EastWest / RA

$199.00

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Description

EastWest/Quantum Leap RA provides composers with access to a variety of rare and unique instruments from Africa, Europe, India, the Americas and Australia, the Far East, and the Middle East and Turkish Empires. Musicians will find that RA has an amazing sound quality and they’ll marvel at the articulation of each instrument which has a wide range that goes from controlled to expressive. All of the instruments and ensembles featured in the collection were sampled extensively as a means of preserving the true character and expression of each instrument. For the first time, users will have more control over the sounds offered in the collection along with the ability to load even more instruments than ever before.

In addition to PLAY’s intuitive custom interface, EastWest/Quantum Leap RA – PLAY Edition includes many other features, such as:

  • 64-bit (for 32-bit compatibility, please use PLAY 4)
  • Intelligent performance section including portamento, repetition, legato
  • Features round robin reset
  • Offers improved articulation window and controls
  • State-of-the-art convolution reverb with pre-delay
  • Improved micro-tuning
  • Improved sound quality with high-resolution audio engine
  • Hi-fidelity one pole filter for natural cross-fades
  • Stereo image editing is now possible using channel sourcing
  • The instruments featured in the PLAY Editions are newly-programmed for PLAY from the original recordings

In ancient Egypt, RA was regarded as the creator of everything, the god of the sun. RA is usually represented with the body of a man and the head of a hawk, holding an ankh & sceptre. The chief location of RA worship was Heliopolis (a Greek word meaning city of the sun). RA is an appropriate name for the largest, and most comprehensive rare and ethnic virtual instrument ever made.

RA was born a few years ago, as a sample library called “Rare Instruments.” All of the sounds from Rare Instruments are included in RA, but this only represents approximately one-tenth of the content. The other ninety percent of RA was recorded at a top studio in Hollywood. We spent time hunting down the best ethnic artists on the West Coast. Los Angeles is so ethnically diverse and blessed with excellent institutions like Cal Arts, it is actually the ideal place to record a rare and ethnic collection.

You will find RA has amazing sound quality. RA was captured with a phase accurate 8-mic setup that gives a complete 3 dimensional image of the instrument. It is this type of sound that takes to artificial or sampled reverb extremely well. The sound is clear and broad. Mics used were Neumann U67 (U47s as alternates), Neuman M50, AKG C12 and Shoepps.

Another cool aspect of this virtual instrument is the fact that we recorded ethnic ensembles. This was done with African drums, bagpipes, gamelan and a Middle Eastern string section. The sound of these ensembles cannot be realistically simulated by layering solo instruments.

RA was a very expensive project, but well worth the cost. A lot of thought went into selecting instruments that would appeal to composers of all types, from dance music, to film. You might want to put the middle eastern string section in your next pop tune, or the hardanger fiddle in a sweeping romantic score ala Lord Of The Rings.

 

Additional information

Weight 1 kg