Review: “Noah Bells” Kontakt Library by Soundiron

It’s been a while since Soundiron came out with a new library. Given that I am a big fan of their products, their attention to detail, and their love four sound design it makes me even happier to tell you the news.

Soundiron has released Noah Bells, a tuned percussion library for Native Instruments Kontakt. It features a deeply sampled collection of 21 traditional Indian Khadki bells, covering a wide ascending range of sizes and pitches, from massively resonant deep notes to small, brittle high notes.

Soundiron provided is some stunning examples of the sound of “Noah Bells”. Check them out on their website if you like. I’ll wait here for you.

About the Instrument

These hand-crafted, hammered metal bells are smelted from simple iron and copper alloys. They range in size from over two feet to less than an inch in diameter, with carved wooden clappers.

They have a dark, raspy, and heavy tone with lots of mid-range body, a rather variable sustain, and strong, complex overtones and undertones. Each bell was recorded in multiple velocities with plenty of round-robin variation to create a naturally dynamic and truly playable virtual instrument.

They were captured up close and dry in wide stereo and from afar in a large open cathedral sanctuary to give you very distinct tonal and atmospheric flavors to blend and choose from.

The history and true origins of “Noah Bells” are a bit fuzzy and rather conflicted, depending on where you look and whom you ask. As far as we can tell, they actually originate and are still primarily made in the village of Nirona, in the Kutch district of the western state of Gujarat in India.

The name “Khadki” translates simply to “bell” in the local Kutchi language. These bells have probably been produced there by the same small number of local families over the last few hundred years, using techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation.

First imported to the United States by Maharani Imports in the late 1960s, they’ve been popularly renamed hereafter Noah Shah, the son of Maharani Imports’ founders, Bonny Karstadt and Ratilal Shah.[/box]

The Interface

The minimalistic Interface hides more depth than you would expect and stays user-friendly and supportive of a fast workflow at the same time. It also looks good and pretty much explains itself.

The very intuitive user interface controls let you customize your sound with a variety of options such as swell, attack, release, tightness, tuning, vibrato, articulation selection, an optional sub-synth waveform module for tonal reinforcement, and a complete step-sequencing arpeggiator system.

This abundance and is something I would already not expect, especially given the great quality of it all, from such a low-priced library. And this is one of the reasons I’ve come to love Soundiron. With them, you don’t need to spend a ton of money to get a high-quality, creative and inspiring tool.

The custom scripted Kontakt user interface built into this library comes equipped with flexible control features, like attack, release, transient offset (tighten), dynamic swelling, vibrato, and a robust Arpeggiator system that provides a full range of custom dynamic modes and step sequencer pattern creation options.

There’s also a complete DSP effects rack, including convolution reverb with dozens of unique spaces, such as cathedrals, churches, halls, bunkers, garages, tunnels, chambers, rooms, and plenty of otherworldly FX impulses to fully explore an endless variety of strange and unexpected sonic manipulations.

Conclusion

“Noah Bells” is a great library, especially for a very low price. Like with all their other libraries, Soundiron has put incredible attention to detail and playability, as well as high-quality sound. On top of that they provide more than just the sampled instruments, they provide all necessary tools for sound design, as well as some of their own sound design patches.

Therefore, I highly recommend you to get this library up for its introductory price, if you can spare 30 dollars at all. You will get a high-quality library that will surprise you with its versatility, and the inspiration it provides. My deepest thanks again to Soundiron for making another wonderful product.

“Noah Bells” is available for purchase for the introductory price of $29 until June 15th, 2016 (regular $39 USD). The Noah Bells library is designed for the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 5.5 and later, but all of the samples are unlocked 24bit/48kHz WAVs that you can use in any standard Wav-compatible program or plugin you like.