It's apparent they have their fingers on the pulse of what's important to film composers today and, Dystopian Guitars deserves no less than a

5 OUT OF 5 STARS!