Nagual: Pre-Hispanic Ceremonial Instrument Plugin by MNTRA Instruments

The instruments in Nagual are wind and percussion sources, including clay water flutes, conch shell trumpets, Huehuetl and Teponaztli drums, and ocarinas. The developer recorded them in a live room in Mexico City using several microphone setups, including mid-side close miking, omnidirectional ambience, back-facing room microphones and Eigenmike ambisonics.

The samples were captured at 384 kHz/32-bit in E.R.A. (Extended Resolution Audio) format, a high-resolution format that preserves detail well beyond normal hearing range. Multimic output reaches up to four stereo streams, which gives you room to shape the balance of close and ambient sound in your mix.

The range runs from C1 to C5, and each sample uses up to 10 round robins to reduce repetition on repeated notes.

Nagual includes 134 presets across three groups: Elements, Atelier and Artist. The Atelier group contains 64 presets and the Artist group contains 13. The developer names several presets as stages of a journey, including "First Attention," "Second Attention," "The Void" and "Between Worlds."

Because the instrument is played like a synthesizer, you can use the presets as starting points, then adjust them for your own arrangement. The library installs at 1.41 GB, so plan for storage space and a fast drive when loading large sample sets.