Gothic Instruments Dronar Master Edition review

Gothic Instruments’ Dronar Kontakt libraries have been making regular appearances on this site for more than two years now, their powerful scripted engine and consistently gorgeous sounds garnering them an average score of somewhere between 4 and 4.5/5. 

Dronar Master Edition is an enormous compilation of eight of the ten Dronars (Hybrid, Guitarscapes, Live Strings, Dark Synthesis, Cinematic Atmospheres, Vintage Synth, Brass and Metal and Glass), delivered as an NKS-compatible Kontakt Player instrument, so you don’t need to own the full version of NI’s sampler to use it. We’re talking a jaw-dropping 2068 preset Snapshots, organised by library, drawing on a 30GB (50GB uncompressed) sample bank.

As the name suggests, the Dronars are dedicated to the production of textures, ambiences, soundscapes, pads and drones. Patches are constructed by blending four layers (Hi, Mid, Lo and FX), each comprising an adjustable mix of two sustaining samples, with
editable envelopes, filters and more. The whole sound can be‘intensified’ with the mod wheel, modulated by the onboard LFO
and Arpeggiator, and pushed through various effects, while the Rhythm Editor enables manipulation of the grooves of certain samples, and the intelligent chord generator does the harmonic hard work for you. It’s just the right balance between power and 
ease. 

We’re still not down with Gothic’s recent move from separate NKIs of 12 keyswitching presets each to individual Kontakt Snapshots, whereby it traded faster loading (but actually, due to the sheer number of Snapshots in the Master Edition menu, not that much faster at all) for what was a really nifty performance feature. 

That’s our only real complaint though. Dronar Master Edition is an immense sound design resource, with the ability to freely mix up samples across the eight libraries, bringing an effectively infinite array of interesting hybrid sounds - hitting the Randomize Samples button has never been so much fun!