Best Orchestral Library?

Best Orchestral Library?

I received this recently.. I don't own it but I've heard good reviews. Good deal from what I understand. Excuse the forwarded advertising - I have no affiliation


Miroslav Philharmonik Classik Edition
Orchestral workstation. The lushest strings you have ever heard and much more... Perfect for your next soundtrack, platinum hip-hop hit, power ballad, or club-anthem.
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More information about flaws and what you think this Complete Classical Collection 2nd Edition - Peter Siedlaczek
i tested this and i thinking is maybe egnoch for starting.

ORIGINAL: jpq
Best Orchestral Library?

Do you have a platform to base your decision on? E.g., if you already own Kontakt (v2+), then you have many many options. If you're looking for an all-in-one solution with it's own player/engine, then that's a bit different.

I think you'll find that there are a lot of really good options out there theses days... back in the day, VSL was really the only high-end game in town, and that would cost you 1000's of $$$ to get started. Today there's quite a bit of competition. Some vendors/products to look into:

EWQLSO -- as mentioned
VSL -- as mentioned
Kirk Hunter -- e.g., Diamond Orchestra, plus he has some new live scripting coming out for playability
Peter Siedlaczek -- particularly his String Essentials 2nd Edition -- go find the demos on Best Service!!!
Westgate Studios -- K2(+) "modular" libraries, high quality stuff here
XSample -- particularly the new Chamber Ensemble product -- great for scoring and live use!
Dan Dean -- a bit older
Vir2 -- particularly their Elite Orchestral Percussion... if you need comprehensive percussion
ProjectSAM -- True Strike percussion, plus nice brass
Wallander Instruments -- WIVI - excellent excellent excellent physically modeled brass and woodwinds!!! an exciting new approach to massive sample libraries

I think you'll find that people that use alot of the products such as those above wll tell you "there is no 'best' library"... and they use the best bits from a variety of products.

I'm sure I've forgotten a lot, but get your google fingers ready to do some searching...

Also, join up here -- http://www.northernsounds.com -- and start asking questions in their Sample Libraries forum. Lots of users of the above products, as well as many others.

Which do you prefer for strings (solo and ensemble)?

The demo's speak for themselves, but here is what I prefer.

I think multiple instrument sections in EWQL sound more life-like and realistic. The solo instruments are great if used in an orchestral context.

Solo instruments used in a real solo context benefit from the added functionality and versatility of the Vienna Symphonic Library. (Listen to the trumpet solo in Quiet City by Aaron Copland in the demo section, pretty darn good). VSL is just more flexible when it comes to articulations.

I think these are the two best "Complete" libraries out there. Some companies have superior sounding solo libraries and idiomatic section libraries. I do not like the Garritan Personal Orchestra, but they have a great solo cello library.

The best orchestral library for you depends on how much money you have to spend and the power of your computer system. Also, what style of music do you do? So there is no one answer for this.

Jim

ORIGINAL: jpq

Best Orchestral Library?

Hey Jp
I would be weary about getting the East West Orchestra for now.I say this because the product is now being replaced by their PLAY system.Same package and all,but has a new interface.
I purchased their Gypsy package not long ago,which was one of the first to come out with PLAY.It was buggy,and I had to wait for the first update for it to run in a usable state.I got the feeling that the software wasn't really tested well at all.I remember one person a while ago on this forum that couldn't get it to work at all,and just gave up in the end.
It *might* be more stable now.Personally I wouldn't bother though.I'd hate to see people like yourself spend what could potentially be over 1K for a software which is still in its teething days.Customers at the end shouldn't be made guinea pigs to check the reliabilty of the products.All of the testing should be done before the product hits the market IMHO.This wasn't the case with PLAY.I'd be very careful (for now) about looking their direction.Plus their customer service is ****e.Once they've got the money of you,you're on your own.
Think before you sink is my advice.
K

Kev it depends on your budget ultimately , say ranging from £50-100.. up to £3000-6000 mark.. CM mag made it their main feature this month.. some are entry level which are ok and get the job done, but I'd rather hire a few string players (4 or 6) and multi track/ get them to play again to make a massive sound.

theres loads of tricks to make the sounds more real, and helpful when your making the tune, but when it comes to the final tune nothing can beat real players.

jpq, if you're leaning toward the Siedlaczek products, you can actually try them out a bit if you register here:

http://www.try-sound.com

That service was set up by Best Service to allow some of their products to be "tried out" online -- it's pretty slick! Though due to the WAN connection, the latency is pretty high -- 150ms or so. But still, you can peruse the entire product and get a sense of overall quality. You can even use a MIDI keyboard to do so, if you can deal with the latency!

What you do is register your email account, then they send you an email to activate your account. Once you'e done that you can create a 15-minute "session" for a chosen plugin, and they give you a standalone EXE for that session. Once you're in, you can adjust the settings of the session -- e.g., default audio rate is 128kbps, and I think you can go all the way up to 320kbps if you have the bandwidth...

For whoever wants to try an inexspensive but very very reralistic hardware Orchestral outboard module should really check these out. I have both of these. There very very relaistic
http://www.ketron.com/itemdetails.asp?mod=SD2

http://www.ketron.com/itemdetails.asp?mod=SD4
Cj

East West Symphonic Gold fits your budget, and is the best bank for the buck (pun intended, of course :#)

Hardware-wise, I've always preferred Roland's orchestral samples over Kurz or Yammy, and the SRX cards are another great way to get symphonic sounds for cheap, if you already own the Roland hardware.

ORIGINAL: rumleymusic

There very very realistic

If the demos are faithful to the real thing then I have to respectfully disagree. It sounds very '90s synthy.

EWQLSO Gold is a great choice, though I think it is a little over your budget. Something to look into though. It has the same sound set as Platinum but it is not 24 bit with multiple mic positions. Even if PLAY has a few glitches, it is new software and they will fix the problems soon enough.

You know, Dean, I was wrong about the price of EWSG -- I quickly checked google and saw a price of $299, but didn't click the link -- it was for the expansion to EW, not the base product.

Thanks for your correction. It is double the OP's budget for the base unit, though I bought mine for $500 last year during a sale.

CJaysMusic,

I listened to some of the SD2's demos. Very realistic indeed. But how can you build works for large symphony orchestras? The only orchestral demo they have is made with a somewhat larger country music orchestra. One violin, etc. I don't think SD2 ($360 at B&H minus the cable interface) can gather 24 violins, 6 horns, etc.

Sylva

Edit:

Actually, sorry, first I listened through my terrible desktop speakers. Then through my Delta44 sound card. There is NO country music orchestra there whatsoever, no violin, but a regular Smooth Jazz orchestra. Through my desktop speakers the Soprano Sax sounded like a violin. The Sax comes through great via the sound card. The question remains: is there any way to write for large orchestra with the SD2?

Anyone know?

Thanks, Sylva

My favorite string ensembles are the ancient East West Ultimate Strings Collection (converted from a Roland-fomatted disk to soundfont). You're not going to find 2000 different articulations, but the overall sound is incredibly pretty. I actually prefer it to the newer EWQL stuff. I combine those with the old Advanced Orchestra (which I also conveted to soundfont) or the Miroslav String Ensembles.

For brass I still find that Quantum Leap Brass does the trick, especially when its layered with either the Miroslav Brass Ensembles or a virtual analog synth. As I don't do "straight" orchestral emulations, these elements mixed in with more contemporary production elements sounds very convincing.

A lot of the string voices are already layered, however, the SD4 also gives you the capability to layer up to 3 voices at once (each one having different parameters applied to it). With the sounds sounding so rich, multi - layering might not even be required, but yes - to get that very, very think effect, I use Protools to physically layer the audio tracks ... seems to be working for me. Anyone else have other ideas?