Orchestral Samples

[gen5020]

I'm looking at some orchestal sample libraries and would love to know what you folks are using and your feedback on them. I'm looking at fairly inexpensive stuff (under $500) and running them on protools using a Mac Pro. Here's what I've researched:Steinberg's Halion - I don't think they have the Intel chip ready yet but I would wait if everyone loved it.MOTU Symphonic libraryEast West Silver (probably can't afford much more)Reason String refill???Garritan Personal OrchestraIK Multimedia PhilharmonikI know there are many more and would love to hear about them as well.Basically, I'm not trying to do a Beethoven symphony BUT I do need realistic strings, brass, woodwinds for sports rockers, ballads and the like. My Triton and Motif just aren't cutting it anymore.Also, ease of use is important. I want something I can use as a RTAS plug in, midi it up and go.Am I asking for too much?Thanks. . . by the way, I know I ask all the questions around here. One of these days someone will ask something I know about and I promise I will answer, in the meantime thanks for all the advice you give.Dave

[davewalton]

Hi Dave,Of the ones you listed, EWQL Silver is the only one I'd get. I started with Silver and it's an outstanding product - especially for $200. Having said that, if the top level of your budget is really around $500, I'd STRONGLY recommend raising that to $595 and getting EWQL Gold. For the extra money, you'll be getting yourself into the pro quality level of orchestral packages - great sound and lots of articulations. There's really no downside to Gold in my opinion and by far and away is the best value for the money. You might not ever need to do this, but there's also the advantage of their upgrade path where you can go to the next level (Gold Expanded), the next level (Platinum), etc without breaking your existing projects. Plus it's used by the holy trinity of Hollywood's A-list composers - me, Matto, and Ernstinen. Dave

[davewalton]

Quote:QLSO Gold can be purchased for less than $500...www.scitscat.comDefinitely worth the money. However, it's not really a "plug and play" instrument. Most modern orchestral libraries require a lot of time and tweaking. It is clumsy and cumbersome to load different patches, plus disk streaming and the large size of the patches often impedes playback and taxes your machine heavily. If you are expecting something like a hardware workstation, where you just select a patch, it's instantly loaded, and you can play it immediately... there's very little like that in the software world.Now all that being said, I strongly recommend Kontakt 2. So that we don't muddy the waters, it should be pointed out that Gold (and a fair number of other software instruments) are just self-contained versions of Kontakt with a reduced feature set. Out of the box, the functionality in terms of how you load and play an instrument, disk streaming, the resources it takes, it's all the same. However, Kontakt lets you go beyond just loading and playing sample and into the realm of sample programming from basic to advanced.I would generally disagree with the assement of how these things work. Early software instruments like AKAI samples are clunky and cumbersome. Gold (Kontakt or whatever) and other software instruments are self-contained instruments. You select your patches from the various orchestra sections, they load up in a few seconds and you're ready to record. Really straight forward. The time and tweaking comes mostly from creating dynamics to create more realism, but to me that's like the time and tweaking on EQ, compression, etc, that we do to make a recording sound better. I use a home built PC with the AMD equivalent of a 2GHz Pentium 4 with 1.5Gb of RAM. I use software instruments exclusively. Some of my projects are fairly ambitious and I rarely run into problems. Anyway, Kontakt vs Gold (or any of the other Kontakt-based software instruments) pretty much boils down to customization and flexibility. Gold is a self-contained instrument. You won't be able to open other samples with it and you won't be able to do a lot of customization in terms of the samples and instrumentation. I think of Gold as a "read-only" version of Kontakt. So if you get Kontakt, you would want to get it because of the extra samples it comes bundled with (in addition to the fine Vienna Symphony stuff) and/or because you want to do sample editing/programming on some level.Plus, Kontakt is used by the dynamic duo of Hollywood's A-list composers - Zircon and Matto. Quote:If this sounds like too much for you, IK Philharmonik may be your best bet. It is highly playable and requires little tweaking, though the recording quality is slightly dated.Ohhhh... I'm going to get on Zircon's bad side today. Personally I'd go for recording quality (i.e. Kontakt or Gold or Silver) over ease of use. Kontakt and all of it's software instrument "children" are really too easy to use to pass up in favor of a lower quality instrument. Using the combined Zircon/Dave recommendations will give you three good choices - Silver, Gold, or Kontakt. Dave

[ernstinen]

Quote:Plus it's used by the holy trinity of Hollywood's A-list composers - me, Matto, and Ernstinen. LOL! Yes, EWQLSO Gold is really a fine library. Something that I've grown to appreciate is the built-in ambience. I believe Silver is dry, and Platinum has both options.Gold blends in well with other libraries I run on GigaStudio by adding a little reverb to the Giga sounds. You can create a HUGE symphonic sound through trial and error in your orchestrating (orchestration? ).Ern

[matto]

I would recommend Gold, totally worth the money over Silver...HOWEVER Gold won't work on Intel Macs until the new Play engine comes out OR unless you also get Kontakt 2, which is now compatible (as of version 2.2), and load the Gold instruments into that. Which of course puts it out of your price range. Miroslav is okay it's just lacking in dynamic layers.Another budget library that's widely liked is Kirk Hunter Emerald, although I don't own it so I can't comment first hand. You'd also need K2 for this as it's not standalone.

[matto]

Quote:Would this be the best of both worlds?Whatcha think?Yes.

[ernstinen]

Quote:Just got this in my email if you're interested. Might be something you want to look at:http://www.audiomidi.com/EWQLSO-Platinu ... lessings.I got that email too, but didn't read it.Wow! I think I'll buy a plasma HDTV instead. BTW, AudioMidi is just down the street from where I live. They're nice folks to deal with. Oh, yes, I've paid lots of California sales tax when I could have done mail order. It's my civic duty. In appreciation, Gov. Terminator has asked me and my wife to come over for dinner this weekend. Ern

[mazz]

If you can swing Platinum at all, I feel it is a great investment. Although the Gold library is mostly what the middle (Full) mic position in Platinum gives you, Platinum does have more articulations overall. Articulations are where it's at in virtual orchestra music. I wish this deal was going when I bought the library, my credit card is still in rehab I credit Platinum library with helping me land a few gigs and it really upped the quality of my demo.Good luck,John

[brennanhester]

I just got the EWQLSO stuff.Yep, it sounds really great.Does it work as a plugin in Logic on my Intel Mac? Of course not!Kontakt 2, here I come!Can someone tell me why I bought an Intel Mac?No?

[matto]

Quote:Can someone tell me why I bought an Intel Mac?Yeah...it pays to check for IntelMac compatibility with any software you buy these days, there's still a number of stuff that's not compatible yet...There's even a thread somewhere on this board stating that you need to upgrade to K2 (or EW's upcoming "Play" engine) to get IntelMac compatibility for Gold. Guess you missed that... Then again...K2 is a great sampler, and has probably the widest third party support of any sample format currently available, so, in and of itself, that's a good purchase IMHO.