Great Sounds...

As a composing project studio owner, I was looking at expanding my sonic palate. I took advantage of IK's "buy 1, get 1" deal, and decided to go with SampleTron as one of my latest purchases, along with the SampleMoog. Not being an "old school" kind of guy, I was looking forward to playing around with all these sounds from days gone by. I've been very pleased thus far.

I'm rapidly becoming a huge IK fan, as I own other IK products (Amplitube Hendrix, Metal, SampleMoog), and I constantly find the quality of the samples fantastic, and the processing and effects to be top notch.

From my lack of experience with actual 'tron' instruments, I find the samples to be a fresh break from the norm, and the actual old recorded 'trons' are tracked with an accurate quality. A creative composer / writer / producer will find numerous patches to utilize, especially in the vein of compositions where you need something ultra-retro.

My only problem with this product is the layout, and it's not a major issue. In my opinion, the 'knobs' could be a little larger and laid out in a more efficient fashion. There are so many options for tweaking that I would recommend the IK guys come up with a whole separate pop-up screen just for tweaking. (Hey, I like big virtual knobs!) Comparing this visual layout of the SampleTron with the Amplitube products by IK, I wish the layout was simply larger so I wouldn't have to squint so much. There really is a whole bunch of effects and parameters to work with. If you're using a huge 30"+ screen, it's probably not much of an issue, but I think IK could have at least made the screen layout larger for the majority of users.

Let me say that the effects section is superb, with more than enough capabilities to manipulate the patches in order to achieve the sounds you desire. You can run select filters and tweak EQ's to get that "lo-fi" sound, and it sounds just like you're listening to an old reel-to-reel film in mono coming out of a crappy speaker. (Any of you older guys like me remember going to the grade-school cafe-torium and watching poorly done, 2-decade old instructional films with rickety music & audio? You get the picture...)

A creative producer & composer will have a field day with the sounds here. Often times, in today's high-tech audio world with huge, pristine, fat sounds, it's nice to have a little "truly old school" AM type sound with audible tape fluctuations to throw in the mix. This program doesn't disappoint.

If you're a serious producer or composer, this program offer you an excellent library of original 'tron sounds. You will have a huge selection to choose from, covering many of the old 'tron instruments and patches, recorded excellently, and the ability to tweak these sounds will keep you toying with this program for hours.

Although I have never been around an old 'tron, with these patches I can picture clearly one of those old, ugly console thingies sitting in the studio corner, adding to the backwards styles of the phat tracks I'm producing for my local hip-hop artist, or the cheesy flute sounds for the uber-folk intro of the latest offering from my area hippie-songwriter, or simply utilizing a string patch that is different from anything else I've been using. You can find a lot of uses for these 'tron sounds.