Applied Acoustics Swatches and AAS Player review

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Hey what’s good fam, hope all is well with ya!

Today I wanted to show off a little player that I’ve been digging over the past few months from AAS

To showcase the concept I’m using their Swatches sound library, so let’s check it out!

So what is Swatches and what is the AAS Player?

swatches_thumbWell, AAS makes a lot of different synthesizers and instruments using musical acoustics technology and modelling.

They have many well known instruments including the Tassman synth and Loung Lizzard EP.

However, what they did with the player is put all the engines from their various instruments into a simple player, which allows you to play sounds made for their various different instruments without actually having to own the instruments themselves.

Now you don’t get any tweaking with the player, it’s a straight up preset player, but the simplicity is what makes it a very powerful tool in my opinion.

You can quickly get access to a ton of different sounds without having to worry about editing or tweaking, just load a play.

The Swatches library is basically a demo collection which contains patches from each of their sound libraries. So it gives you a nice collection of sounds as well as a decent overview of the various libraries they have.

Quick Specs

  • content: 96 presets
  • format: VST and AU
  • price: FREE

How does it sound?

Reel to Reel Tape RecorderThere are some really high quality sounds in the Swatches library, and you can quickly get an idea for the type of quality of the sound libraries they have available.

I’m partial to some of the more ambient and evolving sounds as well as cinimatic soundscapes, but they definitely have some great straight up synth sounds too.

The sounds themselves seem to have a nice “sheen” to them, not so much overly bright but just a really good quality sounds.

Not having a lot of options in the interface forces you to focus more on the sound and being creative, and with this library I find myself using sounds that I may otherwise never have noticed had I not had them in the Swatches collection.

You get everything from soundscapes, to ethnic instruments and even mallet and percussion sounds.

So what’s the bottom line?

I personally own Ultra Analog, String Studio, and their Strum instruments, however I find myself preferring the player and it’s immediate sounds over the full instruments.

I also like that I don’t have to worry about which instrument to load for the sounds or which instrument it comes from, I can just play based on whatever I’m looking for.

4subsI give Swatches 4 out of 5 subs, it sounds great, and I love the concept of the AAS Player and a constantly growing library of great sounds for free

This is the perfect way to really know which of their libraries you would like to own, as well as allowing you to get into the sound of their instruments without having to drop so much cash at once.

I would love to see an EP expansion based on the new Lounge Lizard 4 EP instrument, but other than that, there isn’t really much to fault here for free.

As long as you know what you’re getting into you’ll be happy.  I dig the simplistic concept behind the player and there are some great libraries available, I look forward to checking some out in the future.

Go on over and download it yourself: http://www.applied-acoustics.com/swatches/overview/

Leave a comment below, let me know what you think.

20 Comments

  1. I’ve got their flagship Tassman, which is a huge and wonderful modular synth. I like the AAS sound in general, smooth, well balanced and analogic (if it means something). For those who like modular synthesis, there is some great deal to make for a few days on their site.

    Reply
    • Yeah, I haven’t played with that one specifically, but I dig the sounds I can get from them. I do like the player and library setup, sometimes I don’t feel like tweaking and not having anything to tweak doesn’t tempt me to feel I HAVE to change something…I can just play lol.

      Reply
  2. Michael Parson-McNamara · Edit

    Thanks for this one, Joe! I agree it’s a no brainer type deal! I got it immediately after watching your review. I had bought the EP Session from Cakewalk and upgraded that to the new EP4 which is very nice! Very! I had other priorities on my shopping list for Christmas, but thought hard about going with the Chromaphone and Tassman4. I know I’m gonna get ’em, at some point! Thanks Michael

    Reply
  3. Hey, hope all is good saintjoe

    I downloaded this yesterday and fell in love with it straight away!

    I hadn’t heard of AAS before, but I’ll def. be checking for them in the future.

    I posted your vid up on my blog too, hope that’s ok

    Many thanks and best regards,

    Lee

    Reply

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