Review: Isobelle Austin Cello for Kontakt by Inlet Audio

Inlet Audio is an emerging developer of tools for composers. With Isobelle Austin – Cello Collection 1 – Foundation they have their first product on offer. And this is far from your vanilla solo cello library. Can they make themselves stand out with their very first library?

“Isobelle’s Cello Collection 1 creates a modern scoring sound, blending traditional orchestration with contemporary electronics and morphing, musical sound-design-driven textures, and built-in creative sound manipulation effects. Isobelle’s Cello Collection 1 features and utilizes musical gestures, breaking the boundaries of performable sounds with endless possibilities […]”

Inlet Audio

Dancing About Music

When writing about music we face a conundrum. However much I describe to you how this library sounds; it will only give you a faint idea at best. You may have a pretty good idea of what a solo cello sounds like in its different registers, volumes, and with different articulations. Maybe you can even bring the sound of certain musicians before your inner ear. But can you imagine what circular bowing morphing into left-hand pizzicato sounds like with a low-frequency oscillator on it?

Only four people will answer this with yes. All of them being the creators of the library.

You know the old adage that writing about music is like dancing about architecture? I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but trying to write about music sure feels like it. Regarding the Isobelle Austin Cello, luckily, there is a simple solution for that. I recommend that you head over to Inlet Audio’s website and listen to the demos before reading on…

The Library – A Tool for Sound Design

Now that you hopefully have listened to a handful of demos, let me explain what you just heard. The Isobelle Austin Cello Collection 1 features recordings of a solo cello – bonus points to you if you guess the name of the artist – featuring 20 different playing techniques. They include the more exotic variations of the standard articulations, like flautando, minor and major trills, or tremolo without vibrato. As well as truly non-standard articulations, like paper clip, left-hand tremolo pizzicato, and circular bowing harmonics.

You won’t find the most common playing techniques of the cello, making it clear that this is a tool for sound design, not for emulating a solo cello. At least not outside of avant-garde music using a narrow set of special articulations.

You can find the full list of included articulations on Inlet Audio’s homepage. You can also download the user manual there, even before buying the library.

The included samples provide the background for your sound design. The core element in the graphical user interface is an x/y-pad, where you can morph seamlessly between up to four articulations. You can also load your own wave files here, unlocking even more creative potential. Automating the x/y-pad works via cc1 and cc12. Assigning controller numbers of your own choice is simple enough: right-clicking enables midi-learn.

Next, you can process these sounds with 7 other modules:

• Spaces – blend with another x/y-pad between up to four different reverbs.
• EQ
• Saturation
• Filter – cutoff and resonance.
• Pitch – shift the pitch up to three octaves up or down.
• Envelope
• Low-Frequency Oscillator

All of the parameters are automatable, and these modules will affect all of the sounds loaded in the central x/y-pad.

Double-clicking on one of the articulations that you have loaded will bring you to a secondary page. Here you can mangle the articulations individually. Changes made here will only apply to the one sound that you selected, not the other three in the x/y-pad. Apart from the modules mentioned above, here you also get a granular engine, spread, rotate, and pan.

Isobelle Austin Cello Collection 1 needs 10 GB of disk space (15 GB during installation), and it runs in the full version of Kontakt 6.4.2 or above. It costs $159 at full price. At the time of writing, it can be bought with 40% off at $95. 

Playing with the Samples

With Isobelle Austin’s name in the title of the library, you’d be forgiven to think that this is a straightforward solo cello library.

It is not.

The library wants you to play with the samples not like a performer, but like a sound designer. Morphing them into each other, and distorting them with filters and EQs. Isobelle’s musicianship provides the foundation for your explorations in sound design. The other half of the library contains the tools you get to create new sounds with them.

Some of the modules have been mentioned above. They are good sound design tools that are easy to get into. On the other hand, the selection is somewhat basic without any real surprises or genuinely original features. If you are an experienced sound designer, you’ll probably want to use the samples with your own selection of tools. Which you can do, as the samples are not locked. A nice move by Inlet Audio. In that case, you’d be using only the sample content, without the features of the plugin.

The reverse is also possible. If you are new to sound design, loading your own sounds and experimenting with the easy-to-use tools in the player is a quick way to get you started. The presets, however, will not assist you in this. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity. Presets could easily have shown some of the potential of the sound design modules. Instead, they are all set to a neutral position, with only the loaded articulations changing. Fortunately, experimenting with the parameters is fun and easy to do, and the manual explains what each module is doing.

With this library, you can definitely get textures and sounds for a modern scoring sound. Much is possible, from unusual cello articulations to otherworldly drones to high-pitched bleeps. Loading your own recordings and processing them with the built-in modules opens up even more potential. The main appeal of this library is definitely the collection of pristine samples it comes with, and the accessibility of the effects, even for beginners.

The name ‘Cello Collection 1 – Foundations’ implies that more is to come, perhaps even in collaboration with the same artist. Given the beauty of the samples in this library, that’s an exciting prospect.

Find out more about Isobelle Austin Cello for Kontakt