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Review: Camel Audio's Alchemy Player - Dubstep and Arp Dimensions Sound Libraries

Camel Audio

by SerenaB, March 17th, 2011 and has been Read 4436 times.
Last Edited by: Chris MUG5 Maguire June 29th, 2012.

Camel Audio are an established company with award winning plugins, instruments and effects. They have a vast collection of sound libraries, VST plugins and audio units that you can buy so when I had the opportunity to review their two newest sound libraries, Dubstep and Arp Dimensions, I was really excited.

I have to admit that the installation process did not run as smoothly as I had hoped. You have to download the keyfiles to your desktop and download the samples and presets to the Alchemy plugin and then you have to run the add-on installer. Now this may seem straight forward to some of you more ‘techy’ people but I am not that experienced when it comes to setting up plugins and sound libraries. I did contact the Camel Audio support team and I must say that they were quick to reply and very helpful. Thankfully, I was able to see where I was going wrong and install everything properly.
I had to install Alchemy player, which is a software instrument plugin, as it is required to use these soundbanks but it is free when you buy any Alchemy sound library. Alchemy player costs £39, so it is a brilliant deal! I have never used Alchemy player before but the interface is clear, straightforward and easy to use, so if you are not so experienced don’t worry. It also has its own sample library with 200 instrument sounds, the categories are 37 Soundscapes, 34 Pads, 20 Arpeggiated, 20 Basses, 15 Loops, 15 Synths, 11 Leads, 9 Sound Effects, 8 Mallets, 7 Keys, 6 Guitars, 6 Vocals, 6 Strings, 3 Organs, 3 Woodwinds, so you have plenty of material to work with.

After setting up the Alchemy player I was able to use Arp Dimensions which has 150 presets, the categories included are ambient, bass, classic, dance, layered and percussive. Camel Audio describe this library as "perfect for genres as diverse as electronica, dance and ambient,’’ and when I was playing around with these sounds, I could see why. With the diverse range of new and individual sounds with names such as "algorithmic crystal run," "metallic dreams," "acid stomp" and "aqua poppadom," there are endless possibilities to what you could create with Arp Dimensions. This is a great soundbank if you are interested in these genres of music, and even if you aren’t I would still recommend it as I could not fault the quality of sounds and there is so much you can do with this pack.

The second soundbank, Dubstep, has a 75 preset sound library which includes bass; distorted, sub, sweep, wobble, and drums, sound effects, soundscapes and synth. This pack is aimed towards dubstep, drum and bass and electronica genres and with the heavy grime and deep bass sounds this is obvious. I would say that the bass and drum sounds are more geared towards dubstep and drum and bass whereas the sound effects, soundscapes and synths are more focused on electronica but that’s just my opinion. Like Arp Dimensions the quality of the sounds are brilliant and there is a lot you can do with this pack.

I was really impressed with both of these sound libraries and I think Alchemy player is a really useful plugin to have. Dubstep is priced at £25 and Arp Dimension is £39, both of these soundbanks are definitely worth investing in. If you are interested in Camel Audio they have a larger collection of sound libraries so if dubstep, drum and bass, electronica and dance aren’t really your cup of tea it may be worth checking out their other collections.

On the Mac, Alchemy Player requires OS X 10.4.9 or later, a 2 GHz Intel or G5 processor, 1 GB of RAM, 410 MB of free disk space, and an Audio Units or VST plug-in host.

REVIEWER RATING:

88%