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Free virtual orchestra?


ChuckM

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Does anyone know if there are any virtual orchestra programs available that are free? Preferably open source, although would not have to be.

Or if none free, do any offer a fully working 30 day demo?

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Aren't there any real orchestras around? I know of a few things we might be interested in to record :huh:

Oh sure...the question is: is there any money around?  

You're talking about a lot money per minute.  

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Are you talking about samples, or about notation software? For the latter, Rosegarden seems to be the preferred Linux application, though I never quite figured it out.

Basically, I want something I can run MIDI's through and have it not sound like complete garbage. Something at least approaching realistic. I'll look into that Rosegarden program. Thanks for the suggestion.

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Don't Finale and Sibelius have demo versions? However, I believe these demo version are extremely limited in what you can do. For example, I remember Finale only let you use one page and if you printed it out, it would print the word "FINALE" in huge ass letters across the entire face of the page.

If you want a good program you're probably going to have to pay for it.

Tim

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Rosegarden is open source and completely free. But none of these problems will give you a professional sample library. We're still talking about two very different things here.

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Notepad is pretty limited, you can only have 8 staves, no key changes, no time changes, and doesn't have the Garritan Personal Orchestra library that the complete versions of Finale have.

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Stop talking about notation software!! Finale, Sibelius, etc... these are all notation packages - nothing to do with sampling. The guy wants a free orchestral sample library of decent quality.

Sorry to tell you that no such thing exists.

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Stop talking about notation software!! Finale, Sibelius, etc... these are all notation packages - nothing to do with sampling. The guy wants a free orchestral sample library of decent quality.

Sorry to tell you that no such thing exists.

And this post was so helpful by comparison! :)

Ray Barnsbury

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Notepad is pretty limited, you can only have 8 staves, no key changes, no time changes, and doesn't have the Garritan Personal Orchestra library that the complete versions of Finale have.

How realistic does the Garritan Orchestra sound? Comparable to VSL and the likes?

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Well I only know Garritan, so I can't compare it to anything. What can I say, some samples sound really great others - not so much. I think the flute and solo strings sound pretty good, whereas trumpets and horns leave much to be desired.

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I've heard the Prague Philarmonic are going cheap.

It wasn't the Prague Philharmonic, but last year there was an orchestra that gave everyday people a chance to record some music professionally. I don't remember what orchestra it was, but I remember some members of JWFan trying to get money together last year to take advantage of this possibility. It never happened though. You could record something like 5 minutes of music for like $1500.

I think that's a great idea, but it wasn't cheap.

Tim

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There is no such thing of a free virtual orchestra or sample libraries or whatever you want to called them. You can only buy them and enough said. If you want a good high quality orchestral sample libary then you have to buy it yourself and as I said before there is no free versions, unless of course it a demo version of it.

There heaps of sample libaries out there and some may have demo versions of it. The demo version has a limited amount of instruments or features you can use. In other words you don't get the all the instruments in a full orchestra. Especially with the different unique sounds from a particular instrument such as the strings has con legno, pizz, tremolo e.t.c. may not be in the demo version. Best to get a full version which you have to buy to get every instruments and it unique sounds from an instrument.

Using sample libaries may needs a good fast CPU processor on a PC to get a good smooth playback performance. The faster the processor the better.

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Hmm, well, I figured that, but thought I'd give it a shot anyway. I'll still look into those other programs too though. I can always use some notation software to fool around with.

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Hmm, well, I figured that, but thought I'd give it a shot anyway. I'll still look into those other programs too though. I can always use some notation software to fool around with.

Yeah, thanks for asking, I never thought to ask, but unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and midi is free. :P

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Yeah, thanks for asking, I never thought to ask, but unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and midi is free. :P

I hate to keep insisting on this, but MIDI is only a protocol. Those sample libraries use MIDI just as the old SoundBlaster Pro cards do. They just have better samples. And the old SoundBlaster General Midi sounds were stored in hardware, so they actually cost something. Then came the wavetables (AWE and stuff), which sounded a lot better at least. Also hardware-based.

But yes, today there are a few software-based real-time MIDI synths, which sound like the early wavetables and yes, those are free.

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Yeah, thanks for asking, I never thought to ask, but unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and midi is free. :fouetaa:

I hate to keep insisting on this, but MIDI is only a protocol. Those sample libraries use MIDI just as the old SoundBlaster Pro cards do. They just have better samples. And the old SoundBlaster General Midi sounds were stored in hardware, so they actually cost something. Then came the wavetables (AWE and stuff), which sounded a lot better at least. Also hardware-based.

But yes, today there are a few software-based real-time MIDI synths, which sound like the early wavetables and yes, those are free.

I don't mind, it's good for those who aren't aware of that fact, and there are many who aren't. I was just being careless with my phrasing there.

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There are enough free independently recorded samples out there at various sites, that you could conceivably get together nearly an orchestras worth of samples. The problem comes that the consistency isn't there, and the quality isn't always there. The best idea is to save up and buy an actual sampler. I myself have Garritan (The finale Version, which is blech), and my favorite choice, East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra - Silver, which I plug into Cubase.

The main ones known out there are (in descending order of quality in my opinion):

East West Quantum Leap (silver, gold or platinum)

Vienna Synth Library,

HALion Symphonic Orchestra,

Garritan Series Library's,

Gigastudio (Sample runner, but has series of Library's)

Most composers use a mix of them along with independent samples, or custom samples. I've found some free independent samples out there though that sound pretty nice. Just look around for sampled instruments on google. You should be able to find most things you need at low cost. No Garuntee on quality unless it's all done the same, like in the library's above.

~JW

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Does anyone know if there are any virtual orchestra programs available that are free? Preferably open source, although would not have to be.

Or if none free, do any offer a fully working 30 day demo?

NOTION is a notation-based program that comes with resident London Symphony Orchestra samples. You can use it for 30 days. Aside from that, why don't you investigate some cheaper orchestral libs and plunk a little money down like most of us have done?

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Can't wait for a rich JW fan who knows how to transcribe music and had lots of spare time to record unreleased Williams pieces

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For cheap and suitable orchestral sound I started with Sonidomedia orchestra gold , this was a soundfont library with some good samples, then Big Fish Audio orchestral collection in Akai or Giga , finally I use Advanced orchestra that You can find on ebay for few money as many people will sold it because they prefer the bigger size library, but already with that sample You can sound good enough, here are 2 examples from my soundtracks :

http://erahd.free.fr/adj/balq.htm and http://erahd.free.fr/edf/index.htm

I wish it help...

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