Aperture The Stack

Name: Aperture The Stack
Price: 249 USD
Author: Spitfire Audio

by Spitfire Audio · Synth · Amp-stack sound design library

Not rated yet

Synths, drum machines and guitars played through a wall of 56 guitar amps and four subs, recorded at AIR Lyndhurst Hall.

An Aperture control moves the sound from tight to huge, and it costs $249.

Best for: Sound Design, Keys & Synths, Guitars. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Electronic & EDM.

Keywords: sound design, drum machine, modular, basses, cinematic, drones, pads, acoustic drums, bass instrument, film & game audio, futuristic, sample-based, tempo-synced, tight.

What it does

Aperture The Stack records synths, guitars and drum machines played through 56 guitar amplifiers and four subwoofers, rigged on four levels in AIR Lyndhurst Hall. The idea is a huge, physical wall of sound that you can open up from one row of amps to the whole stack.

Synth sources: The Colossus (an eight-oscillator synth), eight Lyra-8 synths, a modular rig called the Wall, Afrorack modular gear, two Deckard's Dream MkIIs, two Juno 6s and two Sequential Prophets.
Other sources: four electric guitars, two bass guitars and an original Roland TR-808.
Aperture ring: on the mod wheel, it brings in more amp rows, more distant mics and more room: one row for a focused sound, two or three rows for a driven sound, and all rows for the full wall.
Presets: Dave (the Colossus, 7 longs and shorts), Replicants (9), Legends (7), Swarm and Swarm mono (12), The Wall and Wall mono (10), Guitars (8) and Machines (13 drum kits).
Pulses: host-synced pulses at 80, 90 and 135 BPM.

A user manual is available.

Source: Spitfire Audio product page

When to use it

The Stack is the better pick when you want ready-made, enormous synth drones, pulses and hits with the real room and amp sound of a huge rig. Compared with Omnisphere 3 or Pigments 7, it offers little sound design: you play recorded sounds rather than build patches. What you get instead is a physical depth and sub-bass weight that is hard to get from a soft synth and a reverb. Unlike Aperture Cassette Symphony, which makes an orchestra warm and worn, The Stack is about scale and impact.

Best for: massive drones, pads, pulses and hits for sci-fi, trailers and games, layered on top of an existing arrangement.
Genres: cinematic, bass-heavy electronic and ambient.
Look elsewhere if: you want to design your own synth patches; Serum 2 or Omnisphere 3 give far more control.
Tip: ride the mod wheel through a held note to grow a sound from a single amp row to the full wall.

What producers say

Reviewers liked the sheer size and quality of the sound but saw it as a specialist library, with the interface the main complaint.

MusicTech (Clovis McEvoy, 2022) gave it 8 out of 10, praising the "excellent audio quality" and bass, but said Spitfire's standard interface "feels ill-fitted to this collection".
Sound On Sound (Dave Stewart, 2022) praised the big synth drones, the soft pads and the muted guitar textures, and called the modular pads epic.
Criticisms: Sound On Sound found no mic balance mixer, guitars that sound "fairly tame and controlled", and 808 drums that gain little from the hall.

Where to buy

Spitfire Audio: $249
PluginFox: $249

Tutorials and reviews

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