Friends, colleagues, partners, now that the chaos surrounding the release has somewhat passed, I can finally take the time to reflect on what's happened so far.

After some years, what made us even think of a second version?

We felt like the sound the first Rhodope library offered wasn't rich enough. Recording this type of specific throat singing presents a challenge totally different from the strings recordings, for example. What we were able to get out of Rhodope 2 is a whole new thing. We owe this new sound mainly to the higher number of singers we were able to record this time – that way the sound in the higher frequencies doesn't sound so refined. Let's face it – you can't ignore budgeting! :)

Back then, when we created Rhodope: Core, we had different intentions – to provide our users with a tool that can allow them to construct words of their own by combining separate letters (vowels and consonants). As intuitive and user-friendly as we figured it to be, it still felt too time – consuming. A composer nowadays, at least to my mind, can't really afford to spend two whole days just constructing lyrics.

A bit later came Wotan. Then there was Freyja; with your help we were able to tweak “her” a bit and make her even more powerful. It didn't take long for Arva to come to life, too, even though working with children is a bit more challenging, to be honest.

Only after so many trials and errors had we learned enough for us to bring you guys a truly intuitive library.

The Core version was recorded with the Philip Koutev National Folk Ensemble, conducted by Georgi Andreev. We created EXP:A with the help of The Cosmic Voices Choir and conductor Vanya Moneva. Take a step back and remember the “budgeting” part – we could only afford to record a couple of singers for the first version of Rhodope. For our latest prodigy we brought out the big guns – the complete women's Cosmic Voices Choir consisting of twenty singers to ensure a more balanced sound, especially for the lower registers.

The salesman in me speaking now... if you're wondering why would you need to own the second part of our ethnic choir library:

• Brand new sound thanks to the women's choir we recorded (20 singers as opposed to 10 in version 1.0), every singer brings her own colour to the recordings, based on the folklore region she comes from

• Syllabuilder 3.0 engine – Core and Exp:A limit you only to sustains while Rhodope 2 has got staccattos added to it; moreover it has a large array of effects (cluster, risers, shouts, etc.) and the powerful options of the engine like Morph, Connect and the Agile legato.

• Full compatibility with the presets you are already using with Wotan, Freyja and Arva

If I am to tell you the differences between both versions in one sentence - “2” is intuitive, user-friendly and gives you the sound we feel lives up to our standards... after all we are Bulgarians and our folklore singing is more accessible to us, we can relate and evaluate it a bit more easily :)

We are really proud to be able to show the world the value of our folklore with our products through the whole Rhodope series and Tupans X3M. You can be sure we will continue to do so in the future as well ;)

Greetings from Sofia,

George