Sonokinetic Maximo ¤302

Sonokinetic are back with the latest in their ever-growing range of phrase-based orchestral instruments. This time, they ‘go large’ with the expanded ensemble sound of Maximo. Interestingly this isn’t by employing overdubs, so what you get is many musicians moving substantial amounts of air in a real space at the same time. In terms of numbers, the orchestra consists of 60 string, 22 brass and 19 woodwind instruments. There is a lot of focus on the low-end with eight double basses, 16 celli, six bassoons and a contrabassoon – a subtle library this is not.

Like their previous offerings, Maximo makes use of Sonokinetic’s phrase layering interface with separate instances for Strings, Brass and Woodwinds. Incidentally, for those with limited memory or CPU, every version comes in Full and Lite versions at both 16 and 24-bit.

The playback engine is very well put together, and allows for far more nuance than one would expect given the apparent limited musical flexibility of the phrase-based approach. ‘Harmonic Shift’ is worthy of mention as it allows you to create complex chords and more interesting harmonic movement by transposing only selected phrases in any given layer.

Further timbral shaping is offered by the four mixable mic positions, though the futuristic font and icon design in Maximo does make accessing some parameters a little less intuitive than it might be. Also, time signatures are strictly 4/4, so you will need to look to Grosso or others for other rhythmic flavours.

Maximo is big, bold, and classy. Combined with some electronics it is capable of delivering excellent hybrid textures for film, TV and even club use. www.sonokinetic.net VERDICT 9.3