Earlier this month, mixing got even ‘EZ-er’ for music producers as the arrival of Toontrack‘s reincarnation of their popular EZmix software promised to deliver even better results through a wider variety of features.
We caught up with Toontrack’s Head of Sound Design Mattias Eklund to learn more about the thinking behind EZmix 2 and what the Swedish company’s responses are to some of the user feedback so far… 
Rob Manning has been working in music for more than 10 years with his soundtracks perhaps more familiar to British television audiences having composed original music for numerous BBC, ITV and Channel 4 documentaries including Louis Theroux, Dispatches, Gordon’s Great Escape, Heston Blumenthal’s Feasts and Cutting Edge. His credits also include comedies and production music for the likes of Universal and MTV.
Rob’s studio is based in North London with a valve desk, a large and diverse collection of instruments plus an extensive library of virtual instruments including Spectrasonics Omnisphere. Naturally we wanted to find out more so we caught up with Rob to talk about his career and his studio set up.
2011 was a massive year for Swedish drum maestros Toontrack. They released over 30 titles and while many were midi packs and producer presets for their existing instruments and expansions, they unveiled 4 new EZXs -- Classic, Number One Hits, Americana & Metal Machine and the 2 new Roots SDXs.
In a recent video posted on their Youtube channel, Toontrack hinted at what we can expect in 2012. Take a look at the video -- can you guess what it might be?
Miguel d'Oliveira
You may remember award winning film and TV composer Miguel d’Oliveira from an interview we did with him on the Time+Space website back in 2008. Miguel uses many plug-ins from Time+Space brands and we were interested to hear that he’d started producing his own short videos in and around his busy work schedule.
The first of these two videos can be viewed below and see Miguel comparing LA Scoring Strings, ProjectSAM Symphobia 2, VSL and East West Symphonic Orchestra on the legato strengths of their low strings as well as a spicatto shootout. Have a listen (and watch) and let us know which you prefer!
Cedric Vermue is a hugely talented 18-year old composer from the Netherlands who has gained quite a following for his incredibly impressive compositions showcased on his YouTube channel.
Playing the piano and classical music is Cedric’s main source of inspiration and right now, he is taking a gap year during which he is composing the soundtrack for an Argentinian feature film.
When we discovered that Cedric uses ProjectSAM‘s Symphobia 1 and 2 within his scores, we got in touch with him to ask if he’d put together a short video about how he uses ProjectSAM’s critically acclaimed plug-ins and, very kindly, he obliged.
Rob Papen has just posted a new version of Predator which is now available for free to registered users. There are many enhancements including new filter types, new presets and an alternative GUI colour. Predator has become a industry standard virtual synth plug-in across many genres of music because of it’s easy to use interface, amazing presets and high quality engine.
ProjectSAM have wowed the sound design world with their sample libraries for almost 10 years now. Starting with SAM Horns, the ProjectSAM range has blossomed and expanded to include an awesome arsenal of sonic orchestral firepower which is a force to be reckoned with. The award winning Symphobia, perhaps the most famous of the ProjectSAM products, gives composers instant access to epic modern ‘hollywood’ strings to rival any other library on the market.
Recently unveiled at the 2011 AES show in New York, Ozone 5 is the latest incarnation of what iZotope call their ‘Complete Mastering System’. Many of you are probably already familiar with iZotope Ozone which has been an industry standard software mastering tool for many years now.
Here is a video of Tedd from iZotope giving the lowdown on Ozone 5 at AES….
There are a many major developments in Ozone 5 but perhaps the most mouth watering is that there is now an ‘Advanced’ version, which adds a whopping 6 extra component plug-ins and also extra functionality in each individual Ozone module. Having the option to load these modules individually into your DAW gives you much more flexibility when working with Ozone in your mixes.
iZotope 5 Advanced Spectrogram
Another massive new feature in Ozone 5 Advanced is the ‘Meter Bridge’ which gives the user a full suite of analysis tools which can be customized to suite your work flow. Perhaps the coolest of these is the Spectrogram which presents a real-time high resolution 3D representation of your audio.
Hey, but don’t just take it from me though, why not download a trial version of Ozone 5 now on the iZotope website and check it out now!
Since it was released a year ago, Synthogy‘s Ivory II has received numerous first class reviews in the press with huge acclaim for the features that the new engine presented including the impressively realistic Sympathetic String Resonance.
As great as these reviews have been, we wanted to get the opinions of a composer who regularly uses virtual pianos but hadn’t yet experienced Ivory… and that’s where Emmett Cooke comes in.
We interviewed Emmett back in July about his composing work and minimal piano music style and since then he’s been checking out Ivory II Grand Pianos against his existing piano software. Here’s his review…
Laurie Jenkins
Laurie Jenkins recently got in touch with Time+Space about Ivory II Upright Pianos and when he mentioned he was working as a programmer for English Rock band Kasabian we obviously wanted to find out more about how they were using Synthogy’s highly acclaimed software…
Hi Laurie, thanks for speaking with us, first up, could you tell us about your background?
Hi – I first started out as a session drummer for loads of different bands and toured pretty much constantly (biog is on www.lauriedrums.com) as well as owning a studio and partners in a production company where we produce/write loads of different things from our own music – music for tv/film etc. Then I started getting calls from people I have worked with in the past to sort people’s live rigs or programming people’s live shows so kind of fell into what I am doing now by chance really – to be honest the industry is getting tougher and tougher, especially the session side so I am very happy where things are at the moment.
Time+Space Twitter Time+Space News
