Symphonic Orchestra Plugin Your Advise Please !!!

I would recommend you check out either Kirk Hunter's Ruby Orchestra or Diamond if you have Kontakt 2. If not, I would recommend his Emerald for the EXS24. It sounds terrific and the EXS24 is incredibly CPU efficient.

http://www.kirkhunterstudios.com/

Kirk Hunter. I have the Emerald collection (EXS) and it's fantastic for strings, brass, and woodwinds.

Curse this board, I just went and ordered one of the bundles.

Hello Rockfort,

In all honesty, with the quality of todays orchestral libraries, you really cant go wrong. Thats not to say that all sample libs are created equal, but the only one who can make that decision are your ears and pocket book. Also, I do want to point out that many people mix and match their libraries (i.e. VSL strings, Project Sam Brass, etc). Dont think you have to buy a complete orchestra from one company. Listen to demos of each orchestral section and go from there.

Here are my personal favorites by section:
Strings: VSL Appassionata strings (do not own). To me, these are the only strings I've heard that make me swell up with emotion. Take a hard listen to the demos at www.vsl.co,at, and you will see why. Of course this lib was designed for big sections, so you may want to also get their Orchestral Strings and/or Chamber Strings to augment them, or go with another company. Another string lib people seem to like is Sonivox Symphonic Strings.

Brass: Wallander (own). I'm absolutely LOVING this library! No samples to load in RAM, no keyswitches for different articulations, and the sound is absolutely AMAZING!! To me, Wallander is a perfect complement to "traditional" sample libraries, as it relies on CPU rather than RAM, which you can save for your strings / perc. Plus, with a breath controller, this library shines and is extremely convincing, as you are never playing the same sample twice, and have complete control over the dynamics / sound of the instrument. Try their free demo player and see for yourself!! Note, the demo doesn't have all the tweaking options available. I'm currently making video demo/review of WIVI Brass for my personal website ( http://www.shopjt3.com), and hope to have it up in early December. Send me an email at jt3_jon at yahoo.com and I'll update you when its online.

Woodwinds: Westgate modular series (own oboe). I have the westgate oboe module, and think its an incredible library! The players he's hired sound great, and with the K2 programing, the library really sounds natural. However, you do need Kontakt to play it (it does not come with a sample player). If you don't own Kontakt, you may want to again try Wallander here. I have not yet tried their winds, but if its anything like their brass, it will be next on my wish list (too bad the price is a tad high for my current financial situation).

Percussion: Project Sam True Strike
To me, this is hands down the best percussion samples on the market. They run in EXS, and sound amazing! Go to http://www.projectsam.com/ and hear for yourself. They sometimes have holiday sales; crossing my fingers they have one this year. 🙂

EWQLSO Gold is a VERY good library. The natural ambiance and panning of the samples makes Gold very easy to use. However, with this ease comes limitations, as you are stuck with the ambiance in the samples (note, you CAN turn off the release tails, but you CANNOT turn off the "hall" the samples were recorded in). So if all you do is big, orchestral mockups, Gold is a great option. However, if you want more variety of applications, I'd look into samples recorded in a "small" room. All the above libraries have the "small room" option (WIVI you create your own hall, and Project sam has "close, medium, far" mic positions; Note EWQLSO Platinum also has 3 mic positions). I personally prefer this as I can add my own reverbs via space designer, which allow for a greater control and variety if use IMO. For example, I just used my VSL opus flute on a latin jazz song with convincing results. I could not have done the same with EW Gold, unless the Jazz combo was playing in a concert hall. 🙂

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away either here or email. Wish you all the best in your orchestral endeavors!

rockfort,

Instruments 1 - 24 for woodwinds, 25 - 48 for brass, 49 - 64 for all other instruments, and 65 - 96 for strings. 97 for piano, 98 - 105 for choir. Not precisely "score order" but it works for now.

I don't used a fixed set of samples for every orchestration. I bounce between about 12 or more different libraries for strings, 8 libraries for brass, 4 libraries for harp, 6 libraries for percussion, and so on. I mix and match all the time. And I usually load up samples as I need them.

I generally start composing using an across-the-board string patch from one whichever library seems to have the right "vibe" for what I'm writing. So my first job is to audition string libraries for their "combo" string patches. I play everything in, and imagine tremolo parts. When I'm done with the basic composition I will then break out separate trill patches, tremolo patches, violins, violas, celli, basses, harmonics, etc. I will use keyswitching if the program is setup that way, but I won't use, say, the Kirk Hunter tremolo that's part of one of his combo strings keyswitching patch if that tremolo doesn't have the right speed or tonal quality for my music. In such a case I move those notes up to a track assigned to a tremolo patch which I've chosen from another library, set a static level for it, and see how it sounds. 99 times out of 100 I end up replaying the part anyway. For instance, if the tremolo comes out of a slow legato sustained part, I will replay the tremolo notes slightly before their actual entrance and, using a fader on my controller keyboard, fade it up into the end of the legato part. I might also record automation on the release of the EXS instrument playing the legato sound so that when I'm done I have a perfect dovetailing between legato and tremolo.

Might seem like a lot of trouble, but that's how I do things 🙂

Part of the drama of orchestral writing is the change of timbre produced when, say, a string section moves from legato to trilling or tremolo. So I find more often than not that the tonal differences between libraries aren't a problem for this kind of writing.

It's particularly important to switch between libraries when doing trills or tremoloandi on string parts, because there's no guarantee that the rate at which these kinds of articulations were played will be right for the tempo of the music. Still, a lot of the time I end up playing my own violin trills (say) on a violin patch that will speak well for that purpose, because none of my libraries have trill samples that are the right speed.

Same goes with pizz. samples. I don't think I've ever used, say, Sonic Implants (giga conversions) legato and then used the Sonic Implants pizz along with them.

And then there's the idea that you can get really articulation crazy for no reason other than you have articulations to play with! For example, bassoon. I can use a single bassoon patch to play legato and staccato merely by playing the part legato or staccato. No need to load up bassoon staccato sounds (or even keyswitch articulations) if the part sounds right from a single bassoon patch.

Anyway, gotta run, but I hope that gives you a "somewhat" answer to your question!

🙂

I forgot to mention this in my post. EWQLSO Gold is the "medium" mic position from EWQLSO Platinum. In Platinum, you get this "medium" mic position, as well as a "far" and a "close." The "close" mics, which though recorded in the same large concert hall, have much less room reflections and thus you MAY get away with using those mics in a "chamber" setting, adding your own verb.

All the best!

"18 piece violin" in this case means that the samples recorded were produced by 18 violin players and they are not available on seperate outputs.

The choices are obvious to those that seek answers... What do you like? Thats your answer....

Cryptical and poetic.....

The east west gold and platinum libraries sound very good, but there are some issues I have with it.

With gold, you only get one fairly wet mic position. Everything has a lot of hall on it. You can hide that a bit by turning off release tails or tweaking the envelope, but that only does so much - if you want the ability to have drier sounds, I'd look elsewhere.

The library is fairly complete, but still has a number of omissions that are available in comparable libraries. No E flat clarinet, alto flute, bass flute, sax, contrabass clarinet, euphonium, etc. No true legato intervals like vienna has, and wallander and synful seem to be able to emulate. And from what they've said it sounds like they have no plans to expand their orchestral libraries, which is disappointing.

At this point, the EW libraries will only run on an intel mac if you pay $280 more for Kontakt. They have promised intel support for well over a year now, but they still haven't shipped the update to their new PLAY plugin. Many release dates have come and gone, they said fall, then November, then by the end of the year, but I suspect it will probably be spring at the earliest.

I'm not crazy about how EW does business, either. They have a history of making promises of future support and not keeping them. It seems like they try to pressure customers into committing to a buy before products are ready or supported, then once the purchase is made, they don't care about delivering what they promised.

For example, for the past few months they've been having sales on many of their current products with offers of a free upgrade to their new plugin when it is available. Stormdrum was one that was promoted this way, and now that many people bought it based on the promise that it would get ported to their new plugin (giving it intel support) now they're saying that they don't plan to update, and that people should just buy their upcoming SD2 instead. To make matters worse, they're even claiming that they never promised this, even though there are a number of references to it in their user forum. When people pointed this out, they just locked the thread - in the past I've even had my account blocked for pointing things like this out.

Nice sounding libraries, but it's hard to overlook treating customers like that.

That is "not" cool at all - although great sounding (PC), I am also awaiting a intel UPDATE - - however that being said, I look at it this way.
• EWQL = intant gratification out of the box
• VSL = nothing comes close to the legato patches, but dry and have to use your own reverb and know where to place the instruments (easy to do with a chart).

Together both would work, for the here and now, you would need VSL (intel only).

My .02 cents.