ST3’s awesome selection of acoustic and electric guitars was already a triumph, but ST4’s 25GB stash trumps it for both depth and variety. The new Yamaha C7 grand piano (145GB), with its multiple mic setups and treatments, is absolutely beautiful, and the other keyboards (electric pianos, clavs, etc) aren’t exactly shabby, either. Recorded at numerous studios around the world, as well as IK’s new facility in Modena, the ST4 library prioritises the depth of its headline instruments as much as it does the sheer volume of its sounds. Once you’ve made it through the ordeal of installation, a vast and - for the most part - impressive world of multisampled instrumentation is yours to command, adding over 200GB of entirely new material and previously separate expansion packs to the SampleTank 3 library (also included).

See the IK website for a content comparison. Two lesser versions - SampleTank 4 and SampleTank 4 SE - reduce the figures considerably, for €180 and €360 respectively. As well as the new features that will be the focus of this review, SampleTank 4 MAX smokes those numbers, weighing in at an insane 260GB, with 120,000 samples fuelling over 8000 multisampled instruments (see In the ’Tank) and 7500 loops, plus 4000-odd MIDI patterns.

SampleTank 3 introduced a completely new - and much improved - interface and engine, Live Sets (for quick switching between ‘songs’) and more, and increased the size of the sample library from 8GB to 33GB, amounting to over 4000 instruments. Described in our review of version 3 as “big and beautiful, if not particularly bold”, this 16-part multitimbral workstation aims to put an enormous and comprehensive library of lovingly recorded drums, basses, keys, guitars, synths, strings, brass, ethnic instrumentation, FX and anything else you can think of at your fingertips, quickly and easily, but with plenty of sound-shaping, processing and customisation options.

Loops in sampletank 4