Sound Burst

In general:

Ethnosphere is very easy to install. I love that about it. Drag drop done. Most of the instruments sound real and the quality of the recordings is high. Its intention is to allow the user to inject a little ethnic flavour into their songs. It is not trying to be the king of virtual ethnic instruments. This job (adding ethnic flavour) it does admirably.

There are a few complaints. The first is the volume: turn it up! At the highest volume level, the meters don't even go halfway. The second is the number of instruments that are a single sample. With some it sounds fine; I don't mind. But with others it sounds terrible. The third one is the loops. I LIKE the loops. Many of them are excellent. BUT... they just don't work in this instrument. What's the tempo? Who knows? Can I beat slice them? No. And since they're spread across the keyboard you can get other unknown tempos along with obviously pitch-shifted percussion. The loops are almost useful, but not quite. Give them to us as WAV files and they'd be excellent. Finally there are a few glitches, but I'm trusting that they can be repaired.

The user interface is nice enough. The sound varies from very good to very bad - mostly good, though. Features are limited, but unnecessary. Documentation is not needed. There are many presets, some good and others... not so good. Customer support seemed good to begin with, but when I sent them my review and listed the patches that have bad sample sets, they just ignored it. Value for money is pretty high, but I'd have to say now that the Plugsound modules do it better - if only they had a specific ethnic module. Stability is excellent, though - I haven't had any problems at all.Read Review

I have Sampletank, and also some cracking soundfonts (many way better than Sonic Synth sounds). Was this the answer for occasional soundfont use?

Interface:
A bit amateurish looking. Irritatingly only 1 sound name is displayed on screen rather than a list, and a rotary knob (what is it with VST programmers that standard scroll bars are not used?) "scrolls" through the available sounds. Does however allow you to adjust the pitchbend range. It usefully lets you know when a sound is loaded and ready to play - other VST programmers please note!

Sound:
Free sounds are very poor quality and do not begin to compare to Sampletank's. Sample Farm even tells you: the free sounds are rubbish, but you get what you pay for - hardly an inducement to upgrade! You can only load very small soundfonts, you can't even try any good soundfonts you might have.

Features: could do with being multitimbral. As far as I can see you have to open multiple instances - I couldn't get this to work in Cubasis. No effects.

Sounds: few low quality soundfonts. But if you upgrade there are plenty of higher quality ones on offer. The low memory limit is far too inhibiting - why would anybody prefer this to Sampletank?

VFM - it's free.

Stability - it did what it said on the tin.

The programmers could learn from Sampletank/SS, who give you a few really great presets, and have you looking for more. I was generally underwhelmed with Samplefarm, and have uninstalled Samplefarm free. For playing my soundfonts I will stick with Jeskola XS-1, despite its minor problems relating to forgetting presets. It sounds better, is multitimbral (4), allows layering, and has a useful reverb, chorus, portamento, and a (rather crunchy) distortion. Worth the $50.Read Review