Masterbits Eurosphere

These days, sound archives on CD are irreplaceable in the post-production world. For one thing, the capacity is seemingly inexhaustible (a real advantage over samplers). For another, access  has been much simplified. Hagü Schmitz introducers Eurosphere from Masterbits:

With the help of modern CD player systems, it is possible to start single sounds by their time codes. People working in post-production will surely know the difficulty with most CD Libraries: typical sounds like police and ambulance sirens or the atmosphere of Oktoberfest simply arent´t offered. The reason is that most of these sound archives are recorded in the USA or England. Partly, these are extended with sounds from the archives of the German National Radio Institute, but these are a bit outdated in some cases.

With Eurosphere, Masterbits presents a new CD Sound Archive almost two years in production, focusing on the "German-speaking world."

Overview of the Library

The first issue of the Eurosphere Sound Library comprises ten CDs, groupes by theme. The contents of the entire collection is documented in a catalog, listed by track and index numbers as well as alphabetically.

CD 1 (short atmosphers, sample) contains diverse short sounds such as cars, motorcycles, soccer, applause, stadium, footsteps and household sounds.

CD 2 is entitled City Sounds, and it is here one finds sounds from fish market, market, harbor, airport, train station, garbage collection, church, subway or railway.

CD 3 delivers diverse outdoors atmospheres, such as birds, horse racing, Oktoberfest, fireworks, beach and swimming pool.

Traffic Sounds were devided between two CDs, CD 4 and 8. Available are different sounds from pedestrians to intersections, including main streets, country road and highways, and in various seasons.

Construction and Industrial Sounds (road work, container port, mechanic and factory) are heard on CD 5.

The sounds of "people inside" and "people outside" were similarly split onto two CDs, numbers 6 and 7. The palette stretches from the soccer stadium, garden cafe, street fair, town square, house fire, via a pub, to a super-market, department store, cafe, restaurant, or to a concert hall.

To add a soundtrack to that latest home movie look to CD 9, with collected rural sounds from the summer meadow, barnyard, thunderstorm, barge, train, harvester, and naturally the varoious animal sounds,

Finally, CD 10 contains the longer atmospheres (up to almost 10 minutes) such as rain, wind, city, New Years´s Eve, factory, as well as a demo recording made from all the possible sounds from the Eursphere Archive.

Sound Quality

The tone quality of the Eurosphere Library is very good. The collected sounds were digitally recorded (most recordings are in stereo) in keeping with the surrent standard, something which cannot be said about all the sound archives on the market.

Completeness

The production of a completely new sound library is surely a difficult task. After all, there is a vast number of different sounds used relatively often for film or video sound tracks. There are still a few gaps to be found in the first issue of Eurosphere. For example, there are no ringing telephones, but there are almost 40 different tracks devoted to "footsteps on different surfaces."

According to Masterbits, further CDs are already in production, eventually filling in the sound palette.

Conclusion

With Eurosphere, Masterbits closes a gap in the CD Sound Archive market, and it is welcome that a producer has taken on this very labor intensive task. Measured by the prices of other sound archives, the price of DM 1.298 for the whole Library (10 CDs) is more than correct. As previously mentioned, there are certain sounds missing here and there in this new entry to the field. However, the importance of this shouldn´t be overrated at this stage of development.

If the following CDs in the Eurosphere series continue the care in production begun in this first release, this sound archive sould become a standard work in the post-production field.

Hagü Schmitz

back to "EUROsPHERE"

© 1996/97  MASTERBITS GERMANY