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Hopkin Instrumentarium: Aquaalt Black Friday pricing is $19.50, 50% off, until Dec 6, 2026, on Soundiron's Kontakt library of a lute with a steel bowl resonator and water inside it.
The instrument is a custom creation from inventor Bart Hopkin. The bridge passes string vibrations straight to the flat bottom of the bowl.
As the strings sound, a little water shifts around in the bowl. The maker says that movement produces ever-changing resonances and unusual, dreamy tones.
Aquaalt is built from wood and metal, and the maker describes its sound as richly acoustic and bright on every note. The body sits on a swaying stand, so a player can rock the lute to keep the water moving.
It can be plucked or bowed, sometimes with a slide to bend string pitch.
Soundiron sampled the sounds it could get out of the instrument, using two stereo mic positions: Close, and direct line in.
The articulations are Plucks, Bow Long, Bow Short, Bow Sul Ponticello, and Glisses up and down. All of them are available in all four layers, so you can mix and match.
Each note has up to 8x round robin and 6 velocity layers.
The maker also includes a selection of custom FX presets and its signature sound-designed ambient content.
The LFO system has selectable shape, modulation target, speed, intensity, tempo sync and fade-in time.
There are 12 lowpass, high-pass and FX filters. Modulation can be driven by how hard a key is struck, where it sits on the keyboard, the mod wheel, an expression pedal, channel pressure, or values read from the built-in step sequencer's table.
The arpeggiator has a velocity table and controls for direction, timing, swing, randomization and duration. A key and scale lock keeps your notes inside common scales and keys, which helps with melodic writing and live playing.
The FX rack panel holds 27 DSP modules across 8 slots, in any order you choose. The effects section covers modulation (phasing and flanging), echo, overdrive, speaker and amplifier modeling, dynamics control, tone shaping and a rotary speaker, among other tools.
The Reverb module carries 99 convolution impulse responses of rooms, halls, chambers and outdoor spaces. Another 40 custom FX impulses are there for more drastic transformations. Factory FX rack chain presets are included as starting points.
You need the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt, version 6.2.2 or newer, to load the.nki presets. The free Kontakt Player and the Add Library import do not support this open-format library.
The maker lists Windows 7 or higher, or Mac OSX 10.12 or higher. It recommends a dual core CPU, 2 GB of RAM and a SATA or SSD hard drive.
Yes. The Hopkin Instrumentarium: Aquaalt Black Friday deal is 50% off, which brings the Soundiron library to $19.50. The offer runs until Dec 6, 2026.
The library has 5,820 stereo samples in unlocked.WAV format and 21 Kontakt.nki presets. It also has 20 ambient pads and drones built from the source sounds, plus FX presets. Installed, it takes 15 GB.
No. It needs the full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt, version 6.2.2 or newer. Soundiron says the free Kontakt Player and the Add Library import process do not support this open-format.nki library.
Articulations are Plucks, Bow Long, Bow Short, Bow Sul Ponticello, and Glisses up and down. The FX rack offers 27 DSP modules across 8 slots, and the convolution reverb includes 99 impulse responses plus 40 custom FX impulses.
Prices and end dates are checked at publishing time and can change, so confirm them at the store before you buy.