SONIVOX Muse 1.04 (Win) (Bonus)

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 AM, By Geary Yelton

Keyboard Action

Muse furnishes a large number of synthesizer presets. The Synth menu offers analog, digital, and stacked leads and pads, as well as monophonic, polyphonic, and portamento basses. Their quality ranges from rather bland and cheesy (like Synth Lead 7 Dirty Patch) to huge and impressive (like Synth Pad 6 Animated Digi Stack). I found enough really useful synth patches to make sorting through them well worth my while.

Likewise, a comprehensive collection of keyboard presets includes a grand piano, an authentic-sounding harpsichord, a very nice celesta, a DX7-style FM piano, and a versatile Hammond (called Drawbar Organ), as well as Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Clav, accordion, and even a vintage string synthesizer—almost all of them with several variations.

Muse’s beautiful grand piano is more than 2 GB in size. One version features GigaPulse convolution to capture the resonances of playing with the sustain pedal down. Pressing or releasing the sustain pedal triggers recordings of a real sustain pedal, and you can adjust the volume of those recordings. Other variations include classical, rock, jazz, and studio piano, as well as hard-strike, soft-strike, and EZ versions.

Pop Families

The Guitars & Basses menu presents you with 14 clans that include electric and acoustic guitars and basses. Acoustic steel- and nylon-string guitars and electric jazz, overdrive, single-coil, and humbucking guitars come in an assortment of single-note and chord variations. Some instruments let you instantly switch between major and minor chords using the mod wheel—a nice touch. Muse also has a terrific array of basses. In addition to acoustic upright and classic fingerpicked electric, you get heavy picked, Rick Pick, slapped, fuzz, and fretless.

Pop Brass contains five clans: baritone sax, tenor sax, alto sax, soprano sax, and the redundantly named pop brass, which provides sax and brass ensembles. All of them sound really good and provide enough articulations for you to construct realistic performances, though some keyswitching would improve their real-time expressivity. I especially liked the ensembles, which knocked me out with their big, live sound.

The Drums presets offer some of Muse’s most effective samples. All the kits are mapped to the GM standard, and most of them sound quite realistic. Muse divides kits into studio, custom, session, bedrock, brush, and electro flavors to accommodate just about any musical genre. In addition to kits, you can also load individual instruments from each clan.

Vocals and Ethnic Timbres

The Vocals family includes three clans: mixed choir, female jazz vocals, and vocoder sounds. You can select male, female, or mixed vocal ensembles from mixed choirs, and half the presets let you control filtering with your mod wheel. I didn’t find the female jazz vocals very useful unless I layered them together. They include scat syllables, which assign a different sample to each MIDI Note. The vocoder sounds are kind of interesting, though probably no more useful. Five presets give you vocoder-processed synth timbres modulated by a person speaking the words “muse,” “virtual,” “mythological,” “inspiration,” and “yes.”

Muse has two world-instrument families: Ethnic Percussion and Ethnic Melodic. Though the variety of instruments isn’t tremendous, they represent several geographic regions. Percussion from Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, China, and Cuba ranges from atsimevu (a large African hand drum) to vibraslap. Ethnic Melodic includes three Chinese stringed instruments, Indian tambura, two Indonesian flutes, Scottish bagpipes, and American banjo and harmonica.

Symphonic Colors

Muse’s four Orchestral families are taken from the four libraries in SoniVox’s Complete Symphonic Collection. I’ve watched these products evolve, and it’s great to have many of the same sounds in an affordable collection. Almost half of Muse’s content is devoted to symphonic instruments, and you’ll probably find enough variety to suit most musical scenarios unless you specialize in orchestral arranging.

The Orchestral Strings family supplies violin, viola, cello, and bass, both solo and in ensembles. Variations on the solo violin preset include classical, bluegrass, and round-robin varieties. The violas provide up- and down-bowed versions, and the cellos include a fast version. The bass extends much higher and much lower than its normal range, and it also offers up, down, and fast variations. All solo strings supply numerous EZ versions with and without release samples. The player has no control over vibrato, which has been recorded in virtually all string samples. Ensembles stack all four instruments into chamber and larger groups.

Similarly, Muse’s Orchestral Brass family supplies solo and ensemble trumpet, trombone, tuba, and French horn. Each features variations such as swell, fast, and espressivo. Again, some ensembles stack different instruments together, and EZ versions come with and without releases. Likewise, the clarinet, oboe, English horn, bassoon, flute, and piccolo in the Orchestral Woodwinds family deliver plenty of variety.

I was impressed with the selection and quality of the instruments in Orchestral Percussion. I was especially pleased with the harps, which budget-minded orchestral libraries often overlook completely. There are no sampled harp glissandos, but you can play your own glisses and control releases using the mod wheel. Mallet percussion includes glockenspiel, marimba, vibes, xylophone, and tubular bells. Along with the expected bass drum, field snare, crash cymbal, clave, and triangle, you also get ratchet, slapstick, sleigh bells, and some nice wind chimes. Drum-group and hand-percussion ensembles map several instruments across the keyboard.

GigaPulse and Effects

Because it is based on GVI, Muse features Tascam’s convolution reverb, GigaPulse (for details, see the GigaStudio 3 review in the May 2005 issue of EM). Like GigaStudio, Muse offers four stereo NFX plug-ins: Reverb/Multi, Chorus/Mod, Tap/Delay, and EQ. There’s no limit to the number of FX Inserts you can add, and each contains up to four effects. Unfortunately, the GUI for effects is too small to use comfortably.

You route instruments to effects by loading GigaPulse or NFX presets into a slot and then routing the instrument’s audio output to that slot’s input. Once you’ve created an effects insert, you can route any instrument in any slot to the same insert, but you won’t be able to control the amount of each instrument that’s routed to the effects. When you load an instrument that has embedded GigaPulse content, a stacked layer containing the effects automatically loads at the same time.

Amusement Park

I was much happier with Muse’s content than I was with its GVI-based framework. The techniques for selecting instruments felt a bit cumbersome, but at least GVI provides shortcuts that allow you to quickly open instruments you’ve opened previously. Effects routing is a little awkward, and I was disappointed to have so little control over individual effects sends for each instrument. Still, I was more than satisfied with the ability to easily split and layer instruments. I was also impressed that Muse performed so well on a computer that barely exceeds its minimum system requirements.

If you want a sample library that covers all the bases and you don’t already own a sampler, Muse is a great place to start. Even if you have a sampler and an extensive library of sampled instruments, Muse can fill in any gaps in your collection. The price is pretty reasonable, and the quality of the included content is uniformly outstanding. Check out the audio demos on SoniVox’s Web site to hear what a rich and versatile virtual instrument Muse is.

Associate Editor Geary Yelton has been composing and recording since the ’60s and playing synthesizers since the mid-’70s.

PRODUCT SUMMARY

SONIVOX
Muse 1.04
sample player/library
$595

FEATURES: 4
EASE OF USE: 3
QUALITY OF SOUNDS: 5
VALUE: 3

RATING PRODUCTS FROM 1 TO 5

PROS: Uniformly excellent sound. Stylistically versatile. Easy, infinite stacking. Runs standalone or as a VST plug-in.

CONS: Can’t export sounds to GigaStudio or GVI. Can’t import Giga libraries. Confusing GM loading. Limited effects routing.

MANUFACTURER
SoniVox www.sonivoxmi.com