HOLLOW SUN has worked with many of the major manufacturers including Akai, Alesis, Bela-D Media, Korg, Novation, Roland and others and offers an extensive range of professional and affordable sampler sound libraries for convenient direct download at very reasonable prices.

Hollow Sun is essentially me, Stephen Howell. I have been working with synths since the early 70s and with samplers since the very first Fairlight. I was closely involved with Akai Japan's sampler development since the early days, developing sound library with them from the S900 onwards and also designing the UI for the S2000, S3000XL, S5/6000 and ak.Sys. I was also involved in the design of the several of their disk recorders such as the DD1000, DD1500 and DPS24. I continued to work with the 'new' Akai and with its sister company, Alesis, having contributed sound library to Akai's recent MPCs and Alesis' 'Fusion', SR18 drum machine and DM10 electronic drum kti but decided to extracate myself from all the corporate politics and nonsense.

This gave me the chance to move HS Towers to the rural depths of the Vale Of Glamorgan in Wales to concentrate on my own stuff.

Housed in an 18th Century Grade II listed building, The Lab essentially revolves around a hefty Mac Pro Tower and the fairly large modular. Other bits and pieces as well, of course.

But I am not alone in my endeavours and have my little helpers dotted around the world who bring their creative expertise to the Hollow Sun libraries. These include Dan McCullough (US), Roberto Puricelli (UK's 'Failed Muso'), Tracy Collins (of Indiginus) and other friends who contribute their endless talents and boundless enthusiasm to Hollow Sun projects. I teamed up with Dan Wilson of Hideaway Studios near Bath, England, for the massive Novachord project and now help out with his own sample libraries.

Most recently, I have teamed up with Matthias Shuster who lives in Germany surrounded by some of the most wonderfully bizarre and obscure electrical instrumentation and also Atomic Shadow who sends me material from his spacecraft, the Altares, engaged in a deep space mission in a future that never happened.

The latest HS recruit and collaborator is young Croatian, Mario Krušelj, Kontakt scriptmeister par excellence.

The Hollow Sun libraries feature a huge range of synth and vintage keyboard samples from evolving, atmospheric pads to biting leadlines, punchy basses, synth strings and electric pianos, clavs and sparkling digital textures as well as arguably the most authentic sampled re-creation of many classic and desirable - and rarest - vintage keyboards. Collectively, they represent a comprehensive sound library that will cover almost any modern musical application and a few more besides.

Hollow Sun's vintage keyboard libraries are somewhat unique in that no fancy channel strips or outboard gear are used when sampling these instruments - just the raw line outputs of the instruments, warts and all. This means that what you get is pretty much as close to having the actual instrument in your studio, NOT some watered down, 'pasteurised' digital facsimile.

With the advent of Kontakt 4, Hollow Sun has diversified to create our own sample based synthesiser designs with the Music Laboratory Machines. Not being hide-bound by convention allows us to design quirky and unusual noise making devices with intriguing GUIs that challenge creativity.

And now we have the Alien Devices which are arguably weirder than the MLMs; while the MLMs are retro styled and looking back on old equipment used in experimental electronic music studios of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the Radiophic Workshop, etc., the Alien Devices look more to the future with odd sound generators that have yet to be created.

All samples created at Hollow Sun are hand-crafted for optimum use of memory, load/save times and disk space using experience that spans back 25 years to my early days of sampling.