COMPENDIUM – ELDENVALE BY FRACTURE SOUNDS
KK-ACCESS REVIEW
This latest library from Fracture Sounds has a distinctly Tolkienesque vibe, with an entire collection of beautiful sounding instruments that would be completely at home playing in a Middle Earth tavern in a Hobbit village.
Eldenvale is a well stocked compendium library bursting at the seams with over 25 instruments that exude a folky medieval atmosphere, and is a likely one stop shop for any composer looking to source such instruments for film scoring or stylised thematic project composition.
We will break down the individual instruments in detail during the course of the review, but you will find a diverse selection encompassing categories such as Winds, Plucked, Strings, Choir, Atmospheric, & Percussion.
With two years in the making, Fracture Sounds have as always put a great deal of effort into capturing these instruments in fine detail, with multiple microphone positions, In-Situ selectable seat positions, the always excellent 3 atmosphere layers , and a new Glissando controller system.
Join me as I take on the role of Bilbo Baggins and guide you on a musical journey through the shires!
TECH SPECS
Eldenvale runs in Kontakt 7.6 or higher, either the full or free Kontakt Player version.
It is compatible with all versions of Komplete Kontrol when hosting the above Kontakt specifications.
53.4GB of disk space are required for the library installation, which uses the NCW lossless compression format.
There are 25 Kontakt NKI master presets which are spread across the various instrument categories as outlined in the introduction.
There are also a further 32 supporting Kontakt NKSN snapshots under the categories of Fantasy Pads, & Dark Drones.
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
Compendium – Eldenvale is entirely downloaded and installed using Native Access 2 which is a reassuringly fully accessible process following registration of your post purchase serial number.
Launching Komplete Kontrol will scan and add the related presets to your factory browser, so you will be already for your journey into Eldenvale!
GENERAL KOMPLETE KONTROL NKS PARAMETER MAPPINGS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE END OF THE REVIEW FOLLOWING THE MEDIA LINKS SECTION
ACCESSIBILITY
As always Fracture Sounds have worked their magic and done a great job with the accessibility for Eldenvale.
The NKS mappings do vary as appropriate between instruments, but rest assured there are no glaring pitfalls or traps to frustrate your exploration, and there are also articulation keyswitches included in some cases as an additional mechanism to help get the best out of the library.
WELCOME TO ELDENVALE
As we all know, any journey begins with a single step, so it seems appropriate to take a glance at the map to see what instruments are included within the library.
Winds:
(legato): wooden flute, tin whistle, low whistle, uilleann pipes
Plucked:
celtic harp, zither, bouzouki, lute, theorbo, harpsichord
Strings:
high strings ensemble, low strings ensemble (includes legato)
Deep drums, frame drums, medieval drums
Metals and church bells
Fantasy pads and dark drones
As you can see, there is a broad range of instruments included which cover a wide vista of creative territory, and everything is here that will enable users to realise a complete and full bodied composition.
LIFTING THE LID – TREASURES ABOUND!
Starting off with the Wind instruments, consisting of Wooden Flute, Tin Whistle, & Low Whistle, these all sound amazingly natural, breathy and emotive, the legato with two modes, is very well implemented, and a keyswitch articulation allows you to change the vibrato amount.
There are 3 microphone settings, Close, Mid, & Far, and the In-Situ section further enables you to adjust the players seating position within the recording field.
The reverb section offers a selection of presets, Lush being the default and provides a suitably warm and rich atmospheric ambience that works very nicely.
There is also an Impulse Response option, which further unlocks an additional selection of real world reverb convolutions.
Also included in the Winds section is the Uilleann Pipes, a bellow operated set of Irish bagpipes.
Bagpipes are not the easiest of instruments to transition into a sample library, but Fracture Sounds have achieved a really credible implementation, splitting the drone section to its own key range, whilst the melodic chanter occupies another section.
The excellent legato system found throughout, not only enhances the authenticity of the playing experience, but I think that this will also transfer to the end audience listening experience with believable realism.
Again the 3 microphone controls and seating perspectives are included, along with the dual legato modes.
PLUCKED
The Celtic Harp is one of several jewels in the crown of Eldenvale, again beautifully captured and very much a joy to play, with all of the same microphone options and In-Situ controls and reverb’s included.
The Celtic Harp also features the 3 selectable atmosphere layers that now grace many of Fracture Sounds products.
These will let you blend together multiple combinations of 3 complementary atmospheric pad style layers, which are fantastic for underpinning the central instrument, and these can be mixed independently of one another alongside the Raw instrument sound as it is referred to.
These atmosphere layers, or layer Blends are also featured with more detailed controls in their own presets within the library, in the Fantasy Pads and Dark Drone patches.
GLISSANDO
Another of the new features introduced in Eldenvale is the Glissando system, when engaged it enables you to hold down a chord and then use the touchstrip of the Komplete Kontrol keyboard (depending on model), to implement a glissando effect.
Don’t worry though, because No one gets left out in the cold, Fracture Sounds have thoughtfully added a selectable midi CC control directly to an NKS knob, so you can change the default CC11 of the touchstrip to something more preferable to your circumstances, like the modwheel if you wish.
The Glissando system does work very well, however in this mode the keyboard is not playable in the usual manner. Instead you need to hold down a silent chord and then use your controller in order to interact and trigger the gliss strum.
In many ways, it would have been nice to be able to play the Celtic Harp and the other gliss enabled instruments normally in a dual articulation, where you could perhaps then add an occasional glissando run with just a quick swipe of the touchstrip while playing, but I guess for technical reasons it really needed to be either one mode or the other in order to work.
There are a number of other instruments within the Plucked category, zither, bouzouki, lute, theorbo, & harpsichord, and these also sound wonderfully well polished.
STRINGS
The Strings are well catered for, and add a capability of an extra cinematic touch to the whole library.
There are High Strings, Low Strings, and also Combined, all of which feature a selection of useful keyswitched articulations such as sustains, Sustained harmonics, con sordino, Staccato, Pizzicato, & col Legno.
The legato is of course an important consideration, and the classic and Fracture Sounds own Smart legato again plays an integral role, I will include a link in the media section which explains in detail how this works.
Also under Strings, we have Solo Cello Phrases which offer some useful inspirations, and are tunable to match your project.
Solo Cello Textures, and Bowed Piano Textures are also featured, and appear to utilise the same excellent scripting technique we saw in the previously released String Formations and Solo String Formations libraries.
When sustained, both can evolve to deliver a fantastic and natural sounding ensemble backwash that is quite capable of carrying a cue under their own steam
DRUMS, METALS, BELLS, & PERCUSSION
Deep Drums, Frame Drums, Medieval Percussion, Metals, & Church Bells will cover literally all of your percussive needs within Eldenvale.
As you would expect the Deep Drums, which are sampled from orchestral bass drums, provide a suitably powerful presence and pleasing low end.
They also have a nice little trick up their sleeve, (do drums have sleeves?), there are keys dedicated to rolls, and within the NKS mapping these have their own dynamics setting, so with diligent use of automation, it is possible to gradually intensify the roll from a gently muted rumble, to a more forceful timbre.
The Frame Drums patch which also includes a traditional Irish Bodhram, give users even more percussive options, both in terms of the size of the instrument as well as the playing techniques that have been sampled.
Medieval percussion offers a selection of relative instruments, small mallet goat skin drums, Marching drums, tambourines. Again these feature really useful performance derivatives such as rolls, and the dynamics controls.
I observed how the tone of the tambourine could subtly change according to key velocity, from a gentle tinkling tap, to a loud strike where the resonance of the skin can clearly be heard, just excellent scripting!
The metals preset including Gongs, Tam-Tams,Cymbals, & Triangles all add some fantastic high frequency polished cake icing to the mix, whilst the gorgeously resonant Church Bells that come courtesy of the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry (home of Big Ben), have surely got to be the cherry on top for even more thematic atmosphere.
LAYER BLENDS
The Fantasy Pads & Dark Drones presets put the Layer Blends engine at the forefront, with a more extensive set of NKS controls than those where atmosphere layers are otherwise included alongside central instruments.
We are able to select from the collection of atmospheres, choose how the modwheel blends between them, globally adjust the Attack & Release, adjust the low & high pass filters, solo each layer, change the octave for each, modify the global sound with the Lo-Fi settings, and work with the Delay & Reverb.
There was not however any included NKS controls for the LFO section mentioned within the manual.
There are also keyswitches which can mute each layer, and also one to randomise the layers for those times when you really don’t feel like experimenting yourself, do remember to turn them on though, as they are switched off by default.
The Dark Drones patch has the same configuration as the Fantasy Pads, however here the included layer blends have been specifically crafted to work as low drones, there is even a sub layer to add further low end to that overall sense of impending menace.
I have always been a huge fan of these Fracture Sounds atmospheric layer blends, and they certainly add an additional sprinkle of magic and fantasy to a library such as Eldenvale.
CHOIR
The Forest Voices preset brings the choir sound of 4 alto voices to the party, with a selection of useful keyswitchable articulations to add a little extra variety, this patch also includes the atmosphere layers, so you can create something really quite haunting and ethereal.
I highly recommend checking out the links in our media section to hear for yourself just what Eldenvale is capable of, and gaining a more detailed insight into the workings behind the Kontakt interface.
CONCLUSION
Compendium – Eldenvale is without doubt a very fine example of a thematic toolkit of high quality.
Often with such libraries there can be a few mediocre offerings, but not so in the case of Eldenvale.
Just like their other thematic library, Zen Meditations (reviewed in November 2023), Fracture Sounds have tapped into a genre that would previously have seen erstwhile composers scouring the sample library marketplace in order to gather together the required products for such projectS.
It is truly bulging at the seams with content, and regrettably time does not permit me to document all of the features and nuances in this review alone.
Eldenvale does I think deliver a beautifully gift wrapped and fully stocked toolkit of remarkable sounding instruments which offer composers the potential to score an entire fantasy world.
Believe me when I say that the joy and exploration of the journey through Eldenvale is as much a part of the adventure as your final destination!
Compendium – Eldenvale is available from the Fracture Sounds website: Intro (Save 30%): £239, $279, €279, until 22nd December 2025.
Also see the Fracture Sounds website for other current sale and bundle offers.
Compendium – Eldenvale Product page:
Eldenvale Product Overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4sK189Auc4
How Legato works in Sample Libraries:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJneejab0G0
Eldenvale User Manual:
https://fracturesounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Compendium-%E2%80%93-Eldenvale-%E2%80%93-User-Manual.pdf
KOMPLETE KONTROL NKS PARAMETER MAPPINGS
Page One – Sound & Mixer
Knob 1 – Colour
Knob 2 – Timbre Shift
Knob 3 – Damping
Knob 4 – Intensity
Knob 5 – Raw Volume
Knob 6 – Atmos layer 1 Volume
Knob 7 – Atmos level 2 Volume
Knob 8 – Atmos level 3 Volume
Page Two – Microphones, Perspective
Knob 1 – Microphones Perspective
Knob 2 – Close Mic
Knob 3 – Mid Mic
Knob 4 – Far Mic
Knob 5 – Atmos layer 1 selector
Knob 6 – Atmos Layer 2 Selector
Knob 7 – atmos Layer 3 Selector
Knob 8 – Unassigned
Page Three – Placement
Knob 1 – Placement: In-Situe, Custom, Centre
Knob 2 – Placement Row
Knob 3 – Placement Seat
Knob 4 – Unassigned
Knob 5 – Stereo Width
Knob 6 – Reverb Level
Knob 7 & 8 – Unassigned
Page Four – Glissando Mode
Knob 1 – Glissando On/Off
Knob 2 – Dynamics
Knob 3 – Double (octave range extender) On/Off
Knob 4 – Strum Control
Knob 5 – Midi CC Assignement (1 to 99)
Knob 6 to 8 – Unassigned
Page Five – Reverb Settings
Knob 1 – Type Selection (includes convolution)
Knob 2 – Reverb Size
Knob 3 – Reverb Damping
Knob 4 – Modulation
Knob 5 – Impulse Response Selector (when convolution is chosen)
Knob 6 to 8 – Unassigned
Page Six – Settings
Knob 1 – Sample Start
Knob 2 – Dynamic Range
Knob 3 – Atmosphere Mode: Natural, Infinite Sustain
Knob 4 to 8 – Unassigned
Drums & Percussion
Two pages of NKS controls including:
Colour, Damping, Pipe, Rolls, Perspective, Close Mic, Mid Mic, Far Mic, Reverb, Dynamic Range, Sample Start
Fantasy Pads & Dark Drones
Five NKS pages includes:
Layer Blend, Layer Sound Selectors 1 to 3, Envelope Attack & Release, Filter Low & High Pass,
Per Layer Solo On/Off, Per Layer Octave switch + 1 or minus 1 octave
Lo-Fi Amount, Saturation, Age, Warble, Hiss, Mechanical, Speaker IR Selector,
Delay Amount, Type Selector, Ping Pong On/Off, Time in Beats (when sync is on), Sync On/Off, Saturation, Damping Feedback
Reverb: full settings as described previously, Accessibility: Keyswitches On/Off
Strings Four NKS pages includes:
Dynamics, Colour, Stereo Width, Reverb Level, Perspective, Close, Mid, & Far Microphones,
Placement Settings, Legato Mode: Smart or Classic, Legato Latency, Legato Speed, Legato Delay CC On/Off,
Sustain Attack, Consort Attack, Release, Harmonics Attack, Release,
Reverb Settings, Dynamic Range, Keyswitch Range
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access.com
24TH November 2025
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About the Author
Based in Buckinghamshire, England, Chris Ankin has worked as a freelance review writer and contributor with articles published in Sound On Sound, Home & Studio Recording and ST Format Magazines.
He has also successfully worked extensively in and around the music, recording, film Soundtrack scoring, Game & media composition, the creative arts, Charitable trusts,publishing, music streaming and property investments since 1982 whilst continuously and deliberately managing to evade any mainstream recognition under his own name by the use of various pseudonyms.
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