Tuned percussion instruments like marimba and vibraphone sound rich and wide, and the orchestral strings, brass and woodwind come from IK's superb Miroslav Philharmonik package, with plenty of articulations and both ensemble and solo patches. So, how are the sounds? Well, the keyboard instruments are particularly great, offering an abundance of acoustic pianos, electric pianos and organs. We also really like the new instrument Edit page, with easy Part selection buttons always to hand on the right-hand side.

High points include ready access to the currently selected effects plugin from all pages via the FX button, and quick preset editing in the Macro control panel at the bottom of the GUI. SampleTank 3's workflow transcends that of its predecessor, which was cluttered and fiddly to use. With all that in mind, we're quite surprised that ST 3 doesn't go the whole hog and tie in to IK's Custom Shop. The sheer volume of effects is similarly impressive, with 55 excellent processors extracted from IK's T-RackS and AmpliTube suites, including six amp simulations, 14 modulation processors and a range of classic emulations such as the Vintage EQ-1A EQ and Black 76 compressor. In terms of numbers, what all of this amounts to is over 4000 Instruments in 21 categories, more than 2500 audio Loops and over 2000 categorised MIDI files. 'ROMpler-generated guitars often sound weak, but here the electric patches are remarkably convincing' You can adjust the velocity Intensity and Quantise settings of loaded patterns, and drag them into your DAW arrangement as MIDI clips. Patterns get their own tab in the Play page browser, where they're categorised much like the Instruments. Each Multi Part can also include up to 128 MIDI patterns, assigned to individual notes/keys for triggering.

Sampletank 3 instrument collection