"SonicCouture Hang Drum for Kontakt 2" Sample Set -Review Part 1

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<td> <b><u>Introduction</u></b>

SonicCouture introduced the first professional Hang sample set at the end of September 2007 and scouring the internet for Hang samples was restricted to a wide a palette of fuzz-quality YouTube videos and a handful of notes taken from the Hangfan E-Hang (which someone craftily made availalbe on a free sample site).

It was with great excitement that I finally got hold of a copy, courtesy of a long-time, fellow-freak tech head Hang bum, whose dark history I shan't enter into now...

First off, before you go jumping in and buying this baby, I recommend the following ingredients to make your Hang Meringue sound true:

16oz (or to be exact) 2200 Hang Samples (courtesy of our SonicCouture buddies)
3lbs of Native Insturments sample software ace "Kontakt 2" (note: ver. 2.2.1 or higher required)
88 keys of ivory and ebony midi manipulation (or commonly called a midi keyboard)
A sprinkling of PC/MAC robustness, including low latency ASIO drivers for Kontakt,
2 Large, Fat, Well-Rounded Speakers
and finally, a reasonable amount of spare time and an understanding family...

   </TABLE><b><u>Getting Started</b></u>

Installation was as good as non-existent, in as much as, copy the files on the DVD into your beloved sample-hording treasure chest on your hard-drive which includes two directories of Hang samples (one MK1 and one MK2 model) and some .NKI files (Kontakt's program files for loading the sample sets). You'll need a good 2.5GB of space to cram the whole lot on there.

A nicely assembled manual in PDF format also accompanies the samples, but I didn't want to spoil my fun by reading it now did I?! (I will offer you the benefits of a delve in later though)

It took me some time to track down and borrow a copy of Kontakt 2 though - at £180 a pop, it's somewhat prohibitively priced to buy. However, a little hunting around online might bring up some 'cheaper' deals - if you catch my drift. Kontakt 3 is now the latest version and that retails at around £250.

<b><u>Firing Up The Decks...</b></u>

You're gonna need juice for this gig....lots and lots of processing juice. I ran Kontakt and the sample pack on a machine with a dual-core Athlon, 2GB RAM and a midspeed hard drive and an EMU 10/10 card with 12ms of ASIO latency, all on the allegedly wretched Windows XP platform.

<i>(Incidentally, since writing the review, I've tested Kontakt 2 in stand-alone mode on a slower machine with an Intel Celeron (medium speed 2GHz-2.5Ghz - can't remember exactly), 1GB RAM and a much slower hard drive - it still worked quite well, but had much longer sample load times (around 90 secs) and with occassional glitches when you first start playing the samples after load up but fine after a short while)</i>

Browsing to the samples, I head first to the Hang MK1 set, and I'm presented with 6 programs (or 'maps') to choose from.

<img src="http://www.hangfan.co.uk/images/file-browser.jpg"><br><br> I'll head straight for the first in the list - the chromatic scale.
A simple drag and drop into the main sample window of Kontakt, a wait of 20 seconds or so as all the samples in that map load, and a rather fetching close-up of a MK1 ding stares at me with minute little faces reflecting in its polished sheen.

<img src="http://www.hangfan.co.uk/images/hang-mk1.jpg"><br><br>

Not being able to resist the immediate satisfaction of hearing the sound, I press a few keys on my keyboard and I'm hit with a machine gun of Hang slaps - BRILLIANT!! What more could a fanatic want.

<b><u>Map-Reading</b></u>

Ok, so it got more complex than that - SonicCouture have arranged the samples into 'maps'. As the style and nature of playing a Hang involves a lot more than simple chromatic notes (and, of course, the fact that you can't actually get a chromatic Hang) , they've taken into account these likely variations that existing Hang players may use. Each one of these maps allows you access to all of the instruments samples, they are simply arranged differently to allow you maximum flexibility and enabling the user to find a map that suits their performance needs.

Of course, for certain scenarios, it won't matter what map you use, as you can use sequencing software to trigger the samples accordingly - but more about that later.

The Chromatic map (pictured below), for example, lays out the samples across 3 octaves (marked as blue keys) and the 5 red keys below them denote the key or 'sample' switches. These switches allow you to swap the blue key samples between the five different playing (or 'hit') styles that have been recorded, namely:

<b>Fingers Centre</b> (which I would call 'finger taps' at the centre of each notes central 'crater')
<b>Fingers Edge</b> (placed within each notes area of flattened indentation - but not within the crater)
<b>Slap</b> (or as I prefer a 'pimped up finger tap)
<b>Fingers In Between </b>(meaning between the flattened note areas - 'No Mans Land')
<b>Knuckles</b> (ermmm...ouch...)

<img src="http://www.hangfan.co.uk/images/mk1-keys.jpg"><br><br>

This impressive array of styles doesn't, however, include a couple of my personal favourites - those being the 'sideways wrist twist and thumb hit' combo (which does produce a much softer 'non-slappy' sound, especially on the MK 1's) and multiple light finger taps 'tabla-stylee' (familiar to some of the more 'purist-percussive' players around).

That said, I launch into playing around with some of the key switches and alternating notes and playing styles, and already I'm beginning to tingle in strange places... the knuckle hits especially sound like someone tapping inside your head!

Also included is the Gu side 'udu-like' hand hits which (bar the harmonic ring hit you can get) all sound pretty similar regardless of what hit style you are playing with.

The Chromatic Map is also the only map that introduces 'faked' notes (obviously) to fill the gaps that a real Hang couldn't musically produce. This does lead to some side-effects, though we'll look at that a little later.

The other maps on offer include some interesting and very useful layouts for accessing the samples in a reasonably playable fashion. Some feel more natural than others, and as an avid Hang player, I could begin to see the possibilities for live performance and sequenced sample performance being skillfully welded and melded together.

The maps include:
<b>The Precision Map</b>
The notes availalbe on the keyboard become restricted to the original notes of the hang. Includes the key switches for different hits.

<b>The Octave Map</b>
Effectively, five octaves of samples - each octave containing a different hit style and all of the original notes of the Hang, therefore doing away with the need for keyswitches.

<b>The Two Hand Map</b>
A quite widely spaced pairing of samples to reflect playing with two hands, with alternate notes (1 through to 8 on the MK1) in each pair of of notes. NOt a bad idea, but difficult to get right wihtout a bit of practise. Remembering where the notes are being the biggest issue here.

and finally, the <b>Wide Zone Keyboard Map</b>
which is for me the most interesting so far. The Wide Zones map presents all of the Hang notes laid out in a long string across the keyboard, with each clean note represented and a few samples in between which physically represent the spaces in between the Hang notes. If you run your finger along the keyboard playing each note, you really get the impression that someone is playing the Hang every couple of centimetres all the way around.

This map features 4 red keyswitches, though I suspect it should actually be only 3, as the fingers playing centre, on the edge and in between each note are already represented in the main default keyswitch style (therefore leaving only knuckles and slaps to swap to).

<b><u>Hang The DJ?</b></u>
Sound quality - probably the big make or break issue for present Hang owners. HOw does the SC Hang Drum stand against the real deal?
Well, obvious transportability, tactile perversity and sheer attractiveness of a real Hang are things you'll never accurately recreate, but most of us will be using these samples hiding under our duvets, nerding out in true bedroom studio style.

All samples are recorded in stereo at 44.1KHz and at 24 bit and at first touch, the samples do impress in terms of depth, variety and quality. The Gu sample does leave me wanting though, as you can really get in close and record less metal and more ooomph but it is, by no means, bad.

What wasn't obvious to me (depsite having some touch sensitivity on my keyboard - which is a Korg Karma) was the depth of each individual sample. Each key can contain multiple samples, which are triggered accordingly, depending on how hard you hit your midi controllers keys (expressed in the MIDI world as 'velocity' values anywhere between 0 and 127). I noticed maybe 5 different layers, though there are supposedly up to 21 sample layers for each note. It is quite an impressive and expressive effect though, to have a degree of touch sensitivity to playing.

I can't imagine how they managed to measure the physical imapct of each Hang note struck, to then categorise them according to that stength of hit and then lay them on each key in those layers. I guess that's why they're the professionals! I'm not a Kontakt 2 user, so I don't know if it is possible to actually view the sample layers to see how many there are on each key.

I'm still not sure if I invented this in my head, but whilst playing the chromatic scale, it did feel as though the 'unnatural' Hang notes were harmonically weird.

The assumption is that they took the regular Hang notes and raised or lowered the tones to fill the gaps, and that would of course include the harmonics for each sample. I'm not sure if Kontakt does this automatically (presumably not), or if SonicCouture took the samples and processed them using other 3rd party software to get the desired notes and remapped them into Kontakt.

The Hang certainly resonates mathmatically - i.e. each note around the ding, are designed to resonate in ratio to the Ding note - 2/1 - 1.75/1 and so on. I got the feeling that the treated samples demonstrated some strange harmonic behaviour and sounded unnatural, probably due in large part to these disharmonic artifacts.

The master transpose function is one we'll cover in part 2 and see how effectively it works.

<b><u>Half-time Conclusion</b></u>

To sum up part 1 (as it's getting bloody late and I wanna sleeeeeeeeeep!)

<b>Software/Installation  - Score - 7.5/10</b>
Samples great value for money
Prohibitive but not impossible software requirements.
Resonable size
Quick and painless install (simple copy of samples across)

<b>Sound Quality -  Score - 9/10</b>
Clear, deep and juicy! Can't fault the true Hang note samples.
Knuckle knocks are great!
Derived chromatic notes 'a bit dodgy'

<b>Playability - Score 8/10</b>
Not easy to master, but then is anything?
Wide choice of sample maps and hit styles though a couple of common hit styles not included.

OVERALL: 8.5/10 (see below)

Edit: Part 2 actually never got written due to time constraints and me having to give my loan copy back. SonicCouture did promise me a copy, but it never came sadly.
You still have a chance to send me one though guys...and then I could do part 2....anyway, I'll conclude the review early.

Review written by Torbz.
For more information about the product, visit www.soniccouture.com
The 'Hang Drum' Sample pack costs £49 (by download) or £52 (DVD by post).
Any comments, suggestions about the review, please post in this thread.