Sonic Forest by Impact Soundworks – a truly unique instrument that takes humble mallet & bowed timbres, and turns them into evolving electroacoustic textures with a custom granular ‘forest’ engine. Even non-sound designers will enjoy the evocative UI allowing you to morph, alter, and grow the forest with infinite possibilities. 25% of sales will be donated to charity!
$20.00
The Sonic Forest includes a stunning UI that is meant to inspire your music. The serene imagery in the center of the interface gradually changes as you change evocative controls like “Flood”, “Shade”, and “Grow”, providing feedback for how the sound is being affected. This center area is the heart of the granular ‘forest’ engine. As you play with the various articulations, pressing the Plant button captures the last played sample and stretches it across the keyboard. Then, as the Grow knob is increased, the granular forest effect is introduced. The Volume knob can be turned down completely to leave only the beautiful, evolving forest sound in its place. The evolving granular sound is shaped and altered using the rest of the knobs in the center of the UI. For instance, Blossom adds grains that are pitched up to 2 octaves above the original sound. Flood washes out the forest with lush, purely wet convolution reverb. Tangle increases the speed and intensity of the granulation effect, and Wither puts a gradual envelope on the sound to fade it out over time. The sound design possibilities with this forest engine are endless! In addition to the granular engine, the Sonic Forest also includes an array of useful features like an arpeggiator and sequencer, microtuning, and 6-module FX rack (which can be used on both the source articulations AND the forest.)
FULL version of Kontakt version 5.3.1 or higher. The free version (Kontakt Player) is not supported.
“I love when companies do this quirky experimental instruments, it breaks up to standard sounds and ideas we are used to and sparks your imagination in a new direction. I dig the interface a lot, it’s simple but useful, and actually powerful in terms of all that you can do do the sound. I say just go grab a copy, seriously, it’s 20 bucks and well worth more in my opinion.”
“Sonic Forest would be a good addition to any ethnic or world collection. Factor in the stunning granular engine, the giveaway price of $20 (25 percent of which is donated to charity) and I can’t think of one reason not to snap it up!.”
“Today I found something very special. A library that is extremely creative, well-designed, affordable, and even for good cause. I’m talking about “Sonic Forest” by Impact Soundworks. This library is based on a one it’s a kind instrument, sampled with a lot of depth and precision to create a unique sound, but beyond that Sonic Forest has a lot more to offer.”
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vinyl rake (verified owner) –
this is a really fun instrument, easy to use, and the unique interface encourages creativity. with the right tweaking it can produce some really dense arpeggiated patterns – but I’ve just started using it, I am sure there’s a lot more to discover. Unless you load your own sample(s) it’s not really a general purpose sound design tool, but within the palettes of supplied samples it does what it does really really well. A lot of virtual instruments sound great in their demo audio/video samples but then when I actually try them it’s really difficult to make the instrument sound anywhere near as good as it’s promo video, but Sonic Forest sounds great ‘out of the box’. (the only improvement I can think of would be that it would be really nice if the sample bank could store more than one user uploaded sample at a time)
Fabio P. (verified owner) –
I really like this product.