160dB - The Drum and Bass Interface Refill
reviewed by tijn, 9 Jan 2001, Add/view comments (8 comments)


RATING: 8/10

Company:
AMG / ReasonRefills (www.reasonrefills.com)

Price: ?30

Like: d&b loops, subtractor patches
Dislike: expected 1 full NN19 instrument

Download:
demo refill

The 160dB Reason CD was the first commercial refill available for Reason and it is a version of the original 160dB sample CD from the AMG Catalyst Series. This CD contains enough drum loops, baselines, subtractor patches and other samples like FXs to help create some super songs. Although the refill is mainly directed towards Drum & Bass, I found some of the FXs and subtractor patches extremely useful for other styles like house and trance. Also, the individual drum samples can be used in any style of music.

Beside the 200 MB refill, the CD also contains some promotional information, 63 demo REX files, and 12 audio tracks with various demos. I picked up the CD from the Royal Mail postman just when I was heading off to go to work. Whilst driving the usual 20 min boring drive into work, I plugged the CD into my car-stereo. As I mentioned above, the CD contains a number of audio demos, of which a demo song for the 160dB refill is included as the first track. The remainder of the audio tracks contain demos from a variety of other AMG CDs.

The demo song is one of the only ones I have heard for a sample CD that would actually survive as a single. It?s hard, fast, and deep - just my style. Shame its so short.

Content

Dr Rex (content)

For the DR Rex the CD contains a mix between drum loops and music loops in the rex format. Because the CD was released before the update to Reason 1.0.1 was available, it only contains mono rex loops. Stereo rex loops were unsupported by Reason at that time.

Drumloops: The drumloops section includes 50 breakbeats and 56 live drum loops, mostly 1 and 2 bars, and some 4 bars. All loops were around 162-170 BPM. The loops are also sliced nicely so you can cut up the loops and construct your own.

The breakbeat loops come across as new and original and do not include any of the familiar D&B loops which normally make your songs sound like Swiss cheese. There is a good mix between the softer breakbeats suited for more jazzy D&B and the harder ones for things like hardstep.

There were two loops which seemed to have an error in their BPM setting (340 BPM on Break 323 and 443) which caused them to play really slowly with a Reason BPM of say 160. This is giving strange results with quit some silence between each of the slices. This is also the case when you play some of the other loops at low speeds (say 120BPM). This shouldn?t be a problem if you combine your slower songs with other drum sounds, using for example the ReDrum.

The live loops section contains a mix between good clean live drumloops, cool heavily distorted drumloops, and a few filter sweep loops. Because of my personal style I tend to prefer the more electronic/processed sounds, but the clean loops give you a chance to apply your own effects. As with the breakbeats, these live loops are suited to various styles of D&B.

There were 1 or 2 loops that I did not find very useful because they contained to many sounds and would therefore dominate a song. I prefer to use loops that are not as full because that way I can combine different loops and create my own sound.

I also feel that the breakbeats and live drumloops section could have been clearer on the style of the loops. When I look for a loop to fit with my song, I always have a certain style in mind, and therefore look for loops fitting this style. Previewing 106 loops can take quit a bit of time. The breakbeat loops could for example have been categorized by the style (soft, mellow, hard) and the live drums could have been separated in clean live drum loops, and distorted drum loops.

Music loops: The music loops section contains Gate FX, Rhodes, Sax, and Upright bass loops. The latter three types are all also included as NN19 samples.

The 50 Gate FX loops contain a variety of gate patterns applied to different sounds/effects/sweeps. They are all around the 165 BPM and have a length of mainly 2 bars, although there are a few 8 bar loops. The big benefit of these rex loops is that you can quickly use them to include some variation in your songs. Just plug in a Dr Rex, load in a suitable Gate FX loop, tweak some of the parameters on the rex player, and he presto, some variation. This is very useful if you don?t want to create your own sound. Personally I would prefer to have the sounds/effects/sweeps as samples and apply my own gate pattern using the Matrix. Luckily for me, the NN19 sample section does contain some excellent sounds for this (see below).

The Rhodes section contains 62 loops, with a mix of BPMs and bar lengths. The loops contain mainly riffs, and there are some that are very nice. Again, I especially liked the more processed riffs. The quality of the sounds is good and I really like the Rhodes sound. All of the Rhodes loops are also included as single NN19 samples, and to be honest, that format is probably more useful (ie flexible). Most of the Rhodes rex files only contained 1 or 2 slices which means that, especially the 1 slice loops, will not adjust based on the speed of the song.

The Sax loops, which again are also included as NN19 samples, contain some nice and useful loops for the more jazzy D&B. But like with the Rhodes loops, most of them only contain 1 or 2 slices, which in my view makes them almost useless in the rex format. The loops are between 1 and 6 bars in length, and have various BPMs.

The final Dr Rex section contains 56 Upright bass loops. These loops are sliced adequately. All loops are around 165 BPM and contain between 1 and 4 bars. Again, all of these loops are also included as NN19 samples. It?s nice to have the choice. The upright bass loops are cool. Even though the melodies are pre-programmed in the rex loop, there is enough variation to find something for your liking. They are very well suited for jazzy D&B, although they would work in soulfoul house as well. Of the music loops section, this is probably my favorite.

Subtractor (content)

Not to miss out on the subtractor, the refill also contains 40 patches for this wonderful unit. Not enough if you ask me, especially with the quality of some of the patches included. Give me more. The subtractor is my favorite unit because you can tweak the sounds as much as you like. There are patches for bass, fx, pads, and some others.

About half of the 20 bass patches include some very mean bass sounds. There is a good mix between sweeping basses, short bass stabs, and looped basses. Most patches need to be played around the C4 range, but there?s one or two that are too high, and therefore need to be played at around C2. All the bass patches will work really well in D&B, and some of the rougher basses are also very suited for trance and techno. If you are after the killer bass, just layer 2 or 3 of these beauties.

The 5 FX patches are nice, and quit useful for your breaks and intro?s. Combined with some of the FX samples and subtractor pads, they give you enough material to create the right ?atmosphere?.

The pads (all 10 of them) are excellent. Some of them are really spooky and I you could create some nice soundscapes using these pads, some of the FXs, and a gate effect.

The final 5 patches can not really be grouped. Depending on what tone you play them at, you could include them as a bass, fx, or pad. There are 2 oriental sounding instruments, a patch that sounds like a sax, a kazoo (whatever that may be) which sounds like a mix between someone screeming their head off, a skidding car and a detuned radio (top), and a very deep bass. Some of the patches include an echo effect achieved by the subtractor. Its good to see that you can add these effects without needing any of the effects units in Reason.

NN19 (content)

The CD contains a section with a number of NN19 patches, which link to samples included on the CD. The following patches are included:

  • 10 Analog FX
  • 13 Atmosphere
  • 1 Miscellaneous FX
  • 8 Music FX
  • 25 Basses
  • 3 Upright basses
  • 4 Rhodes licks
  • 4 Sax licks
  • 2 Upright licks

Most of the patches contain 1 sample per octave. The Rhodes, Sax, and Upright licks patches contain a sample on every 2 or 3 notes. The benefit of patches in Reason is that you can always create you own, and map your preferred samples on the keyboard. The actual samples included in these patches are located in the ?Other samples? folder in the refill. These samples are reviewed below:

There are 52 mono Analog FX samples of between 1 and 10 s in length. The samples are mainly a mix of deep analog bass sounds, various sweeps, and alarm noises. Although the higher sweeps tend to come across as the dominant type, there are quit a few deep basses as well. I feel that there are enough quality samples here to create some phat D&B.

An important element in most D&B songs is the Atmospheric sounds used during intro?s and breaks. You can either create your own using some of the other shorter samples on the CD, or you can use one of the 13 stereo atmospheres. Each of the samples is about 30 seconds, and because they are stereo are relatively big (around 2 mb). The downside of this is that if you have a slow computer you might not be able to include more then 1 or 2 of these in a song.

If the subtractor patches and analog FX samples did not give you the Bass sound you were looking for, maybe the 28 mono bass samples can help you out. The samples included in this refill are a mix between natural/upright basses, and electronic basses. The basses range from short to long, and are deep to very deep. Some of the processed analog basses are very phat indeed, and could almost come across as hover sounds. Definitely useful stuff for producing the deep and dark variety.

The refill also contains 11 Miscellaneous FX samples in stereo of between 2 and 6 seconds long. These shorter samples are excellent if you want to create your own atmospheres. Add 1 or 2 strings and maybe a few samples from the Music FX section, and I am sure some killer breaks could be the result. Because the quality of the samples included is good, I would have liked it if more of these were included.

Some very nice sounds are included in the Music FX section. It contains 37 stereo samples of between 1 and 30 seconds long. Some of them got the hairs in the back of my neck to stand up. Great for building some chilling/spooky breaks into your tracks. This is one section of samples that I would use a lot.

Finally, the Rhodes, Sax, and Upright bass sections contain the same samples as used in the Dr Rex section. As I said in the review of the Dr Rex loops, I found this NN19 format for the Rhodes and Sax samples more useful then the Rex files because most of them only included 1 or 2 slices. I did expect that the NN19 patches would include a few single note Rhodes and Sax samples, instead of the riffs included here. This is unfortunately not the case, but with the low price of ?30, it is worth investing in some of the other CD?s of AMG that do contain intruments, like the Dirty Ol?Relics CD.

ReDrum (content)

Like with the NN19 patches, the ReDrum kits do not contain samples themselves. They contain links to drum samples (10 per kit max) in the ?Other samples? folder. There are 10 kits, which gives you access to 100 of the 318 included drum samples. Instead of reviewing each of the kits, I have therefore reviewed the individual sample sections. I prefer to setup my own kit using different samples anyway.

The Kicks section includes 71 samples with a good variety of hard and mellow kicks. Some of the samples are too short when you hear them on their own, but wouldn?t cause any problems in a complete loop. There are 5 or 6 kicks that I like very much because they suit my style of music very well.

There are plenty of High hats, and the good thing about the ones included in this refill is that most of them contain an open and closed version. Most of the 50 samples were good, but also, unfortunately, none of them really jumped out at me. But then again, that is very difficult with high hats.

Together with the kick, the choice of snare really makes or breaks your D&B song in my view. This refill therefore comes with 96 good snare samples consisting of basic snares, some rolls, rimshots, and other sounds that can be used as a snare.

It also includes 32 tom samples. Most of the toms are electronic sounding and often come in high and low versions. These samples are useful for creating some fills and variation.

The cymbal?s section includes 38 samples. It includes bells, crashes and rides. The sounds are of good quality, but this section does not contain anything special in my view. You will find similar sounds in any other refill. I did liked the choked crashes that were included.

The final other section contains 31 miscellaneous samples. You can find here some useful samples for including strange sounds and effects in your D&B loops. There are cow bells, claps, FX sounds.

Song templates (content)

The refill contains 5 song templates you can use to build up your songs. Each template contains a short loop of 8 to 16 bars containing a variety of drumloops, sounds and effects. Overall I found the quality of the templates to be good and they show the quality sound you could create with the refill. The problem with templates is that you will recognize them when used in a song, so if you decide to use these templates, I would tweak the sounds and replace some of the drumloops to create your own personal sound. The five templates are:

  • Dark: a hard and dark D&B template based on heavily distorted drums and sweeping FX effects. I like this because it fits my preferred style. I do miss a good, scary and rough baseline though.

  • Jazzy: this template contains easygoing drumloops with one of the upright bass licks. Its ok, but could do with some more instruments, ie a sax.

  • JumpUp: This is a cool, almost hard step, rhythm with some background FX. Together with the hard template, this is my favorite of the 5.

  • Tek: This is a simple template, nothing special really. Standard soft D&B loop combined with some sweeping bass sounds.

  • Trancy: This is almost ambient due to the atmosphere used. Very nice relaxing template, even though my machine has trouble coping with the atmosphere sample (Don?t worry, I am testing this refill on my old/slow laptop Toshiba Tecra 8000, 128 MB, PII400).

The small print (content)

If elements of the refill are used on a commercial project you will need to inform AMG and send them a copy of the final result before it is released. No additional license fees are payable, unless the samples are a major piece of the work. So when creating killer songs, make sure some of the core elements in the song are not from the 160dB refill. The demo/rex files on the CD are not licenced and you can not therefore use these in your commercial projects.

Conclusion (content)

Even though this was the first commercial refill available after the release of Reason more then a year ago, I still think it is a top refill. The most useful elements of the refill in my view are the drumloops, subtractor patches, and some of the NN19 samples. A minus point is that the refill just contained Rhodes and Sax riffs. I had hoped it would include a full Rhodes/Sax instrument as a NN19 sampler patch. Also, the rex loops are all in mono because at the point of release there was no point including stereo rex2 files because they did not exist. So overall, I rate this refill 8 out of 10.