Rossignol-Studio has announced that their Harmonéon sound library for Native Instruments Kontakt 5 (full version of Kontakt required for NKI patches, however WAV samples are also included) will be offered as a free download until June 4th this year (€15 standard price).
The library is based on a harmoniflûte, a rare keyboard instrument that is similar to a harmonium. In Rossignol-Studio’s virtual version of the instrument, the keyboard is split into two areas, the left one being used to trigger the samples that sound similar to a harmonica, while the area towards the right sounds like an accordion.
Unlike a vast majority of Kontakt libraries (both free and commercial ones), Rossignol-Studio new Harmonéon library provides the source WAV files along with the NKI patch, so users who don’t own Kontakt can still use the included samples in their sampler of choice (here’s our list of the best freeware samplers). The library comes with one NKI patch and 20 WAV files (16-bit) in total. The instrument was sampled across three and a half octaves, with three samples per octave.
There are no velocity layers or round robins in the pack, but the instrument still sounds convincing and natural enough, considering that it’s such a compact library. Having multiple velocity layers wouldn’t make sense anyway, since the original harmoniflûte instrument isn’t velocity sensitive. Adding a few round robins (or more sampled notes per octave) certainly wouldn’t hurt, but again, I’m quite happy with how the instrument sounds. The samples are looped perfectly and there are no nasty clicks or pops while playing the instrument. The Kontakt instrument provides a choice of three effects (reverb, drive, and a delay with fixed time setting) and volume controls for the left and right keyboard areas.
The library is being offered as a free download until June 4th. To download your free copy of the library, add it to your shopping cart (click the Buy Now) button and complete the checkout procedure. Registering for a user account is completely optional.
Download
Harmonéon is available for free download via Rossignol-Studio (15.6 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 1 NKI patch for NI Kontakt 5, 20 audio samples in 16-bit WAV format).
Last Updated on May 27, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.
