Altered States

DVD. ALTERED STATES is an instrument that will inspire you!! First, it is absolutely VAST (almost 5 Gb, and thousands of unique source sounds). Second, it is a plug-in virtual instrument powered by a custom high-performance NATIVE INSTRUMENTS interface for shaping and manipulating the sound. Third, the source material is extremely organic, unique, ultra-creative, and virtuoso sound design. And the diversity and flexibility of this stunning resource has to be experienced to be believed.

Much of ALTERED STATES is brand new, and much is from highly-acclaimed and award-winning Zero-G libraries never before available in this format. All sounds have been reorganised and re-categorized from the original ten (yes, 10) incorporated Zero-G libraries and integrated with over a gigabyte of outstanding brand new material. In the rhythm department of the resulting monster library, there are thousands of loops and all are presented in sliced format (via the NI INTAKT Beat Machine) or via the Time Machine, so they will automatically sync to your songs, and you can apply sound-shaping to each slice if you wish.

The programming, conversion, and organisation of this vast product has been expertly carried out by IAN BODDY, one of the UK's leading synthesists, and has been designed to be as user friendly and logically creative as possible.

ALTERED STATES is simply the single most powerfully creative sample-based virtual instrument ever created, a claim which can be justified, even in the face of competition like Spectrasonics' very fine 'Atmosphere'. How? ALTERED STATES has an extremely large and incredibly diverse library of sounds; it has the best software interface, created by NATIVE INSTRUMENTS, the leaders in software synthesis; it's engine is based on the KONTAKT audio engine (the same as in the world's finest and most highly-acclaimed sampler); and all the sounds can also be loaded into NI KONTAKT if desired (see below), meaning it is NOT a closed system. Also, the loops, the LFOs, the FX, everything can be automatically synced to the tempo of your song (making other techniques like Groove Control look cumbersome!), and you have total recall of everything you do, in your sequencer.

The whole of the ALTERED STATES library is presented within a stunning new state-of-the-art plug-in interface by NATIVE INSTRUMENTS which is specifically optimized for, among other things, rhythmic loop playback, manipulation, and creative mayhem. The convenient one-screen interface (a version of NI INTAKT) provides tremendous sound shaping abilities without disrupting the creative flow, including a first-class multimode filter, an envelope follower, two LFOs, effects, and much more. All of the loops in the library have been set up so that they can be automatically synced to tempo, either via the Beat Machine or the Time Machine. The Beat Machine has loops divided into their individual hits (slices) which means they can be played at a wide range of tempos without change in pitch. It also allows the user to give each hit individual settings for pitch, playback direction, pitch envelope, amp envelope, distortion, delay, and more; a MIDI file of each loop can be easily exported so that groove, accent, and feel can be manipulated in any host sequencer. The Time Machine time-stretches or compresses loops in real time.

Not only can you sync, stretch, and pitch the loops, but also filter, effect and modulate them as well! A powerful sound-shaping filter, flexible envelopes, syncable LFOs, and distortion, syncable delay, and lo-fi effects can inject even more energy and individuality into the loops, as well as into the synths, pads, textures and everything else in this absolutely vast and inspiring sound library. Since the software interface is a version of NI's superb INTAKT engine, working with it is fast, easy, and sounds great!