I love this, one of my favourite libraries. Great sounds and lots of tweakability
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Product details
Brand: Spitfire Audio
For 40 years, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was the place to go for the sound of the impossible – the unruly engine behind the music and effects of Doctor Who, the Goon Show, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and countless other BBC productions. It was a place of other worlds, and of other sounds. Reanimating this abundant legacy, the essence of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is now available for the first time – with unprecedented access to its home: London’s Maida Vale studios. Dive into an immaculately sampled collection of vintage synthesisers, tape loops, iconic archives and brand new performances from Workshop members. Revitalised with Spitfire’s Solar engine, this library passes the torch from the most forward-thinking minds of early electronic music on to the next generation of producers. Now available through Rent-to-Own on Splice’s platform. Learn more
All reviews
I'm a little disappointed with this product. Many of the sounds are identical, with only minor differences. Furthermore, there are few truly interesting sounds. They seem outdated and, more importantly, already exist in other collections. Finally, the interface isn't great. It's a bit confusing, and the transformation possibilities are limited. I'll still be able to use it, but in my opinion, very little.
Good inspiration!
“What is the most important thing in music production today, perhaps? It’s being able to incorporate a sound and use it effectively. These sounds are timeless—like buying a jewel.” — MR
Nice experimental tones to be had, ideal for adding mystery or a sense of experimentalism to your productions
I'm a big fan of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for years and a plug-in dedicated to it, it's a dream come true!
WOW! This one is very much in the what fun category! Lots of great, imaginative sounds to work with. This goes back to early days of sound synthesis and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was brilliant! Back to the days when a tape loop required a splicing block. Oh Joy!
Absolutely awesome sounds and inspiring Solar Player. A dream for every sonddesigner and fan of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop came true.
sample / snippets sfx and stuff from the bbc radiophonics workshop which is just great along with it being a vst and usable in a synthesizer-y/ishy and midi sense which is great, rather to a hypothetical situation of just only having the samples
Excellent product! I bought Solar: BBC Radiophonic Workshop. A lovely product with an excellent interface that invites experimentation. Just what you would want from a BBC Radiophonic Workshop device. Highly recommended!
The sounds in this product are great, however the user interface is terrible. In particular, the preset navigator menu is possibly the worst I've seen in any music software ever. Most plugins nowadays have great preset browsers with categories and sound types to help narrow down the preset list. Whilst this does "technically" have a preset browser, you can only see 2 categories and 7 presets without having to use the scroll wheel. I don't understand how this could pass even the most basic quality control or user testing. The user interface should not be this terrible at this price point.
Well, the range of sounds and devices is pretty amazing. My biggest issue is with the Solar UX/UI, especially the navigation. I really feel like I need to have a second monitor to operate Solar within my Ableton Live set up, but I don't have the resources or space to support a second screen....
I use this plugin on Bitwig in Linux. It works well with wine-tkg 9.21, dxvk and yabridge. I bought this within 1/2 hour of receiving the release email. The Radiophonic Workshop has a storied legacy at the cusp of electronic music. It was a no brainer. This library is so deep that I've only scratched the surface. It uses the Spitfire Solar plugin which allows a good amount of manipulation of the sounds within the plugin and using modulators outside the plugin to manipulate the many vst parameters. It reacts to MPE but only to control the pitch bend, so you'd need several instances to bend notes independently. The array of sounds are both musically useful and a great basis for effects. You'll also find the Doctor Who, Blakes 7 and so on sounds that the Radiophonic workshop are best known for. Based on the initial release, the GUI is good but for the vast panoply of content it's a little lacking compared to say Arturia's Analog Lab. Searching and more extensive tagging would be an excellent addition. The bounds sizing of GUI elements is somewhat inadequate (see 6:44 and 12:15 in the walkthrough video). It's lots of information crammed into small boxes with lots of scrolling. Though getting to an initial starting point is a little cumbersome, once there Solar is a really effective sample based synth with all the options you'd expect and many Spitfire twists in the signal chain that show their deep understanding of how you might want to manipulate the sounds. If I could give fractions of a star, I'd probably give it 4 7/8. I've already used it in several projects, in several places. If you're scoring for film, don't ignore this plugin because it's a /synth/, the examples give a good idea of the range and the walkthrough touches the surface of the depth. If you need foley, this is an interesting choice. I'm using it in rock, funk, EDM and orchestral.