Artistry Audio Origin X $299 PC MAC

To get your creative muse going, it’s good to have some new sounds to play with, and this debut from Artistry Audio comes packed with them

Origin X is a loop-based sample library for the Native Instruments Kontakt platform and is the first release from developer Artistry Audio. As an NI Kontakt format library you can use it in your own full version of Kontakt (VST, AU, AAX, standalone), or run it in the Kontakt Player which is free to download. Whichever you opt for, Origin X requires Kontakt version 6.4 or later to work.

In the beginning

Origin X is designed to deliver production-ready, beat-driven and melodic sounds that are easy to play, program and manipulate, and a quick spin through the 350 master presets indicates that the 1400 loops (4.5GB) are excellently produced. There are just two versions of the Origin X Kontakt instrument, one of which accesses the above mentioned sample set and a second one which lets users load up to 24 of their own loops.

For the main instrument, Artistry Audio have designed a highly capable Kontakt workspace based around four key panels – Main, Sounds, Effects and Macros. Here you can access one of 350 master (Instrument) presets as well as sub presets that pertain to specific aspects of the instrument (Kits, Sounds, Effects and Macros).

The instrument has a two-part interface that accommodates two layers (Layer 1 and Layer 2), and each layer loads the same set of 12 loops. The 24 total slots (called a Kit) are mapped across the keyboard and each Layer has its own two-stage processing (Sounds and Effects). This creates the potential for two very different sound sets based on the same core samples, and this is precisely what the master presets demonstrate. In addition, presets for Kits (75), Sounds (130) and Effects (100) allow you to move beyond an Instrument preset in a quick and fruitful way.

Digging Deeper