Nu-Rave reviewed:DJ magazine, October 2008 But ‘Nu Rave’ is a little different. Rather than treading any well-trodden or trendy paths, on this one he’s been allowed to run riot, creatively speaking, and the result is excellent. Influences range from Gallic house to breakbeat, taking in dirty little acid lines and electro-tinged musical loops. The result is a collection of sounds and loops that really do sound ahead of the game. Not only do they sounds great, but they’re programmed by somebody who knows their way around a bit of manuscript paper too so they’re all meticulously labelled. Your root bassline note is F#? No problem, just pick a musical loop that’s labelled as such. Or take any other and you know exactly how much to transpose it up or down. All in all, a very versatile and well-produced collection. Verdict: 5/5"
Sound on Sound, October 2008 Given that the library is most obviously intended for various dance styles, the drum and bass loops are key – and Nu Rave doesn’t disappoint. The drum loops actually cover quite a lot of ground, ranging from fairly straightforward patterns (mostly, but not exclusively, based around electronic drum sounds) through to more experimental material that includes both unusual sound sources and some nice processing. The bass loops are equally diverse but there’s some really good stuff amongst this lot that I’m sure would go down well in a club context, including some great lo-fi and processed riffs. Both the drums and the bass contain plenty of bleeps and bloops, and there are more of these in the tops and glitch loops folder, including hi-hats, percussion and occasional snares melded with all sorts of other weird and wonderful noises. The synths and music loops folders provide plenty of ear candy, offering loops that are rhythmically interesting and provide lots of harmonic content, too. Most of the synth sources sound very analogue, and there’s some great filter and pitch-processing going on, which should be spot-on for modern dance, rave and club music. The vox and FX folders are fairly modest, but they do contain some good material, including some nice vocoded vocals. The combi loops provide a collection of two-bar pre-mixed loops, which are fine for instant gratification, but I suspect folks would prefer to layer their own. The collection is rounded off by a useful collection of about 130 individual snare, kick, hi-hat, cymbal and ‘hit’ sounds. The kicks, in particular, are very good. The cover blurb describes Nu Rave as ‘the underground sound of Parisien house and indie-tinged electronica’ and, while Paris clubland is not something of which I have first-hand experience, the broad musical sentiment seems to be pretty accurate. These loops could easily work in anything from cutting-edge dance productions through Nine Inch Nails-inspired rocktronica. In the majority of the folders there are some paired loops included that have similar names but slightly different performances. However, there are probably not enough related loops to build a completely arrangement without resorting to some beat-slicing – the only real down side of an otherwise excellent library. Rating: 5/5"
Computer Music, September 2008 It's clear that a great deal of effort has gone into the production of this library, and while there's not a massive amount of unique material on the discs (about 800MB), it's reasonably comprehensive, although some ride cymbals would have been nice. Overall, Nu Rave is one of the most convincing contemporary genre-based collections we've tested. If you're into the more noisy side of dance music, we recommend it without hesitation. Rating: 9/10."
Beatportal, August 2008 We loved Sample Magic’s Minimal and Tech House collection earlier this year, so their latest offering – Nu-Rave – naturally piqued our interest. After spending a few evenings with Nu-Rave, here’s what we found. Technical specification As with Sample Magic’s other libraries, the 2.7 GB of data on Nu-Rave covers nearly every viable format, including Native Instrument’s Kontakt, Reason NNXT, Steinberg’s Halion, Stylus RMX, Logic’s EXS24, as well as common loop formats like WAV, AppleLoop and even REX. The sampler-based data offers a lot of flexibility in terms of editing, allowing producers to restructure the content via standard sequencing tools. For users who want to just dive right in, the audio loops are neatly organized by instrument type and tempo. The loop types include bass, combi (mixed music), drum, music only, synth parts, tops/glitch, and vox (vocal) at three tempos - 120, 125 and 130 - which pretty much cover the usable spectrum for the Nu-Rave/Disco genre. Better still, musical key information is included in each loop’s filename, which is wonderfully handy for producers with a bit of training under their belt. Usability The electro uprising of the past few years has seeped into pretty much every modern club genre – tech house is techier, progressive is funkier, techno grooves harder, even trance has developed a bit of a wiggle – so it’s not really a surprise that electro was destined to cross-pollinate with the alt-electronic scene at some point. The result of all this genre-melding can even be found on Beatport itself, as astute readers may have already noticed the recent addition of the Indie Dance / Nu Disco category. Pardon the pun, but Sample Magic really didn’t miss a beat when they created the Nu-Rave collection. Rather than get all wild with the ephemeral adjectives, we’ll just rattle off a short list of artists whose styles are represented in this library: Justice, MSTRKRFT, Simian Mobile Disco, Chromeo, Switch, Martin Solveig, SebastiAn, Moulinex, etc… Well, you get the picture. Adding Thomas Bangalter and Fred Falke to that list probably would have been redundant since all of the above artists owe at least a nod to those French scalliwags who kind of kicked this whole thing off back in the 90s, but we digress. Now that the comparisons are out of the way, let’s talk quality. Put simply, when it comes to the Nu-Rave / Nu Disco genre, this library rocks in ways that other developers can only dream of. Period. Every nuance, every groove is utterly heartfelt and authentic, with production quality that is right up there with any track currently on the Beatport Nu Disco charts. If it sounds like we’re gushing, that’s because we are. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little room for improvement, If we could make one tiny request of Sample Magic for their next batch of releases, it would be to break out the drum loops into their individual components: kick loop, snare loop, hat loop, etc, as this would make it a breeze to mix and match components to customize the groove for intros, buildups, breakdowns and so on. But that’s about the only negative thing we can come up with for this library.
MusicTech, July 2008 Far harder in tone than the tedious New Order-emulating disco rock currently clogging up the charts, this is a soundset for people who want to be played in impossibly trendy clubs or on Radio 1 at three in the morning, when the programming is searingly electronic. Supplied on a 2.3GB DVD, the collection comprises 796 24-bit WAVs, 476 REX files compatible with Stylus RMX, 476 Apple Loops and various EXS24, NN-XT, Kontakt 2 and HALion patches. The files are grouped by type and tempo and there's an audio CD included for auditioning the sounds and for sampling them yourself using a hardware sampler or groovebox. Stylistically the emphasis is on fat, wobbly basses, stabs and sequences, bit-crushed drums, circuit-bent vocals, robot voices and some individual hits for building your own kits. The range of tempo is limited to 120, 125 or 130BPM, but at least this means that matching and layering loops doesn't require time stretching. Sonically, recording quality is excellent – warm but scary, and with copious amounts of pitch bending applied to the synths and basses. Start layering loops and pretty soon you can almost feel yourself wanting to pay way over the odds to get into a ridiculously exclusive underground club where the DJ spins this sort of stuff all night and a drink sets you back a week's wages... Verdict: Sleazy does it... A good selection of squelchy, crisp and biting samples for the more discerning electro producer." 
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SM08 Nu-Rave 
