Hover by Ohm Lab
They're back! And they've done it again. Today we dig into the recently released Hover sample pack collection of drones and textures from the ModeAudio gang!
Can we just say Holy wow, Batman! THIS is a great collection of sounds. And by this, we mean the new Hover sample pack of drones and textures from the ever-so-awesome crew at ModeAudio. Yeah, it really is that good.
Where to start?! We have been touting the brilliance, passion and dedication of ModeAudio for a while now and it's releases like Hover that remind us why. Crisp and character-rich textures alongside deep and immersive drones is such a great combination to sit down to in the studio. There was never a doubt that the sounds would be good. It's just that each and every one of these sounds is not only unique, but relevant and useful, too. As a company that produces a lot of deep and immersive music, soundscapes and sound beds for the film and gaming industries, we knew right away that these samples would find their way into some pretty great tracks.
There are 100 samples featured in the Hover collection and we didn't find a single one that sucked. Not even a little. They have them categorized in Ambiences, Bass Drones, Guitar Drones, Metallic Drones & Textures, Noise Drones & Textures and Synth Drones. Some are deep and subtle, while others are harsh and in-your-face. All of them held up really well to aggressive EQ processing, time stretching, layering, slicing & merging, etc without any hang-ups. I think we say that about all of ModeAudio's samples though
We absolutely loved the hidden and/or obscured elements in each of the sounds that can be highlighted through some clever EQ and compression work. In fact, we were so drawn into certain frequency ranges in several of the sounds that we decided to just make a dark soundscape featuring 10 of the samples in the Hover collection, using just reverb, EQ, compression and a touch of sample delay here-and-there. No samplers were touched. Everything was arranged inside of Logic Pro X, set to 80bpm and was exported without any mastering.
[Listen to the demo on the original review page here]We've loved a lot of what ModeAudio has sent our way, but this may be the favorite at this point. Of course, this could very well change next week when they release something new, but for now it's the forerunner.
We noticed a few details worth mentioning before we wrap up this review. These are definitely sounds that you want to process as you go, as they are presented in a fairly raw state, with much of the low-end presence intact. Using a Hi-Pass/Low-Cut on all of the sounds (To varying degrees, of course.) is a good idea to help you proactively combat muddiness before it occurs. And just because you don't want all of the low frequencies in all of your sounds, does not mean you want to straight-up ignore what's down there. There are some pretty stellar textures and noise happening in some unexpected places. So you may want to try your hand at isolating some of those and working them into an atmospheric sound bed that can be used to help make your music deeper and more immersive. These sounds love reverb. Multi-band compression may be more preferable than the traditional route. And many of the samples in the Hover collection reacted beautifully to using nested reverbs and both serial and parallel compression in tandem. Just a few tips to help you get the most out of these sounds!