8Dio Santur KONTAKT

The Santur, Santouri, Santour or Santoor is a hammered dulcimer (sort of an ancient Cimbalom) of Babylonian origin, currently played in several countries around the Balkans, Middle East and Eastern Europe.

This library has been deeply sampled in order to give the composer a great tool made by very different colours of sound thanks to the use of three sets of mallets (wooden, semi soft and soft mallets) and three different damper configurations (no dampers for long sustains, one damper for staccato, two dampers for staccatissimo). Two microphone positions, over six thousand samples and quarter-tone tuning options make this library a very versatile tool which fulfills every type of user. Our CHAOS engine has also been added to multiply the textures and possibilities this library has to offer. We hope you enjoy using this library as much as we enjoyed making for you.

3 Different Mallet Types

The 8Dio Santur offers you three different mallet types. The instrument is very responsive to mallets, so we deep-sampled it with Wooden, Semi-Soft and Felt Mallets. The Wooden is more defined and epic in its sound. The Semi-Soft is great for normal tempered material and the Felt Mallet gives a gentle and warm presence in the sound. All mallets also contain unique samples for dampeners, so you can choose how dampened you want the sound.

3 Dampener States & Trills/Rolls

The 8Dio Santur contains three dampening types. Full open sustains, semi-dampened staccato and fully dampened staccatissimo. Essentially the dampener shortens the sound, which is why we used traditional orchestral names for it. We also recorded a massive section of trill/rolls – both with all three mallet types and in the three dampening states. The idea is what you mix the normal multi-samples with the trills – to generate a completely live sounding performance.