Today we will be reviewing a new product from the First Audio Peak called “The Legendary Sticks of Doom” or LSOD for short. This will be an in-depth review because it is simply a humongous library and making a short review wouldn’t do it a justice. Let us have a peak.
Content
The Legendary Sticks of Doom comes in a packaged metal casing where on top it says “Handle with care or Die” which I thought was a pretty cool marketing move. Once opened, you are quickly mesmerized with its content. I will briefly list all of the contents of the box.
1. 5x Blu-ray disks with samples – in total, there is approximately 133 GB of stick samples.
2. 1x SDD (250 GB) with a backup recordings and samples in case you lose the Blu-ray disks
3. 2x Real life Legendary Sticks of Doom
4. A demo of the upcoming product “Bunny Ate the Elephant” aka BAtE – I will talk about that instrument a bit later.
5. An action figure of “First Audio Peak” holding the LSOD.
6. A thank you note.
As you can see, the package is fantastic and really shows that FAP really put a lot of thought into marketing their product. On the Blu-ray disks you will find all of the instruments and samples. I have to mention that FAP made LSOD in an open Kontakt format which means that you can access the samples anytime you want. You will need the latest version of Kontakt and Kontakt Player in order to run LSOD smoothly and without any issue. Legendary Sticks of Doom also comes with its own FAP player.
You can run LSOD on older versions of Kontakt but it will only display a single message (“Click here to try the FAP player”) and a button to use their own FAP player.
The FAP player
The First Audio Peak player is a new sampler on the market and it is rich with functions. It has everything you ever wanted Kontakt to have and more. First and foremost it has a synthesis engine which sounds terrific. It supports additive synthesis, FM synthesis, granular synthesis, wave form synthesis and a newcomer FAP synthesis (New). It also includes the legendary moog filters and all of the buttons you find in your synths.
In addition you can also script your own instruments if you want to. The scripting language is really easy to understand and it is a mixture of C# and FAPs language called “modular code”. Unlike Kontakt’s script language, you only have to understand few basic rules to code your own instrument. I am guessing this is the easy mode of coding. If you know “Morse code” than you should feel right at home as the “modular coding” also includes pressing shift + space for giving commands to the graphic interface. If you don’t understand “Morse code” then FAP was kind enough to provide an extensive tutorial on how you can learn “Morse code”.
There is also a nice innovative feature included in FAP that I will explain in the GUI part of this review.
The Kontakt player content
The Kontakt content is somewhat different from the FAPs player as it includes only a one sample and a wave form in the center of the graphic interface. It has a major flaw though.
It consists of only one large sample which takes forever to load into your RAM. By no means is it meant to be used on older computers. It took approximately two and a half hours to load into my RAM and was hardly playable. I think they made it that way so that people would use their FAP player. Not a great move on their end.
Luckily you can use the wave files if in need of some hard core stick samples.
The Graphic interface
As I have mentioned above, the FAP player is excellent and really shines when it is used in conjunction with its synthesis mode. The FAP player is designed so that it is easy on the eyes and heavy on the functions. In the middle of the GUI you will find a waveform window which as you might have guessed it, shows a waveform and on each side you find all of the parameters to tweak. The graphic interface changes based on your performance or the usage of FAP.
With its intelligent design, FAP can determine whether your music is on the right track or if you are wasting time telling people on the internet how busy you are. If you are, let’s say, wasting time browsing through the internet while having FAP opened in your DAW, FAP will automatically know that and it will close all the windows except your DAW and FAP. It will keep you focused all the time. It will also tell you if your music isn’t any good by displaying a big red box with white text that says “Your music sucks”. I have run into that occasion many times while trying the FAP player.
Having said that, there is a great reward if FAP finds your music interesting, by displaying a message based on who you sound alike. It is quite encouraging to see you could sound like many of the famous composers. In some cases I also got an Elton John award but I think that was a glitch.
The Sound of Legendary Sticks of Doom
It is perhaps the best stick sound I have heard in my life. The samples were recorded at whooping 192 KHz and 1bit which in other words mean “Stretch Galore”. In some cases I managed to stretch the sound more than 500% and still had all the wanted frequencies.
The BAtE – Bunny Ate the Elephant demo pack
The demo is pretty fantastic and I am really looking forward the seeing/hearing more of that instrument. Basically it is the same thing as Legendary sticks of Doom with the exception of few new samples and instruments – the new addition being the Bunny and the Elephant of course, though not many details were shared in the demo version.
Value for money
This is the best part. LSOD will only cost you a small fortune but you could get it for 80% off on FAP’s sale. The price for the standard product will be around 4,99 EUR while the VIP version will cost you around 4.999,00 EUR. I’d always go for the VIP version as it will make me a better sound designer and composer.
Conclusion
The Legendery Sticks of Doom is one hell of a product. There is no shortage of stick samples and if you are like me then you are also always in need of some high quality stick samples. The box, the demo products, the instruments and the nice note from the developer saying “Buy my sticks” is nothing short of a “Must Have” product.