Spitfire Audio releases Albion One

Spitfire Audio is proud to announce availability of ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION — effectively celebrating its tenth year in business by refreshing and rebadging its ALBION ONE epic composer toolkit flagship as an updated edition, expanded beyond the British music technology company’s relatively recent ‘ONE’ re-recordings of its initial ALBION ‘legacy’ sample library release thanks to a new UI (User Interface) design, NKSTM (NATIVE KONTROL STANDARD) support, 15 new Albion Orchestra patches, punchier mixes of Darwin Percussion, plus 63 new Stephenson’s Steam Band sounds and 67 presets personally created by Spitfire Audio co-founder and composer Christian Henson himself alongside 78 new Brunel Loops recordings across 8th, 16th, and 12th rhythmic pattern.

ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION encompasses everything needed to make music for film. A 109-piece orchestra accompanied by a thunderous cinematic percussion section beats at its musical heart. Helped along still further with warp-able Brunel Loops designed by award-winning music makers — including plentiful presets from Spitfire Audio co-founder and composer Christian Henson himself, plus Stephenson’s Steam Band — a unique and dynamic orchestral synth section also housed within Spitfire Audio’s fully tweak-able eDNA (electronic DNA) engine, it is little wonder that ALBION ONE established itself as Spitfire Audio’s most renowned orchestral sample library like nobody’s business! But because the original ALBION concept was so simple — squeezing everything needed to score a film into a single, unified product — perhaps this should come as little surprise.

Since a large orchestra is at the compositional core of most film scores, Spitfire Audio set about capturing something special to place at ALBION ONE’s musical heart. Collectively convinced that in order to create a first-rate film-scoring tool they should go to where the best film scores are recorded, London’s legendary AIR Studios founded by Beatles-producing genius George Martin more than made the grade. Indeed, its Lyndhurst Hall has been the recording room of choice for Hollywood directors for decades, with notable scores to countless blockbusters being recorded there, including Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar, Danny Elfman’s Justice League, as well as the Harry Potter phenomenon, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Lord Of The Rings, and many more besides. Spitfire Audio’s own ALBION ONE orchestra was recorded by award-winning engineers using rarefied microphones through Neve ‘Montserrat’ preamps, the world’s largest Neve 88R large-format console, and onto pristine two-inch tape before being converted with top-of-their-class Prism A/D (analogue-to-digital) convertors at 96 kHz — no expense spared to capture everything exactly as it would be for the movies.

Musicality and technicality, of course, go hand in hand. Having assembled 109 of London’s finest players already well versed in Oscar-winning film score sessions and major global concert performances, Spitfire Audio’s ALBION ONE production team then captured them performing a range of techniques — long notes, short notes, tremolos, pizzicatos, and so on — across a range of notes, and also by section (Brass Low, Mid, and High; Woods High and Low; and Strings) to ultimately provide its users with the flexibility to program or perform their own orchestral compositions with an abundance of control options. As such, Spitfire Audio’s acclaimed ‘legato articulations’ (which combine adjoining samples to magnify musicality) and ‘runs’ (where a single note triggers the recording of a section playing phrases) play an integral part in making ALBION ONE sound so realistic. Furthermore, four mic positions — C (close), T (tree), O (outriggers), and A (ambient) — are available to load and mix to suit the type of music being composed and the scale that the composer wants to achieve. Spitfire Audio also provides an ‘ostinatum’ designer to allow adventurous users to instantly create exciting, tense, or action-packed passages.

Percussive, rhythmical accompaniment also adds to most films scores, so, similarly, ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION encompasses everything needed to build a scoring backbone with its Darwin Percussion section spanning gentle undertones to full-scale mega hits. Hi sticks to low taikos and toms, plus newly-added, supercharged Easter Island hits — some in sections, some solo with a dash of blockbuster-style hyped percussion thrown in for good measure — are all recorded at AIR Lyndhurst Hall, with engineer extraordinaire Jake Jackson’s magical mixes packing a perfect punch.

Percussive enhancement of an altogether different kind continues courtesy of Brunel Loops, a module based on Spitfire Audio’s eDNA engine. Having captured hundreds of raw and warped loops from original recordings made at Spitfire Audio’s own studio facility, featuring percussive heavy-hitter Paul Clarvis (Spectre, The Dark Knight, Star Wars, Harry Potter) playing a collection of unrecognisable relics, it is the perfect tool for sound-mangling mayhem. More meaningfully, Brunel Loops allows two input sources to be warped, sequenced, effected, and blended. And all in sync. So the possibilities for creating unique and distinctive loops are almost boundless. Better still, Stephenson’s Steam Band takes ALBION ONE’s orchestral material and pushes, pulls, stretches, and squishes it beyond recognition using everything from priceless vintage outboard to cheap guitar pedal processing — perfectly bridging the electronic and orchestral realms as an easy-to-use, go-to tool for creating unparalleled pads and extraordinary effects.

What better way to celebrate Spitfire Audio’s tenth year in business as a British music technology company producing high-quality virtual instruments and sample libraries, then, than with ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. Perfect for first-timers and established composers alike, this industry-standard product is the perfect place to start a film scoring journey to glory. Getting there clearly could not be more musically adventurous, as Spitfire Audio co- founder and composer Paul Thomson testifies: “Everything you need to write epic film music in one box — from roaringly loud to really subtle and quiet.”

ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION can be purchased and digitally downloaded (as 87.3 GB of uncompressed .WAV files, featuring 47,233 samples) for a time-limited introductory promo price of £299.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$349.00 USD/€349.00 EUR (inc. VAT) until January 11, 2018 — rising thereafter to an MSRP of £399.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$449.00 USD/€449.00 EUR (inc. VAT) — from here:
Spitfire Audio – Albion One
(Existing ALBION ONE owners automatically receive ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION for free while ALBION ‘legacy’ owners can cross-grade now for £99.00 GBP/$99.00 USD/€99.00 EUR.)

ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION needs Native Instruments’ free KONTAKT PLAYER (5.6.8) — included in the purchase — to run as a fully NKSTM (NATIVE KONTROL STANDARD) supporting plug-in instrument for Mac (OS X 10.10, 10.11, or macOS 10.12 — latest update) or Windows (7, 8, or 10 — latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit), while Spitfire Audio’s free Download Manager application allows anyone to buy now and download anytime.

For more in-depth information, including several superb-sounding audio demos, please visit the dedicated ALBION ONE 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION webpage here:
Spitfire Audio – Albion One