Rating: ***** 5/5 Stars
Sample Logic have a product catalogue packed with impressive sonic options to tempt even the most demanding of film or TV composers. And, while there are plenty of purely music‑based applications I can imagine for their latest release, I suspect Genesis - Pads In Motion is most likely to appeal to that audience. Can you ever have enough sources of pad and/or soundscape textures? Well, let’s find out.
Supplied as a Kontakt‑based instrument (it requires the full version 6.7.1 or later), and built from some 13GB of sample data, Pads In Motion lets the user combine two of the underlying 200+ source sounds within a preset. The original sample sources include a variety of organic/acoustic sounds such as vocals, strings, brass and woodwinds, as well as various keyboards and synths. Auditioned individually, there are some beautiful sounds available spanning a huge range of different textures. Whether you need something light and airy, deep and menacing, subtle, or endlessly shifting, there are plenty of potential starting points, and the excellent tag‑based browser lets you find what you need with ease for either individual sound sources or full presets.
While the samples themselves are top quality, it’s the UI/engine that then lets you generate an almost limitless range of sounds from them. Indeed, while this is undoubtedly a musical instrument, it’s also very much a sound‑design tool. You can create some fabulous playable sounds but also design equally impressive textural sounds if what you need is something more minimalist as a sonic atmosphere.
You can create some fabulous playable sounds but also design equally impressive textural sounds...
The UI’s Main, Edit, FX and Master pages provide plenty of sound‑shaping options. For example, in the Edit page, you can retune, apply an ADSR envelope, add compression/saturation and powerful low/high‑cut filters that include LFO‑based modulation. There are numerous parameters throughout the engine that can be modulated and, via a neat step‑sequencer, this includes the volume of each layer and their blend; with suitable settings here, you can easily introduce all sorts of pulse or rhythmic elements into your sound. However, the design of the control set also strikes an excellent balance between ease of use and depth; there is little by way of learning curve when creating your own sounds.
OK, the underlying concept of layering varying combinations of two pad‑style source sounds to create a new pad sound is not itself new (indeed, Sample Logic themselves have several other titles built on the sample principle), but it is beautifully executed here. And, while this is not an inexpensive product, the sounds are of the highest quality and undoubtedly blockbuster‑ready. You may already consider your pad sound collection to be (cough!) well‑padded, but Genesis - Pads In Motion is excellent and well worth auditioning for some additional sonic inspiration.
$249.99
$249.99