In which case start with SampleTank 4 SE – that’s a sensible 30GB of sounds and 2,000 presets for €149 or €99 if you preorder.

Is it too big, is there a chance that you’d never know where to begin? Maybe. The animation and modulation possibilities are immense and so building up your own bank of sounds could become an occupation in of itself. But version 4 is a phenomenal sound source that will always have something useful to offer in any situation. SampleTank sometimes gets overlooked because it’s been around forever and doesn’t have the style or coolness of Kontakt based libraries or other sample libraries. The Arp does its thing, the Strummer uses chords to intelligently construct accompaniment, Phraser maps in a choice of over 4,000 MIDI patterns and the Loop Manager has you browsing through 7,500 loops to find the perfect one. There’s an Arpeggiator, Strummer, Phraser and Loop Manager. It comes with 4 “groove players” that are ready to animate your sounds. SampleTank has been famous for its beats but version 4 takes that further. You can also edit articulations within the sounds which is very cool. A modulation matrix lets you get into some serious parameter manipulation. Inside you have control over envelopes, oscillators, portamento, polyphony and chose from 16 modelled filters. The GUI is now resizable which is great because the controls and parameters have often been a bit tiny. The sound editing was never the focus of SampleTank but there’s a decent amount there if you want to tweak your sounds. There’s an awful lot of sounds in here and I hope IK has beefed up the browser and filter options to make navigating this vast list comprehensible. There’s a huge acoustic piano, a range of electric pianos, a massive collection of synthesizer sounds, new brass and string sections and drum kits galore. Acoustic instruments have been captured with multiple articulations and round-robins for as authentic a performance as they can manage. The new content comes from record sessions in cities across the world and also in their new custom-built studio in Italy. You’ll probably need to buy a new hard disk just for this. I think that’s 5 times the size of the previous version.

This new version now comes with 250GB of sound library filling the needs of 8,000 presets.

Sampletank 4 drums