Good Ethnic Instrument Plug Ins?

hi, apple's own world jam pack has some of what you are after.
decent quality as well.
AFAIK, there are no dedicated middle eastern VI's.
pity, because that culture and it's musical heritage are extremely interesting.
maybe Bin Laden should have got his point across via music rather than violence.
best, david r.

I'm looking for a good set of "ethnic" sounds too. he Moyu Ethnic looks good. There is also

http://www.soundsonline.com/product.php?productid=EW-163

but at twice the price

Twice the price and sounds twice as good.

Next shopping trip... 🙂

Thanks guys.

Hi,

I use BFD's Percussion expansion pack and there are more ethnic percussion instruments on there than meets the eye. To use that, however, you also need BFD's base software as well which gives you some real nice drum sounds as well.

In fact they have a couple of amazing derbakeh's in there 🙂

R

A similar conversation took place as a side tangent in another thread a while back in regards to good ethnic sounds. From that thread, MOTU's Ethno instrument was given some poor reviews just because the quality and number of sounds really isn't there. Good price, but you get what you pay for.

I'd go East/West any day of the week. That stuff is amazing and definitely worth the price. I don't have their ethnic pack yet, but it's next on my list. Everything else I have from them is impeccable.

....East West Ra, Yellowtools Culture.....
-A

Ra sounds way more than twice as good as Ethno. Ethno is pretty, and fun to play with, but the sounds are really not that great. Ra sounds frankly stunning... they're not even in the same ballpark. The extra cost is well worth worth it.

East West's RA for sure.

Although it has a few percussion instruments, that is not it's focus... at all.

It's mostly the melodic type instruments, from various regions of the globe, neatly organized by continent (and/or geographic location).

Considering I spent 1000 dollars on it when it first came out, that 595 price tag seems like a steal...

If you have one paying project that could benefit from these types of samples, it will more than pay for itself.

I'd go East/West any day of the week. That stuff is
amazing and definitely worth the price. I don't have
their ethnic pack yet, but it's next on my list.
Everything else I have from them is impeccable.

The reason I don't like East/West is because of Kompakt/Kontakt player. I've seen they've created their own player (cleverly named "Play"). Does anyone have any experince with thier new player? The Kompakt era seemed like a huge head ache full compatibilty issues and NI problems.

MBP 2.16 LP7.2.3 RME FF800 Mac OS X (10.4.9) RMX Reaktor 5.1.2 Reason 3.0.5 Live 5.2 Battery 3.0.1 Recycle 2.1 DFH

Haven't used their new player "Play" yet. I actually like the East/West stuff because of the use of Kontakt. I haven't had any issues when using the East/West stuff with the NI stuff at all. To each their own, though.

I'm going to second David's suggestion. I love the World Jam Pack. It may not be the best out there, but if the 'ethnic' instruments are only for accent and the focus, then the Jam Pack is more than up to the task.

X

You're using Kontakt, not Kompakt? Kompakt is the player that all East/West uses.

Is there a Kompakt UB? No problems on the MBP?

Hey Smurf,

Correct, I am using Kontakt 2 for all of my East/West samples. I'm not certain on whether or not there is a UB for the Kompakt player but I don't think that there is. Once I got Kontakt, I never looked back at the packaged players 😉