Featured plug-in: Ultimate Sound Bank Ultra Focus

With today's enormous proliferation of virtual instruments, we are all searching for ways to streamline our Digital Performer virtual studio. We're searching for a handful of highly capable instruments that give us a broad sound palette, presented in a compact, simple user interface.

For example, MachFive is the perfect solution for consolidating all of our sample libraries at our fingertips in one window. But what about all of those vintage, classic synths that we wish we could turn into extra cash on eBay - or the ones we wish we had owned but never did? Finally, there is a simple, elegant answer: ultimate Sound Bank's Ultra Focus.

Ultra Focus is a brand new virtual instrument plug-in that delivers all of the synth sounds you have ever loved, in one convenient window, with one of the most advanced preset management systems ever devised. Ultra Focus could be considered a hybrid synth plug-in and sample playback instrument, and it ships with a staggering 8 GB of sounds (!), over 24,000 samples and over 2,000 presets. Make no mistake: this plug-in could be the first and last synth plug-in you ever acquire. The Ultra Focus sound design team carefully and lovingly employed every landmark synth made in the last 30 years to create the most versatile sound palette every assembled in a single instrument. And best of all, you can forget about having to learn a dozen different synths to get the sounds you need: they're all available - in clean elegant fashion - in the Ultra Focus window.

While 24,000 presets may seem daunting, they are clearly organized by sound category (bass, pad, lead, bells, etc.) but also by sythesis technique (classic analog, FM, wavetable, vector, additive, PCM, etc.) So you can quickly find the sound you're looking for.

Lots of programming is provided, including layering, multimode filtering, LFOs, envelopes and so on, so the possibilities for new sounds are endless.

And how does Ultra Focus sound? There's nothing quite like the richness of these sample instruments, delivered by the award-winning UVI Engine. But don't take our word for it. Read this full (rave) review of Ultra Focus at audiomidi.com from industry luminary Mikail Graham, who certainly knows a thing or two about classic synths.

For information on other Ultimate Soundbank virtual insturment products, click here.