IK Multimedia SampleTron Instruments RETAIL-R2R D01: 589 MB D02: 492 MB D03: 358 MB SampleTron is a virtual instrument that combines the authentic recreation of “Tron” sounds such as Mellotrons, Chamberlins, and Optigans with the powerful editing and playback features of the SampleTank engine. No other product allows you to manipulate, process and stretch such gritty, emotional and quirky lo-fi sounds all from within a single powerful and easy to use interface like SampleTron. SampleTron is a virtual instrument made for many styles from hip hop to electronic to classic rock and offers some of the most unique musically useful tones you can imagine. From the nostalgic sounds used by The Beatles, Moody Blues, Genesis, Yes and other rock bands of the 60’s and 70’s to the modern production of artists like Kanye West, Smashing Pumpkins and Beck to new sonic creations now possible only with SampleTron, the sounds in this package are diverse, powerful and inspiring!

SampleTron gives you the sound of the Mellotron and many of its more obscure cousins, not to mention some serious potential for sonic malarkey, courtesey of IK's SampleTank player. It's been a while since its initial announcement, but after a lengthy gestation period IK Multimedia's SampleTron is finally with us. Following relatively hot on the heels of SampleMoog, SampleTron is the second of IK's 'SampleXxxx' plug-in ROMplers dedicated to specific families of classic and vintage keyboard instruments. While SampleMoog was an anthology of Moog synthesizers, SampleTron is, unsurprisingly, an anthology of Mellotrons — or, more accurately, a potted history of tape replay keyboards from the Chamberlins of the 1950s through to the 1975 Mellotron Mk V and the Novatron of the late 1970s.

However, the history lesson doesn't end there — SampleTron also covers other legendary and curious replay instruments from those halcyon pre-sampler days; the Mattel Optigan, Chilton Talentmaker and Vako Orchestron, all of which employed optical disks as their playback medium, and the 360 Systems Digital Keyboard, one of the earliest digital ROMpler keyboards — also known as the 'Digital Tron'. Like SampleMoog, SampleTron's core library is hosted by a customised SampleTank player, this one being adorned with suitably vintage Tron-esque graphical controls. The layout and facilities are essentially the same as SampleMoog's; the SampleMoog review in the May issue of SOS describes these features in detail, so rather than reiterate them at length here, this review will mainly pick up on any operational and feature differences between SampleMoog and SampleTron. Lantek Expert V27 Crackle. For the uninitiated, here is a brief recap of what's on offer: 16 multitimbral Parts with integral Part Mixer, twinned with a library Browser with search facility. Each Part provides a full complement of synthesis parameters: low-pass, high-pass and band-pass filters in six, 12 and 24dB per octave flavours, two LFOs, two AHDSR envelopes, key range controls, velocity sensitivity controls, Macro controls appropriate to the currently loaded instrument, polyphonic and monophonic key modes, and a choice of SampleTank's Resample or Stretch synthesis engines — more on which later. Up to four effects ('wired' in series) are available to each Part, three of which are freely selectable from a total list of 32 types. SampleTron is also configurable to provide up to 16 stereo virtual outputs.

The Beach Life Game. Interestingly, an early promotional PDF flyer for SampleTron from last year shows some subtle variations from the production version. One such variance shows the presence of a Global effects option, a feature subsequently abandoned for some reason, which is a shame, as this would be very useful for the processing of composite sounds spread across two or more Parts.