Native Instruments Arkhis Review - Complex Orchestral Textures

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Arkhis is a new collaboration project between Orchestral Tools and Native Instruments. The main theme of this library is modern cinematic scoring. The engine of Arkhis makes it incredibly easy to create complex cinematic atmospheres with orchestral samples.

Some of the samples have been taken from various Orchestral Tools libraries and some have been curated specifically for Arkhis.

Layers of sound

The secret to the powerful sounds that can be achieved with this library lies in the clever layer engine. In the main interface of Arkhis you are presented with three different layers that can be individually filled with sounds.

There are 90 source sounds to choose from that are organized into the following categories:

String Orchestra, String Ensemble, Brass Orchestra, Brass Ensemble, Chamber Strings, Solo Strings, Woodwinds, Vox, Harps, Waterphone, Dulcimer, Orchestrations, Guitar Ensemble, Hang Drum, Mandolin Ensemble, Tonal Wood Ensemble

Some of these do have more sounds than others. As you can imagine, there are tons of possible combinations with the three layers. You can also choose one of the many presets to get started.

Really nice is that you have a lot of control over these sounds while playing. All you need to do is move your mod wheel. At the lowest position you will only hear the first layer, by moving the mod wheel closer to the middle you can dial in the second layer and if you raise the mod wheel all the way to the top, you get a combination of all three layers.

Smooth and easy

The interface of Arkhis looks really nice and modern and is refreshingly simple at the same time. There are not too many confusing knobs and buttons on the screen, but you can always go deeper into the different menus to further shape the sounds to your liking.

You get the usual AHDSR envelope, volume and pitch controls and a good selection of different effects like distortion, flanger, chorus, delay and a convolution reverb.

These effects can be applied to each layer individually. This is great because it allows you, for example, to add some distortion only to the top layer, to bring in some intensity, when moving up the mod wheel.

Final thoughts

Orchestral Tools have always made high quality sample libraries and this collaboration with Native Instruments has really paid off.

It's super easy to create stunningly beautiful and complex textures with the three different layers and the control with the mod wheel works really well in practice.

What's most surprising is the low price, considering how much content you are getting here. I think this is a really valuable tool for most composers and it would be pretty difficult to create these kind of textures by yourself. It might be possible to do that but Arkhis can save you a lot of time and simply delivers what it promises with ease.

Positive:

+ Easy to create incredible soundscapes

+ Great for underscoring and building atmospheres

+ Three different layers allow for complex sounds

+ Interface is very smooth and easy to use

+ Nice control over the sounds with the mod wheel

Negative:

- Not really suited for melodic lines, but that's not the point of this library

Arkhis size: 12 GB

Current price: 199 $

You can get Arkhis here: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/cinematic/arkhis/

Also check out the official walkthrough.


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