The Orchestral Sample Library Thread

[Michael Grigorowitsch 367]

1 hour ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

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[Manakin Skywalker 3602]

1 hour ago, Michael Grigorowitsch said:

 

 

[Drew 557]

Cinematic Studio Strings has finally received an update that notably adds a better runs mode. The creator of the library posted this test mockup of the Hedwig's Theme string runs. Sounds quite good!

 

[AC1 3805]

What  piano VST do you guys like? I've currently rediscovered Garritan CFX (the lite version).

 

 

[LSH 777]

I have dozens of virtual pianos but Embertone's Walker 1955 Concert D has been my go-to for a while now. It has a gorgeous warm sound.

 

[LSH 777]

Cinesamples' Piano In Blue was an absolute workhorse in my earlier days of writing and MIDI programming. Loved it for its warm sound, even out the box.

 

Sampled from a piano with quite an esteemed history. 

 

[AC1 3805]

14 hours ago, LSH said:

I have dozens of virtual pianos but Embertone's Walker 1955 Concert D has been my go-to for a while now. It has a gorgeous warm sound.

 

 

I bought that (and an extra mic position) but I felt it was a bit tonally uneven, as you sometimes get with older pianos.

[TheAvengerButton 132]

I've actually been having a lot of fun with the Glass Piano from Spitfire Labs. Beautiful sound, yet also simple.

[Michael Grigorowitsch 367]

Damn, I thought Spitfire Audio were only good people....

Unbelievable how many people are still inhumane and hurtful, from whom it is not expected and not wanted....

But I don't think we should let people like Christian Henson take down such valuable achievements as Spitfire/Pianobook have achieved. It would be a shame for all the good people who worked so hard on this project. I will continue to use their great products....

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

Sorry for putting this here, but there isn't a "Pop/Rock Sample Library" thread:

 

Toontrack has a released their Hitmaker SDX, produced by Hugh Padgham and including drum samples in the style of Phil Collins, Sting and the Police:

 

https://www.toontrack.com/product/hitmaker-sdx/

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

 

 

[TheAvengerButton 132]

Does anyone happen to know what loop track Mark Mancina and RCP used for their scores of Speed and The Rock? In the track Rocket Away on The Rock soundtrack I swear I can hear the same drums playing that play in the track Rush Hour from Speed so it's gotta be a loop of some kind. Might be created in-house but maybe it's out there in the world.

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

On 20/09/2022 at 9:13 PM, TheAvengerButton said:

Does anyone happen to know what loop track Mark Mancina and RCP used for their scores of Speed and The Rock? In the track Rocket Away on The Rock soundtrack I swear I can hear the same drums playing that play in the track Rush Hour from Speed so it's gotta be a loop of some kind. Might be created in-house but maybe it's out there in the world.

A lot of loops from the era come from:

 

Zero-G Datafile 1-3

Best Service No Kick

Best Service XXL Extreme 1-5

Best Service Horny Clubsounds

Spectrasonics Distorted Reality 1 & 2

Spectrasonics Metamorphosis

Best Service - XXL 1750 New Drum Loops

Best Service - XXL 1500 Drum Loops

Best Service Gigapack

Best Service Club Edition 1-4

AMG - Black II Black

Roland JV80 Dance Loops

[Drew 557]

On 06/09/2022 at 12:05 PM, Michael Grigorowitsch said:

Damn, I thought Spitfire Audio were only good people....

Unbelievable how many people are still inhumane and hurtful, from whom it is not expected and not wanted....

But I don't think we should let people like Christian Henson take down such valuable achievements as Spitfire/Pianobook have achieved. It would be a shame for all the good people who worked so hard on this project. I will continue to use their great products....

 

Christian Henson has a history of saying far-fetched or outrageous things. His thoughts are his own. It killed me to watch the initial reaction of hundreds of people saying they will never use Spitfire stuff again because of this.

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

 

 

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2022/10/21/real-piano-kontakt/

 

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

 

[TheAvengerButton 132]

Just bought the Metropolis Ark 4 choirs (I like their sound better than the Ark 1 choirs) and now Gaelic Voices? I am drowning in fantastic choir libraries now.

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

 

[filmmusic 1249]

Can anyone recommend any good Choir sample library?

Is there any equivalent of the old Eastwest Choirs where you could also build words and have the choir sing them?

edit: Oh, I see there is an update of it. Hollywood Choirs.

But I read there aren't any choir sections? Soprano, alto, tenor, bass? Just women and men in general?

[Manakin Skywalker 3602]

29 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Oh, I see there is an update of it. Hollywood Choirs.

But I read there aren't any choir sections? Soprano, alto, tenor, bass? Just women and men in general?

 

That is correct. If you already have Symphonic Choirs, then I would absolutely recommend getting Hollywood Choirs as well. I tend to use them both, for different purposes. They work well together.

[filmmusic 1249]

44 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

That is correct. If you already have Symphonic Choirs, then I would absolutely recommend getting Hollywood Choirs as well. I tend to use them both, for different purposes. They work well together.

Is there something similar from another company?

[Manakin Skywalker 3602]

53 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Is there something similar from another company?

 

Hm, not anything that I can think of, definitely not anything with a wordbuilder (more just Ah's, Ooh's, etc.) And HC is probably by far the most recent, and best sounding.

 

It's going to be on sale next week anyway, so the price will drop at least 50% or more.

EDIT: Scratch that, the Black Friday sale is going on right now! HC is 60% off.

[TolkienSS 184]

4 hours ago, filmmusic said:

Can anyone recommend any good Choir sample library?

Is there any equivalent of the old Eastwest Choirs where you could also build words and have the choir sing them?

edit: Oh, I see there is an update of it. Hollywood Choirs.

But I read there aren't any choir sections? Soprano, alto, tenor, bass? Just women and men in general?

 

And no boys. And no solos.

 

I have Audio Imperia Chorus. Best out of the box sound. And plenty of vowels. Wordbuilders are overrated. I mean, you trying to record Carmina Burana?

[TheAvengerButton 132]

I've been getting by just fine with Metropolis Ark 4's choirs. Really, Ark 1, 2, 4 and 5 have some decent choir selections at a very affordable price. They also have a children's choir.

 

I am not a fan of how "perfect" the Metropolis Ark 1 choirs were, so I settled on the 4 choirs which have some imperfections in them that make them slightly more palatable. But they have marcatos phrases that you can toggle to make legato and I get by just fine with those.

 

I hear a lot of people say that the Metropolis Ark stuff you have to kind of put more work into making it sound cohesive, but the Ark 4 choirs are extremely managable. I also nabbed the Basso Profundo bass choir from Ark 2 for some William's Sith stuff.

[ocelot 478]

I write by hand at the piano but then I use note performer in finale when orchestrating the scores. They sound so good now I don't need anything else, but then again, mine are only demos as I always get to record with full orchestra.

[Drew 557]

Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition is on sale for 60 percent off. https://www.soundsonline.com/orchestral/hollywood-orchestra-opus-edition

 

If you want a cheap choir, check out Spitfire Originals Epic Choir. Only 30 dollars.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/originals-epic-choir 

[Drew 557]

Cinematic Studio Series is on sale for 25 percent off. In regards to programming, these libraries are the best of the best. The tone is also spot-on for a lot of use cases. I personally think Cinematic Studio Woodwinds is the best-sounding woodwind library out there. Surprised to not see any discussion of Cinematic Studio Brass here yet. Be warned, they are a bit dry. Making a custom mic mix with the room and main mics turned up all the way helps a lot. Cinematic Studio Percussion is slated for release next year or in 2024.

https://cinematicstudioseries.com/ 

 

Cinesamples is having an insane 65 percent off sale! 

https://cinesamples.com/

[TolkienSS 184]

Orchestral Tools is really cheap this Black Friday sale. There's nothing on sale except the Arks and very few others.

[Drew 557]

19 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

Orchestral Tools is really cheap this Black Friday sale. There's nothing on sale except the Arks and very few others.

 

I was hoping for the Berlin Series to be on sale again. I don't understand Orchestral Tools' logic with such infrequent sales. All it does is helps their competitors.

[Drew 557]

Not going to lie, Metropolis Ark 1 looks really solid for anyone just starting out.

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]

 

 

[TolkienSS 184]

Here's a question for veteran DAW users:

I bought EW Spaces II on the Black Friday weekend, and it's my first standalone reverb plugin, up until now I only used the mic positions that came with the libraries.

I wanted to turn off all reverb in the libraries so I can use only the Spaces II reverb, is there a way to do that? 

[MaxTheHouseelf 291]

19 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

Here's a question for veteran DAW users:

I bought EW Spaces II on the Black Friday weekend, and it's my first standalone reverb plugin, up until now I only used the mic positions that came with the libraries.

I wanted to turn off all reverb in the libraries so I can use only the Spaces II reverb, is there a way to do that? 

 

I don't think that this is possible, that easy at least. (Maybe there are some plugins to remove the reverb tail artificially from i.e. Tree Mic samples but not sure this is what you want).

 

19 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

so I can use only the Spaces II reverb,

Then AFAIK you should select exclusivley Close Mic Position + EW Spaces Reverb.

[TolkienSS 184]

8 minutes ago, MaxTheHouseelf said:

 

I don't think that this is possible, that easy at least. (Maybe there are some plugins to remove the reverb tail artificially from i.e. Tree Mic samples but not sure this is what you want).

 

Then AFAIK you should select exclusivley Close Mic Position + EW Spaces Reverb.

 

So set up Spaces on a track as a bus, and then send the VST instrument tracks there, right?

Do you own spaces? Can you recommend certain reverbs in there?

[MaxTheHouseelf 291]

24 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

So set up Spaces on a track as a bus, and then send the VST instrument tracks there, right?

Yeah, set the reverb as effect track and send stuff to it. I'm not an expert with this though, mostly I just place the reverb directly on the instrument but routing instruments to it is the proper way to do it I think.

26 minutes ago, TolkienSS said:

Do you own spaces? Can you recommend certain reverbs in there?

Nope, I mostly use Valhalla Room and the Reverence Plugin that comes with Cubase.

[TolkienSS 184]

46 minutes ago, MaxTheHouseelf said:

Yeah, set the reverb as effect track and send stuff to it. I'm not an expert with this though, mostly I just place the reverb directly on the instrument but routing instruments to it is the proper way to do it I think.

Nope, I mostly use Valhalla Room and the Reverence Plugin that comes with Cubase.

 

I was wondering if you can just add Spaces to the instrument tracks as a second plugin and if that would work.

Maybe that would be too RAM intensive though?

[MaxTheHouseelf 291]

1 hour ago, TolkienSS said:

 

I was wondering if you can just add Spaces to the instrument tracks as a second plugin and if that would work.

Maybe that would be too RAM intensive though?

Yeah this works, you will notice if it's to RAM intensive quickly

[TolkienSS 184]

27 minutes ago, MaxTheHouseelf said:

Yeah this works, you will notice if it's to RAM intensive quickly

 

I tried running the Spitfire Symphony on a laptop once. No good lol

[TolkienSS 184]

23 hours ago, MaxTheHouseelf said:

Yeah this works, you will notice if it's to RAM intensive quickly

 

Speaking of RAM ... have you encountered the following problem: I bought CinePerc during the Black Friday weekend. When I tried downloading it through Native Access, it said the download failed because not enough disc space was availble, and I needed 149 GB additional hard drive space. My destined hard drive had 250 GB left on it. Ok I thought, let me move 200 GB to a different drive. It still gave me download failed.

Then, I used another drive with 1,1 TB of space, and it still said not enough space.

I've spoken with both Cinesamples and Native Access support, and both couldn't tell me what's wrong. 

[TolkienSS 184]

On 01/12/2022 at 8:04 PM, MaxTheHouseelf said:

Yeah this works, you will notice if it's to RAM intensive quickly

 

To follow up on this, I use Spaces II now and it sounds so much better than library intern reverb. I wouldn't change it for anything anymore 

[MaxTheHouseelf 291]

On 02/12/2022 at 7:27 PM, TolkienSS said:

 

Speaking of RAM ... have you encountered the following problem: I bought CinePerc during the Black Friday weekend. When I tried downloading it through Native Access, it said the download failed because not enough disc space was availble, and I needed 149 GB additional hard drive space. My destined hard drive had 250 GB left on it. Ok I thought, let me move 200 GB to a different drive. It still gave me download failed.

Then, I used another drive with 1,1 TB of space, and it still said not enough space.

I've spoken with both Cinesamples and Native Access support, and both couldn't tell me what's wrong. 

Sometimes they send manual download links via email as well, so you can unzip and move the files into the folders manunally without an installer. Have you tried that? But yeah I remember, the download needs at least double the space of the library for installing, because of the unzipping/extraction process.

 

1 hour ago, TolkienSS said:

 

To follow up on this, I use Spaces II now and it sounds so much better than library intern reverb. I wouldn't change it for anything anymore 

Yeah true, and it's far more flexible as well.

[filmmusic 1249]

Speaking of reverb, what is considered to be the best reverb around for orchestral film music?

Something that has presets like concert hall etc.?

[LSH 777]

8 minutes ago, filmmusic said:

Speaking of reverb, what is considered to be the best reverb around for orchestral film music?

Something that has presets like concert hall etc.?

 

Audio Ease Altiverb is definitely up there.

[filmmusic 1249]

29 minutes ago, LSH said:

 

Audio Ease Altiverb is definitely up there.

And it's 500 euros?? 

[Michael Grigorowitsch 367]

1 hour ago, filmmusic said:

Speaking of reverb, what is considered to be the best reverb around for orchestral film music?

Something that has presets like concert hall etc.?

 

[Drew 557]

Right now I don't use much reverb at all besides a little bit of reverb included with plugins, sometimes. It's doable since my libraries are all recorded in decent sized spaces. 

[TheAvengerButton 132]

What, if anything, is on y'alls Master bus when it comes to your orchestral scores?

 

I am not at all good at production so I always just leave my shit blank. I try to do EQ carving and what not but I still can't hear what I'm supposed to hear there so I don't even do much for my instrument patches. I just try to volume match when I can and hope for the best.

[Datameister 1650]

9 hours ago, filmmusic said:

Speaking of reverb, what is considered to be the best reverb around for orchestral film music?

Something that has presets like concert hall etc.?

I'm a fan of Altiverb for the convolution and LX480 for algorithmic. I use Altiverb to try to get the instruments to "sit" in the same physical space together, and then LX480 provides the artificial tails that so often get added to real orchestral recordings. Sometimes I only need one or the other; sometimes it's both.

[A Farewell to Kings 3557]