“It’s dreamy, evocative and incredibly emotive, but there’s so much you can do to sounds as well”: Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars review

Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars: What is it?

We’ve had some great guitar instruments in for review in recent months, but Sonora Cinematic’s latest looks like being one of the best titles for those of us blessed with more keyboard than string-plucking skills, and after a more atmospheric style of axe sound.

Panorama Guitars is designed to produce the kinds of lush and evocative guitar sounds that shoegaze and post rock bands made famous over the last 20 to 30 years. Think Slowdive, Mogwai and even the sounds of Robert Fripp playing on David Sylvian albums – heavily laden with emotion, atmosphere and reverb.

Panorama Guitars not only delivers that sound in spades, but has a superb and tweakable engine that lets you record movement, modulate and layer sounds together. If you want your guitars dreamy, you’ve come to the right place.

Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars: Performance and verdict

It might not have the most inspiring-looking interface, but there’s more going on with Panorama Guitars than meets the eye because it’s based around the same flexible engine used in Sonora’s rather great Aria Vocalscapes.

For a start there are some hidden extras like a three-slot effects area and dual LFO page. Each LFO operates on one of two sounds that layer each preset in Panorama Guitars, so the main feature on its UI is an X-Y pad that allows you, on a basic level, just to blend between sounds. You can even record these movements, which are then played back on subsequent key hits.

Already, then, there’s a lot you can do with the sounds that ship with Panorama Guitars. There are currently 40 different sampled-based instruments that you can apply to each of the two layers, A and B (with more planned in an imminent update). These range from bright guitars, reversed sound, and bass sounds, to ambient tremolos and washes. (Sonora sampled five electric guitars, a baritone guitar, and an electric bass for the title.) The 100 presets tend to – but not always – deliver a more distinct guitar-based instrument on Layer A and a more atmospheric ambient pad-like sound on B, but you can easily change and mix these sounds.

As good as these instruments are, the effects must also take some of the plaudits for the overall amazing sound here, as each of the presets is drenched in them. Each of the three slots can have one of 28 effects placed in it, with further controls opening up to adjust. You can choose from amps (bass and lead), stompboxes (wahs, distortions, lo-fi and more), delays, reverbs and modulation types. A lot of fun can be had mixing and matching, and the three slots let you change a preset beyond all recognition and layer up as much atmosphere and emotion as you please.

We’ll cover more on the modulation side of Panorama Guitars below, but one other feature worth highlighting is the ability to assign many of the parameters to that X-Y pad – and you thought it was just for blending the layers, right? Wrong. Any parameter – and that’s a lot – which has an empty dot next to it can be assigned to the X-Y pad. Set the maximum amount you want the parameter to cover, then hit X or Y and it will be assigned. Easy! This makes automating and performing with Panorama Guitars a hoot, and some lovely evolving sounds can be created.

LFO meet guitar

Both layers A and B get an LFO and filter to tweak. You can easily assign the LFO to volume pan and filter cutoff, and choose from five different waveforms for modulation. It can also be easily synced to your DAW.

As with other parameters in the effects section, and as described above, the filter cutoff has a dot next to it so can be assigned to the X-Y pad. A third way of controlling this (on top of the LFO and X-Y pad) comes by way of a step sequencer (shown in orange). This can have up to 16 steps which you can then draw in to change the filter cutoff at a rate determined by a frequency dial (top right). This can drastically change a sound, so you’ll have to tread carefully. And it should also be noted that you can use all three modulation types – step sequencer, X-Y pad and LFO – on the filter frequency simultaneously if you want some ultra crazy filtering action! Again, there’s more depth here than meets the eye.

Dreamscape

By now you’ll have got the point that we love this instrument. We don’t really even have to describe its overall sound quality – it’s dreamy, evocative and incredibly emotive, but there’s so much you can do to sounds as well. Yes, if you don’t like the genres it aims itself at as much as us then it won’t be a 10/10 for you as it is us. But even a few glitches where sounds needed to be reloaded can’t stop us max’ing this instrument out score wise (we think it might be a Logic/Kontakt thing anyway) as this is probably the best 60 quid we’ll spend on a plugin. It’s finally time to throw ourselves at that long awaited post rock album, right now.

MusicRadar verdict: You know when an instrument is going to be a useful tool for years to come, right? Yes, this is it. Panorama Guitars (post) rocks.

Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars: The web says

"The sounds go from recognisable guitars and basses all the way to ethereal pads, faux harps, spy movie harpsichords, dreamy pads and timbres that could easily be mistaken for processed electric piano."
Sound On Sound

Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars: Hands-on demos

Sonora Cinematic

Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars - Cinematic, Post-Rock Virtual Instrument For Kontakt - YouTube

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The Sampleist

The Sampleist - Panorama Guitars by Sonora Cinematic - Overview - Composing With - YouTube

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Sonora Cinematic Panorama Guitars: Specifications

• Fully compatible with Kontakt Player version 7.7+.
• CONTACT: Sonora Cinematic