About us
We make orchestral libraries in unmatched quality
We deliver stellar orchestral instruments for a cinematic age. Our dramatic 'ProjectSAM sound' has been filling theaters and living rooms around the world since 2001. With our highly musical approach and intuitive interfacing, ProjectSAM has pushed the boundaries of orchestral instruments several times.
Founded in 2001
Composers Maarten Spruijt, Vincent Beijer and Marco Deegenaars teamed up to found ProjectSAM. Not fully satisfied with the orchestral samples available at the time, they set out to record their own, focusing on three main things:
1) an ambient, multi-mic setup in a concert hall environment, 2) the right set of articulations, emphasising on note lengths in- between a sustain and a staccato, to be able to build thematic lines, and 3) instrumental effects that cannot simply be recreated using individual samples.
Our team
Vincent Beijer
Managing & recording engineer | Founder
Vincent met Maarten and Marco at the Utrecht school of Arts. He works tightly together with Maarten in the conceptualisation of new products and is also responsible for strategy & new business. Did you know that every sample you’ve heard from ProjectSAM has been recorded and mixed by Vincent?
Vincent has a background in songwriting and recording.
Maarten Spruijt
Creative & programming | Founder
Maarten plays an important role in the conceptualization of new libraries, getting a feel for what to record and how a composer would use these recordings in the final product. He has also been responsible for the Kontakt scripting of ProjectSAM’s libraries for the past few years.
Film music has always been one of Maarten’s greatest passions. He has composed the scores for a number of films, series and games. In his spare time he loves to play the piano, drums and bass.
Marco Deegenaars
Finance & quality assurance | Founder
Marco has been responsible for ProjectSAM’s finances since the beginning. This includes accounting, managing reseller orders and the webshop. In addition, he monitors the quality of performance during recording sessions and takes care of the tuning of samples. Nothing better than a beautifully tuned orchestra!
Marco is also a musician and produces CD Productions for Show & Marching Bands. He has been playing flute and piano for many years.
Colin van der Lei
Mapping & notation wizard
Colin’s work spans across composing demos, orchestrating for orchestra recordings, programming and video editing. From creative duties to software development, Colin’s responsibilities reflect a broad scope of involvement in different aspects of ProjectSAM’s output.
Colin is passionate about film music, orchestration and music theory. He has composed music for various films, series and games, and orchestrated for numerous composers and orchestras.
Wytse Braaksma
Support & editing magician
Wytse takes care of many tasks in the field of communication with our customers, partners and colleagues. This includes responding to incoming Support Tickets as well as formulating outgoing social media posts and communications on the forums. He is also actively involved in the editing and mapping of samples and is passionate to think along his colleagues for new ideas and concepts.
In addition to being an avid gamer himself, he is also a fan of video game music and also enjoys composing music in his spare time.
Refinement and continuous innovation.
Free Trumpets
Following the above concept, ProjectSAM aimed for a more epic, cinematic sounding recording. In 2001, ProjectSAM’s first test recordings resulted in the Free Trumpets, a Gigastudio instrument of a 3-player trumpet section performing multiple articulations in unison. ProjectSAM posted this instrument online as a free download for the composer community. The Free Trumpets served as the proof of concept for ProjectSAM’s first commercial release in 2002: SAM Horns.
Many releases have followed since, further defining ProjectSAM’s cinematic recording concept, first completing the family of orchestral brass, then moving on to orchestral percussion.
Symphobia
Apart from a carefully selected set of articulations, ProjectSAM has always been keen to record an inspiring set of orchestral effects alongside, ranging from French horn rip clusters to bowed cymbals.
After completing percussion with True Strike, ideas grew for a new library that focused more intensively on orchestral effects, as well as playable, pre-arranged orchestral ensembles. Teased under the working name SAM Movie Box, 2008 saw the release of what would become the game changer library for ProjectSAM as well as, arguably, the orchestral sampling industry: Symphobia.
Adaptive sync
Symphobia is ProjectSAM’s most successful release yet and quickly became an indispensable tool of inspiration for many film, tv and game composers. ProjectSAM developed and released three follow-ups, expanding the palette of the original release with the darker sounding Symphobia 2 in 2010, the lighter, fantasy-themed Symphobia 3: Lumina in 2013 and in 2019 introducing ‘adaptive sync’ with the orchestral effects focused Symphobia 4: Pandora.
ProjectSAM has also successfully explored the jazzier, bigband side of film scoring with Swing! and the acclaimed sequel Swing More!.
Based in Utrecht
ProjectSAM’s office holds a small team and is based in the beautiful old city centre of Utrecht in The Netherlands.
Address: ProjectSAM, Oudegracht 376, 3511 PR Utrecht, Nederland
Email: info@projectsam.com
Chamber of Commerce: KvK 55510744 - VAT number: NL851744886B01 - Bank IBAN: NL40 INGB 0009392877 - Bank BIC: INGBNL2A
Our distributors
Apart from our own online store, our products are also carried by the following distributors:
Europe
- Best Service
USA
- PluginFox
- Audiodeluxe
- JRRshop
Japan
- Crypton Future Media
China
- Feilayin Computer Music Technology
South Korea
- Music Metro
Taiwan
- DIMI CO
India
- Sudeep Audio