First orchestral libray, what will you suggest?

[labou]

Hi,

I want to get a first orchestral sounds library in the 300$ range and will like to seek for advice.
I'm tempted now by MOTU SI for it's wide range of instruments, convolution reverb, low CPU and memory usage and the UVI engine seems pretty decent editing wise, but I red in a review that 5% of the sound were not too good which seems oriented in the strings, any owner can comment?
In the other hand GPO have really impressive demo, but the kontakt player seems pretty limited and the lack of exotics instruments and voices seems pretty hard to fill with another not too expensive library.
I also notice that a lot of people here seems to use Philharmonik, however I haven't come across really convincing demo and it's a bit more pricy.
Any other I'm missing?

Also, reading the post here it seems pretty clear that most of you are using more than one libraries, so I guess each developper has their strenght and weekness, but in my case i'm not looking in a library to do complete score works, but more to add color in different other musical style.

Any advice will be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Francis.

[davecos]

Hi,

I want to get a first orchestral sounds library in the 300$ range and will like to seek for advice.
I'm tempted now by MOTU SI for it's wide range of instruments, convolution reverb, low CPU and memory usage and the UVI engine seems pretty decent editing wise, but I red in a review that 5% of the sound were not too good which seems oriented in the strings, any owner can comment?
In the other hand GPO have really impressive demo, but the kontakt player seems pretty limited and the lack of exotics instruments and voices seems pretty hard to fill with another not too expensive library.
I also notice that a lot of people here seems to use Philharmonik, however I haven't come across really convincing demo and it's a bit more pricy.
Any other I'm missing?

Also, reading the post here it seems pretty clear that most of you are using more than one libraries, so I guess each developper has their strenght and weekness, but in my case i'm not looking in a library to do complete score works, but more to add color in different other musical style.

Any advice will be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Francis.

Francis, for what it's worth, I urge you NOT to buy MOTU SI. Frankly, it sucks. I bought it last year and aside from the recorders and period instruments, I never use it. I don't dislike MOTU as I own their ultraLite and DP5. But this is the biggest piece of poo I have heard. The samples aren't any better than old Roland orchestral expansion. Heck, the Roland is better. Miroslav Philharmonik has a Classic Edition that is scaled down but is within your price range. I like Miro although in some instrument depts. it shows its age.

I own almost something from every developer in terms of orchestral libraries so I hope I can give you a fairly objective perspective.

EWQLSO Silver Pro- Good for the money (I think it's one sale now too). Low latency, CPU. Nice Steinway piano. Some choral stuff. Weak in the legato string dept. though. No chromatic sampling. No release trails. Does include solo strings which aren't bad. Qlegato is more successful in brass than winds or strings.

Kontakt 2 (with VSL instruments). Probably the best value as you get the K2 player which many libraries are formatted for plus you get VSL orchestral instruments. they sound very good and you get the legato horns and solo flute which sound friggin' gorgeous (I use both all of the time). Celesta is nice. Harp is beautiful. Even has mod wheel control patches that simulate more realistic bowing for stringed instruments with (NEVER use velocity for strings).

M-Audio Orchestral Strings
M-Audio Orchestral Brass
M-Audio Orchestral Winds- all three of these come packaged seperately but they are derived from Sonic Implants bigger libraries. nice smooth sounds. Good price ($100 Canadian per pack). Not as much variety as the other libs but nice professional sound. HOWEVER, you need Kontakt, HALion or EXS (not a problem if you already own Logic Express or Pro) to run them.

Project SAM- basically just brass and percussion at the moment but god help us if they ever decide to release a full on orchestral library. Their brass cannot be beaten IMO.

GPO I don't own this library but own J&BB and Strad 2. What I like about Garritan products is the level of control you have over the instruments. GPO is probably the cheapest of the lot and has some nice ways of shaping the instruments to your phrasing but I really don't like the brass. I find them a little anemic. But I hear lots of great demos from people and even Wendy Carlos, the godmother of synthesis praises Gary's products and that ain't no small endorsement!

HALion Symphony Orchestra- This for me was a real steal as I corss-graded from HALion String Edition so I got a 27 gigabyte library with 24 bit samples for under $300. To my ears, this is a very good library. I don't think the demos did it justice on the Steinberg site to be honest. I've gotten some terrific results from it. But it lacks a piano and harp which kind of sucks. for a library that normally goes for $500 that's a bit of a gip.

Kirk Hunter Emerald I have repeatedly heard great things about this library. Go to Kirk's website to check out some demos including individual articulations (nice one there Kirk!) as well as full on demos. But once again, this either requires that you already own Kontakt 2 or else EXS.

Hope this helps you out.

David

[BenBotkin]

The $300 range?

I would say the frontrunner in that range would be GPO.

I do not have hands-on experience with the other above mentioned packages, but from my study and the demos I have heard, GPO seem to give the biggest bang-for-buck.

I have been a satisfied GPO user since mid '05.
It is true, the brass instruments are probably the weakest part of the library- but if you play aroung and do a lot of tweaking you can get some more-than-decent sound out of them.
Unfortunately this is the kind of tweaking that requires having the library long enough to get used to it.

Big plus, it retails for $200.
Another plus, it only takes up 2GB hard drive space.
Another plus, I can run four full instances of GPO (32 instruments) smoothly on a AMD 3000+ system with 1GB RAM.
Another plus, GPO comes as a stand alone package, bundled with a lite version of Kontakt player, so it can be easily integrated into any DAW without previously owning a sampler.
I have 2 gig now, so the only thing limiting me now is my CPU. (usually no more than 40 instruments)

GPO has my recommendation.

[noldar12]

Another vote for GPO. The use of the mod wheel to control volume, and velocity to control attack is very straight forward and works quite well. GPO is a great starting point, and very helpful in learning about orchestration. Note also Gary's on-line course on orchestration as well.

Jim

[germancomponist]

Hi,

I want to get a first orchestral sounds library in the 300$ range and will like to seek for advice.
I'm tempted now by MOTU SI for it's wide range of instruments, convolution reverb, low CPU and memory usage and the UVI engine seems pretty decent editing wise, but I red in a review that 5% of the sound were not too good which seems oriented in the strings, any owner can comment?
In the other hand GPO have really impressive demo, but the kontakt player seems pretty limited and the lack of exotics instruments and voices seems pretty hard to fill with another not too expensive library.
I also notice that a lot of people here seems to use Philharmonik, however I haven't come across really convincing demo and it's a bit more pricy.
Any other I'm missing?

Also, reading the post here it seems pretty clear that most of you are using more than one libraries, so I guess each developper has their strenght and weekness, but in my case i'm not looking in a library to do complete score works, but more to add color in different other musical style.

Any advice will be really appreciated.

Thanks.

Francis.

Hello,

if I were you, I would buy the GPO or/and the Kirk Hunters Emerald.

This two libraries give you sooo much!

Best regards

[ZareOne]

I know it goes beyond the $300 limit, but the guys from Vienna have released the Special Edition of their Vienna Instruments. The Standard library costs $445, and it has the same sample player as the bigger one. Have a look at: http://vsl.co.at/en-us/211/412/293.vsl

I own Kirk Hunter's Emerals, and I agree it's very playable. It has tons of presets, but most of them based on the same samples. I have heard there are lots of samples which are not used by any preset, so they're only wasting space (have in mind I have not checked it). I own ProjectSAM Brass, and I think it's faaar better sounding than Emerald's, but no so playable.

I hear lots of phasing in the brass and strings, and some sound anomalies I can't describe. In the sound department, I find GPO a lot more consistent, without noises (you can add noise if you want to, adding noise samples in the sequencer). I really like GPO woods and strings, but it's harder to master them. Emerald is maybe more usable out of the box, but I have heard great themes rendered with GPO (look for Roberto Ferrari's aka beach compositions in this forum, specially his adagios).

If you can live with the sound inconsistences of Emerald, get it. If not, buy GPO or save for VSL Special Edition.

Just my € 0.02

[nikolas]

Personally I would stay away from EWQL silver. Very soon you will start feeling cheated for the things you're missing.

GPO can work much better with (a little more effort) and better results than Silver.

[Ashermusic]

I really like Emerald , so much that I pushed Kirk to do an EXS24 version which he did. It is very playable and has its own sound.

However, I will tell you on another forum I paricipate in I recommended it and man, did it get dissed.

Apparently this forum will not let me post the link to that forum for some reason. I have some theories about that which if you pm me I will expand upon.

Bottom line: listen to the demos. If you like the sound of them I would not worry about unused samples (which apparently EW has also) or reprocessed samples. If it sounds good, it is good.

[jmc]

Personally I would stay away from EWQL silver. Very soon you will start feeling cheated for the things you're missing.

GPO can work much better with (a little more effort) and better results than Silver.

I 'd like to second this opinion. I have both GPO and Silver, and GPO is a more complete package (also a LOT more instruments), particularly if you are just beginning your foray into sample libraries. It is very intuitively programmed, and you have all your major articulations. It also has a great support community here on NS, and some of the best tech support ever. Silver has some nice sounds that I do use, but I have never done a piece only with Silver, because it is missing so much.

I'm very impressed with the demos for Emerald. I don't own it, but I wish I did. The only drawback that I often read is in comparison to GPO--for someone just starting out--it can be overwhelming, by sheer numbers of samples to wade through. Also you need to have a sample player, since this is a library only.

Hope that helps!

[ThomasL]

Hi all!

I'm quite new on this forum (been "lurking" awhile) but this is my first post since I couldn't resist sharing my 2 cents.

For about two weeks ago I was in this very same situation. I read everything I could get my hands on on the net and, well, I just got Emerald and I must say that I'm really pleased with it.

The "problem" with the multitude of patches isn't really a problem if you spend like 60 seconds to try and familiarize yourself with the abbrevations.

In my opinion it's actually a strength. You have a patch for every passage in your music AND/OR you have large keyswitched ones as well with different types of modulation-wheel control to suit different playing styles.

I like it alot so far.

All I really can recommend you to do is to listen to the demos. If you like them, you'll like Emerald.


Regards
Thomas

[labou]

Wow, that's a lot more than I whish for, thanks everybody.
So MOTU SI is no go, reviews were not that harsh, thanks davecos.
Does anybody knows if Emerald might be ported to kontak2 player since it's already a kontakt library? Just the price of kontakt is more than I wanted to spend and I can really live without it as I use other samplers.
Also, I'm sure I red somewhere that GPO might get an extended library edition, does anybody's knows if it is just more samples for what is already there or new instrument, voices,....
I will also consider VSL...

Too many options....

[dalek3]

I have GPO and never use it.. though I've heard some really good demos to come of it, I don't have the patience to tweak it to that point to get results that good.. I have other libraries (such as Emerald) that I can get to sound as good or better without needing to spend hours tweaking the individual sounds. Out of the box, even in a nice Altiverb hall, I don't personally like the sound of GPO that much.

That being said, I don't think it was ever designed to be the end-all-and-be-all of sample libraries, but simply an easy idiot-proof, dumbed-down, low system requirements way to get into the world of MIDI and samplers, which is ordinarily quite confusing, complicated, and requires high powered computers. GPO's interface is easy enough that it provides about the most user friendly possible introduction to the world of sampling and MIDI.

If you've already done quite a bit of MIDI work, and are comfortable enough in your technical computer knowledge, you could skip GPO and go for stuff like Emerald and other libraries.. They tend to require more technical knowledge to get going and use but they also IMO sound better out of the box.

It also can't be stressed enough how much of a difference a good convolution reverb makes. If you're new to sampling, this is something that you may overlook. Voxengo's Pristine Space has a nice low price point (I think about $120) and is very well reviewed, though I haven't used it myself. If you don't have a good convolution reverb, you won't get any libraries sounding realistic (except things like EWQL that already have hall ambience).

If you're not really a computer expert and new to MIDI stuff, I would probably suggest GPO and a convolution reverb.

If you have more computer know-how and perhaps have had MIDI experience, I would suggest Emerald and a convolution reverb.

Mike

[AlexDavis]

Dear labou,

The new VSL "Special Edition", while above the price range of many other libraries, looks like it will be a VERY nice collection. Basically it's the core of almost everything VSL has to offer (they've managed to trim it down to 80GB). I own the Symphonic Cube, and find myself using those "core" patches 90 percent of the time. I probably would have purchased the Special Edition instead if it was available a few months ago.

Actually, VSL Special Edition comes with material not available in the Symphonic Cube, including: Saxophones, Apassionata Strings, Symphonic Organ, and even a scaled down Bosendorfer.

Good luck making your decision!

-Alex

[dalek3]

Don't forget that it also includes it's own reverb effects VST which is a nice start.

Alas, Garritan Ambience does not include early reflections to my knowledge, which makes a rather large difference to the realism.. All the recordings where I've heard GPO really shine used some type of convolution reverb like Altiverb rather than the Garritan Ambience. I've tried Garritan Ambience a couple times and ditched it rather quickly.

If you don't have $$ to spend on a commercial convolution reverb you could always get a free convo reverb like SIR.

Mike

[davecos]

I just checked out the VSL VI Special Edition and looked at the articulations. $450 for ALL THOSE? I would definitely get that to start. As I mentioned, the performance legatos are to die for. They are the most realistic sounding. Dangit, now I have to buy it!!!!

:mad:

[tfishbein82]

I just checked out the VSL VI Special Edition and looked at the articulations. $450 for ALL THOSE? I would definitely get that to start. As I mentioned, the performance legatos are to die for. They are the most realistic sounding. Dangit, now I have to buy it!!!!

:mad:
Most articulations are shorted when it comes to velocity layers though. There's only 1 or 2 on most.

[kotori]

Most articulations are shorted when it comes to velocity layers though. There's only 1 or 2 on most.
Actually, it seems that the most common number of layers is 3. The rightmost column on their page is only related to performance legato so it's natural that it is more limited than the other articulations. Please don't miss the middle column (http://vsl.co.at/shop/articulations_special_edition_new.htm?Lang=1&TopNav=2&SubNav=1&Menu=54&Detail=0&Region=1) describing the number of velocity layers for non-performance articulations.

[emaitch]

I just checked out the VSL VI Special Edition and looked at the articulations. $450 for ALL THOSE? I would definitely get that to start. As I mentioned, the performance legatos are to die for. They are the most realistic sounding. Dangit, now I have to buy it!!!!

:mad:

$399 until April 15!

http://www.ilio.com/vienna/instrumentsII/special/index.html

-emaitch
(ILIO)

[germancomponist]

Look here, than you know that you have to add much more money to sound like that... ~|

http://www.bestservice.de/detail.asp/en/instrument_classic_complete_oorchestra/vi90_vienna_special_edition/761882a217p236p160p220

And then, look here: http://www.bestservice.de/detail.asp/de/plug_ins_vi_orchestra/peter_siedlaczeks_string_essentials/761882a217p236p160p220

But, why do you not wait for Garys new visualizing instrument? I think, Gary knows all about what is going on the market now, and, I also think, Gary`s new visualizing Sampleinstrument will topppppp the others *() *() *()