SonicBoomBox
Company: UltimateSoundBank
Price: $99.00
http://www.usbsounds.com
Like many great products that Apple has created, GarageBand has made almost a whole industry of support products. The sheer number of which is amazing considering that GarageBand has not even been around for an entire year yet. I suppose this is somewhat misleading since the format in which loops for GarageBand are made have actually been around for awhile in other Apple products like SoundTrack, but to give the devil his due, it wasn’t until iLife 04 and GarageBand was released that much attention was given to it by the mainstream press and software makers.
Apple has made three add-on Jam Packs with more (over 2000 per Jam Pack) loops and more Software Instruments. Each Pack is also around $100. What if I could offer you twice as many loops and over 200 Software Instruments for the same price? Well, I can’t. But UltimateSoundBank (henceforth referred to as USB) can and with the release of SonicBoomBox they have. But not everything is peaches and cream here.
The package comes on a single DVD that also has it’s own installation program. No need to start up GarageBand and index the files by dragging and dropping from the disk, the install program does it for you (Just don’t have GB running while installing). Once it’s done doing it’s thing, fire up GarageBand to use the loops and Software Instruments right away. This also means that if some sub-section of this package is unwanted (maybe you don’t want banjos or harmonicas), too bad for you. It’s ALL going in there whether you like it or not. Yep, all 4 gigabytes of it.
As far as the loops go, there are some really nice ones here, but oddly enough there is also some major duplication as well. While going through the tracks, I noticed that some of the acoustic guitar loops seem to repeat themselves just in different octaves. Since this can be done with almost any loop from within the GarageBand program, I fail to see the point of including them. Of course USB writes loops for other software (like ACID) as well so maybe the duplication of effort has more to do with the fact that these loops were probably pulled from some (or all) of their other collections.
Also, more than half of the loops seemed to be rhythm or drum tracks. I like drums as much as the next guy, but do I really need 2000 more? A little more variety would have made this package really swing. That’s not to say there isn’t some good stuff in here as well, they just make you dig for it too hard.
One nice touch about this collection is that they preface all their loops with “USB”. Makes it easy to find the newer stuff buried in with what you already have.
Another nice feature is the sheer number of software instruments. Over 220 to shape your sounds just like you like it. Of course each is tweakable through either GarageBand’s filters or USB’s own filters. Their interface is different I’ll give them that. Sometimes I think too much time is spent on making it look like some kind of analog device instead of putting easier to explain sliders in, but hey, that’s just me.
Of course what really makes or breaks a loop collection is the quantity and quality of the loops. At over 4000, USB’s SonicBoomBox certainly has what it takes and quality of the loops is superb. I guess my only complaints are the repetition of some of the loops in almost every category and the fact that most of them are rhythm and drum based. The price is right though. At $100 bucks or less, this is still a collection worth having.
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