For anyone under 40, all you really need to know is that it is surprisingly easy to get to grips with. Yes, it’s still doing as many sounds as possible, but they are now delivered behind a slick and fully resizable fascia – redesigned for v4.0 – that is optimised to run beautifully on retina displays, although it can be a little dark on occasion.įor anyone older than 40, ST4 is like using an old-school 16-part multi-timbral synthesizer. That one played sounds ST 4 MAX not only plays a hell of a lot more, but it basically allows you to compose with them and a lot more besides. It is clear that SampleTank 4 is not so much a grown-up version of that first version I saw back in 2001, but actually a completely different beast, perhaps as you might expect. After installing, and on boot up, you simply enter the serial number from the software box, old-school style and then choose where your content location is (you can install and move this wherever you like) to get going. Next up, you download and install the SampleTank 4 software from the IK Multimedia website – you’ll need just short of a GB of space.

Luckily, the whole package is delivered on a pen drive. This is obviously right up there with the bundles from NI and Steinberg in terms of scope but, to my mind, is really more on the wavelength of synth and workstations from the likes of Yamaha and Korg in terms of delivery. Finally, SampleTank 4 MAX, on test here, is a tasty quarter-terabyte of samples and 8,000 sounds for €599. Next up is the regular SampleTank 4, which delivers 100GB of samples and a whopping 6,000 sounds for €359. You get SampleTank LE (the ‘affordable sound and groove workstation’) which offers 30GB of samples and 2,000 sounds for €179. The ST universe has not only moved on to version 4, but there are three versions within that. The last time we looked at SampleTank it was in version 3. You won’t be surprised to learn that it is related to the number of Gigabytes of material you get.

The all-new SampleTank 4 Max does all of that, and some.īefore we dive in too far, let’s explain the ‘Max’ factor. Despite everyone going modular-and-analogue mad, it seems there is still a fabulous case for an all-singing, all-dancing application that covers just about every sound you will ever need, in one. Fast-forward nearly two decades and our views on using a computer solely for music production might have changed to re-embrace hardware, but SampleTank is still here and it’s still making a very good case for your cash.

Sampletank 3 max