Ancient Kingdom

Name: Ancient Kingdom
Price: 104 USD
Author: EastWest

by EastWest · Instrument · World wind instrument library

Not rated yet

Ancient Kingdom is a library of rare world wind instruments played by Saulius Petreikis, from duduk and shakuhachi to Viking war horns, with four effects signal paths.

It costs $104 on sale (regular $299) and runs in EastWest's Opus player.

Best for: Acoustic Instruments, Sound Design. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic.

Keywords: world instruments, woodwinds, brass, cinematic, monophonic, sound design, textures, film & game audio, acoustic drums, classic, clean, futuristic, heavy, subscription, tube.

What it does

Ancient Kingdom is EastWest's library of rare world wind instruments, played by Lithuanian wind player Saulius Petreikis. It pairs clean multi-mic recordings with heavily processed versions for more otherworldly, cinematic sounds.

345 instruments: in 26 categories, including Armenian duduk, bansuri, birbyne, fujara, hulusi, Irish whistle, Native American cedar flute, Persian ney, shakuhachi, goat horns, Viking lur, Viking war horn and Viking voices.
Four effects paths: the instruments were re-recorded through amps, vibration enhancers, metal surfaces, distortion, megaphones, tubes and rotating speakers.
Eight mixes: Close, Mid, Main and Surround mics plus four FX mixes, with channel routing and convolution reverb from real spaces.
Moods: Classic, Epic and Soft presets that reshape the tone in one click.
Articulations and scripts: long, short, effects, legato and keyswitch patches; true legato, legato and portamento with an adjustable time knob.
Shaping and tuning: a five-stage envelope, stereo double, velocity curves, transpose, fine tune and microtuning scales.

It runs in EastWest's Opus player, and it is also part of the ComposerCloud+ subscription, which has a 14-day free trial.

Source: EastWest product page

When to use it

Ancient Kingdom is the pick for rare ethnic flutes and horns, either raw or pushed into processed, hybrid textures. Compared with Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition and BBC Symphony Orchestra Core, which cover Western orchestral winds only, it adds duduk, shakuhachi, ney, fujara and Viking horns that those libraries lack. Its four FX paths also go further into sound design than a plain orchestral library. It is narrower than EastWest's RA, though, since it covers winds and not world strings or percussion.

Best for: ethnic flute and horn solos and textures for fantasy, historical and game scores.
Genres: cinematic, game music and ambient.
Look elsewhere if: you want a broad set of world instruments beyond winds; RA covers more regions.
Tip: Sound On Sound suggests the keyswitch presets for natural articulation changes and using the FX paths subtly to add a modern edge.

What producers say

The one major review is strongly positive, and no real criticisms were raised.

Sound On Sound (John Walden, 2025) called the sounds "undeniably impressive", fit for triple-A film, TV and game work, and praised the sampling depth, the mic blend, the reverb and the optional amp and Leslie-style effects.
Standouts: Walden singled out the low hulusi, double shepherd flute and the Armenian duduks.

Sound On Sound review

Where to buy

Best Service: $104
EastWest: $104 (regular $299)
Plugin Boutique: $104 (regular $199)
PluginFox: $104 (regular $199)
AudioDeluxe: $104 (regular $199)

Tutorials and reviews

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