choices for first library

[michael88s]

It\'s time for me to pick out my first library or two and I\'d appreciate any suggestions.

My basic needs are for a good general purpose library; and for at least solid strings if not an orchestral library. Budget is a factor.

As far as orchestral, I\'m considering the Miroslav Vitous Mini Library which is mono- and I\'m wondering how useful it might be? Is being mono it\'s only limitation, or are the number of samples inadequate?

In an earlier post Mark K wanted to know about converting stereo files to mono. I\'m concerned about the reverse. My thought, and please correct me if I\'m wrong, is that when we\'re listening in a concert hall the hall acoustics give us the spatial sense. If there were no room acoustics each instrument would seem to be coming from an individual monophonic space. I know I\'m oversimplifying here.

My point is- couldn\'t mono files be enhanced by judicious processing to a point where being mono isn\'t a limitation?

Thanks for any input.

michael88s

[donnie]

Michael,

There have been numerous topics on this subject even some as recent as a couple of days ago. Do a search and you\'ll find TONS of viewpoints.

Donnie

[michael88s]

Donnie,

I\'ll check that out, maybe I should have dug a bit deeper before posting as I did.

One thing though- my question about the MV Mini Library and monophonic file useability seems to be a topic, unless that\'s also been addressed previously, that would be of interest to all, certainly I\'d learn from any insight offered here.

Thanks again,
michael88s

[michael88s]

Donnie,

Thanks for taking the time to inform me. I just looked and didn\'t have to look far at all to find similar topics.

apologies/mea culpa

michael88s

[Chadwick]

Mono is very useful, as one of the first ceilings you\'re likely to bump up against is polyphony. A stereo library will use twice the number of voices as a mono library.

When stereo is discussed, it\'s as controversial a topic as whether sounds should be recorded wet or dry, distant or close mic\'d etc.,

Many great recordings have some amount of digital reverb on them so I\'d guess that you could go a long way using mono samples by the use of judicious panning and great verb.

In the end a crap stereo pizzicato sound will always sound worse than a great mono one. So definitely try to listen to the library.

Have a look at the Prosonus library as an alternative to MV or AO. The samples have been around for eons, but they\'ve only recently been \'remastered\' for Giga. My memory of the sample disks is that there were a lot of useful sounds there. From what I hear, Donnie\'s done a good job programming them up for Giga.

[LifeForceExplorer]

Yep - If your aimed at orchestral music Prosonus is a good one, I think. And the price is right too. Look for the recent discussions about it here. Good strings - especially the solo strings, suprisingly. The only drawback for me was lack of documentation, but you discover the typical Giga maneuvers that you have to learn about with most any orchestral library anyways.

I\'m a month and a half into Giga just starting up the learning curve myself. The FIRST library I bought was the Conexant GM500 and you might also want to look at this one. (Only about 120 bucks most places!) Never mind the \"lighter\" version called Conexant GM128. With the GM500 (the 500 means its a 500mb version) you get a nice medium sized version of each of the standard 128 GM instruments. So while youre learning you dont have to shell out the big bucks and you get a decent version of everything from tambouras to guitars to drums to all the classical orchestral instruments (and lets not forget helicopters and gun shots). And nearly all of them except the ho-hum strings are really quite decent yet they only use 4 to 10 voices each so you can load up easily a dozen of them and get right to it even in GS96.

[composer22]

I personally prefer mono samples. Its sooo much easier to control and place them into a mix w/o resorting to EQ

[Hans-Josef]

Hello,
all Xsample volumes have stereo and mono versions of the instruments.

Ciao,

Hans-Josef

[michael88s]

Thanks everyone

It sounds like it would be really useful to have BOTH mono and stereo orchestral libraries, and I hadn\'t even thought about available polyphony!

Regarding the MV mini collection, Ilio is sending me a demo disk which I hope will have some mono files to listen to.

But having downloaded the Prosonus demo, I\'m definitely leaning in that direction, nice price too.

The Conexant GM500 library has been on my mind too. The \'meat and potatoes\' sounds for pop I know are pretty good and anything else would be gravy (sorry for the pun).
Bigga Giggas Acoustic Essentials Midi Bundle looks interesting too, supposedly the drums and guitars are good.

As a new Giga user I\'m thinking that I need to develop a \'non-hardware\' mindset regarding my sound sources- and having a few nice libraries will help that along.

Thanks to all once again,
michael88s

[michael88s]

Thanks Hans, I\'ll look into Xsamples too.

michael88s

[Mark_Knecht]

michael88s,
I think you and I are in violent agreement! images/icons/wink.gif

It probably depends a lot on what sort of music you\'re doing. Most pop music, when recorded in a studio, does not use stereo mics for every instrument. Instruments, even vocals, are primarily recorded in mono to a single track and then set within the sound space durigng the mix. Individual sends on each track allow you to tailor a lot of aspects about the sound - EQ, reverb, etc. - until you\'re happy with the overall sound.

That said, it is not my experience or expectation that I can take a bunch of dry, mono orchestral sounds, combine them and get an exact knock-off of an orchestra playing the Royal Albert Hall, even if I could define what that sound is. I personally think it is often overlooked that when listening to music in a live venue, the \'sound\' you hear is dependent upon where you sit. In the Royal Albert Hall, it would not sound the same sitting front row center as it would sitting in a seat against the back wall. The amount of direct and indirect sound is totally different. Absorption from other people and seats changes the sound. I think it unlikely that we will see digital processing effectively recreate that sort of space any time soon.

That said, all sound leave the instrument \'dry\' and is effected by its environment.

Also, instruments that produce sounds from essentially a point source are, I think, essentially mono instruments to the listener. This was your point and I agree. I think Tom\'s point in that thread about pianos is valid, if you are sitting at the instrument. It\'s a large instrument, and does produce sound in a stereo field for the player. However, for an audience sitting 40 feet back, I contend that even the piano approaches being a point sounce instrument. When you listen to a piano concerto live, you do not hear the piano filling the complete sound space.

And again, to be totally clear, I am NOT advocating ANYTHING in terms of how people put their music together. In my limited case, using the Digi 001 and PTLE, I am limited to 18 live tracks due to the hardware constraints of that system. There is NO way to have more than 18 inputs coming in live from synths. GSt, producing everything in stereo, was essentially saying that I can only have 9 separate instruments. I wanted more. This works for me.

Cheers,
Mark


Originally posted by michael88s:
In an earlier post Mark K wanted to know about converting stereo files to mono. I\'m concerned about the reverse. My thought, and please correct me if I\'m wrong, is that when we\'re listening in a concert hall the hall acoustics give us the spatial sense. If there were no room acoustics each instrument would seem to be coming from an individual monophonic space. I know I\'m oversimplifying here.

My point is- couldn\'t mono files be enhanced by judicious processing to a point where being mono isn\'t a limitation?

Thanks for any input.

michael88s<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">