Ambient Keys, Audio Unit and VST plugins

About Ambient Keys

Ambient Keys is a synthesizer which produces dreamy sounds, either beautiful or just strange. Are you using VST plugins or Audio Units and need an organic and beautiful sounding instrument? Then Ambient Keys is one of the plugins you should check out. Lush pads, interesting leads which sound almost organic or wonderful sound effects - these are the type of sounds which you may play using Ambient Keys.

Ambient Keys includes 1024 presets which are divided into 16 groups of 64 presets each. Presets are selected using two drop down menues, one for the group and one for the preset within that group. You can, of course, make your own sounds as well.

The synth is available as a VST plugin for Windows and as an Audio Unit for Mac OS X (compatible with software, such as Logic, Garage Band, Digital Performer etc).

Ambient Keys was tailor made for sounds which sound beautiful or strange but nevertheless good and interesting. They are full of tension and drama and they're suitable for those who are looking for sounds they've never heard before.

Basically the synth follows the same tradition as our popular Space Synthesizer, but unlike the Space Synthesizer which features an evolving wave oscillator, Ambient Keys plays hundreds of ambient waveforms/samples and processes these using the plug-in's powerful synth engine and its advanced effects processor, which has 133 (!!!) different effect modes, including our unique crossfading effects.

Ambient Keys includes a number of electronic drum kits, bass sounds, noise and mechanical sounds etc and not just pads. However, they all have an ambient character. They're different. Not the stuff you're used too.

These sounds are unusual, swirling, fat, lush, fantazy sounds, which sound almost organic. They'll definitely work as a source for inspiration when you need new ideas.

The sound of the filter banks can be adjusted. The effects (except the reverb) may be controlled by an LFO with 7 different waveforms and two variations of each (14 in total). The reverb includes a lowpass filter for realistic damping. In addition, the plug-in has a dedicated ensemble section and a built-in stereo delay.

Sound Examples

Each demo, below, was created using one or more instances of Ambient Keys, as the only instrument. The drums were played by Ambient Keys too. What you hear is what you get. No other plugins were used and there's no processing except Ambient Keys built-in effects.

Symphonic (3.4 MB)
Preset G14-SubGold4 (534 KB)
Preset G8-DistMetal (264 KB)
Preset G10-SubStars4 (392 KB)
Flows (886 KB)
Into the Unknown (4 MB)
Electronica 2 (324 KB)
Preset G5-BandpMagica (350 KB)
Dramatic (444 KB)
Choir plus seq (637 KB)
Techno (kind of) (480 KB)
Acoustic (356 KB)
Preset G1-ResoCycle (244 KB)
Preset G16-AmpPad3 (447 KB)
Preset G14-ResoSynString (640 KB)
Electronica 1 (590 KB)

Presets are organized into groups and they are selected using two drop down menus (one for the group and one for the patch itself). The drop down menus make it easy for you to browse through the patch collection.

Ambient Keys includes 1024 presets. They will last for a long time. Play around with them and when you feel ready, start creating your own sounds. However, the 1024 ambient presets will probably give you more then enough timbres to explore. If you need inspiration, then try some of the presets and you'll see that you'll get lots of musical ideas pretty soon.

The plug-in features an easy-to-use "learn mode" to support MIDI controllers. That makes it easy for you to, say, draw a waveform in your sequencer and then let it control any of the knobs. Or hook up an external MIDI controller and control the plug-in with it. Ambient Keys responds to the MIDI damp/foot controller.

Each voice has its own resonant filter, which can be controlled by an envelope or with velocity. You may adjust the waveform pitch and there's a traditional amp envelope there too. A manual (PDF) is included.

Technical Details

Powerful sample/waveform based synthesizer.
1024 presets.
Effects section with 133 different effect modes.
Effects include filter banks, resonator, distortion etc.
Crossfading effects and layered effects.
Effects may be controlled by an LFO.
LFO with 7x2 different waveforms.
Ensemble section.
Stereo delay.
No fixed number of voices.
Easy mapping, knobs to MIDI controllers.
Each voice has its own warm resonant filter.
Filter controlled by envelope or with velocity.
And much more...

The effect section was tailor made for ambient sounds, featuring a large set of filter banks, a resonator, flanger, reverb, pitch shift, a sub oscillator, amplitude modulation, distortion, plus layered and crossfading versions of these effects.

Crossfading effects means that Ambient Keys can alternate between effects. That opens up for a new range of interesting sounds.

The number of voices that you'll get from the plugins voice allocator is only dependant on the power of your CPU. However we have introduced a feature in Ambient Keys which allows you to set a voice limit, for example maximum 8 or 16 voices or any number.

You may download a demo here, but the demo contains only 5 presets and 5 samples. And it has a 3 minute limitation. All these restrictions are of course removed when you buy and download the full version.

Click here to read the manual in PDF format.

SWREG is the online merchant we cooperate with to sell the software. SWREG has been around since 1987 and is one of the most trusty merchants on the Internet.

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