Native Instruments Ethereal Earth for Kontakt 6 is easy-to-use, offers many onboard customizable atmospheric sounds and is made for the players.
With the release of Kontakt 12, Native Instruments also introduced its new Play series. These are very easy-to-use virtual instruments for Kontakt 6 (Player) that are aimed primarily at players/composers less for sound designers. One of them is the Ethereal Earth library, an atmospheric library which offers more than just sampled-based sounds.
Ethereal Earth has a total of 100 ready-to-play atmospheric presets that features ambience, bass, brass, drone, FX, lead, pad, pluck, string, texture, and wind sounds. The presets, on the other hand, are just an example, as there is an engine behind these sounds where you can do more like playing sounds.
Play Series Engine
The library is powered by the Kontakt 6 Play Series engine, which makes sound design much easier and accessible to everyone. With this, you can not only quick edit the factory presets but also design completely new patches. The engine is based on two sound sources or oscillators (A & B) each equipped with 123 sampled sounds.
These are selected with the help of a small menu in each oscillator section where you can easily select your favourite sources. You can find here various ambiences, bass, synth leads, piano, pads, textures and more. Nice is that here you can combine two different sounds as you like. This principle is so simple that everyone understands it, including musicians who have nothing to do with sound design or patch programming.
Macro Controls
In addition to the sound sources, the interface also offers a few simple parameters, a kind of macro controls that summarise a group of parameters that take over the difficult work in the background. With the Blend A / B function it is possible to determine the proportion of the two oscillators. To the left more of A, to the right more of B. It is also a nice feature to quickly revive and change factory sounds.
Then there’s an AR (attack, release) envelope for both sound sources, a filter (cutoff) and several other effects like an echo, grid and more. However, the effects will change depending on which factory preset is selected. Although the sound manipulation parameters are very simplified, they are fun. You can quickly deform the factory presets and with the help of the additional effects per patch, you can quickly customize your own sounds.
One thing is for sure: musicians who have experience with synthesizers or even deeper audio plugins will quickly lose their fun here. As already mentioned before, it is aimed at musicians who want to concentrate on composing and less on sound design.
Conclusion
Native Instruments Ethereal Earth can be called a bread and butter virtual instrument for simple atmospheric sounds as it has beautiful and varied sounds. It is perfect for beginner and experienced musicians who want fast spherical sounds on the keys without spending a lot of time in sound design. This library focuses on the composition less on sound tweaking. However, with the onboard macro controls, sounds can be personalized and perfectly tuned.
Contra
- 49€ price, a bit expensive for a single library with the included content. Also in included in Kontakt 6 and Komplete 12 what is a better deal
Native Instruments Ethereal Earth is available now for 49€ for Kontakt 6 Player. The library is also included in Komplete 12.
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