CPU friendly strings and brass

[Holmseth]

Looking for virtual brass and strings that don't eat up all of my CPU power. I'm not going to start writing cinematic scores but would be nice to have some trumpets and violins to add to my cues. What are you guys using. Any comments will be highly appreciated. I currently have 16Gb internal memory on my computer.
Regards
Asbjorn

[andygabrys]

Allright - well that's half the Battle.

Having a certain amount of RAM allows you to load a certain amount of samples, and do a certain amount of Virtual realization, but the other half is how much CPU power you actually have. The third thing to consider is how your samples are stored and streamed - SSD is fastest and in most cases the best.

Example: you have an older MacBook pro with 4 core i7 CPU @ 2.6 ghz (8 virtual cores) running off the internal mech HD

or you have a Mac Pro with 12 cores at 2.66 ghz for a total of 24 virtual cores running off PCI connected SSDs?

those are two totally different scenarios - so its hard to say how much you will be able to do on your particular machine.

I use Cinebrass and LASS (which is intensive on the CPU and sample streaming) and there are many other choices out there like all the Cinesamples stuff, and the Native Instruments branded stuff.

The East West Stuff is good, the 8dio stuff is good. There is not really anything bad, but they all do have different work flows.

Check out the walk through videos on the various manufacturers websites to see how they all work.

CAVEAT - all the walkthroughs are generally done on supercomputers so its no indication of how much you could hope to on your own machine.

Have you checked Youtube for videos pertaining to what you asked?

Good luck!!!

[Kolstad]

I use Projectsam Symphobia, which is quite light on cpu. One patch use about 1\4 to 1/2 of one ram in Kontakt 5. That is pretty good compar3d to say cinematic strings, which use about 2 full ram per patch.

I do stream the samples from an SSD, which helps a lot on loading times (but doesnt change the ram use).

Btw, Projectsam is not just efficient, but also awesome sounding!

[Holmseth]

Thank you Andy for your insightful information. I will be looking into an external ssd drive for samples. As for the library's it is also a matter of price as I at least for now won't be writing the big cinematic scores. Thanks again. Much appreciated.
Asbjorn

Allright - well that's half the Battle.

Having a certain amount of RAM allows you to load a certain amount of samples, and do a certain amount of Virtual realization, but the other half is how much CPU power you actually have. The third thing to consider is how your samples are stored and streamed - SSD is fastest and in most cases the best.

Example: you have an older MacBook pro with 4 core i7 CPU @ 2.6 ghz (8 virtual cores) running off the internal mech HD

or you have a Mac Pro with 12 cores at 2.66 ghz for a total of 24 virtual cores running off PCI connected SSDs?

those are two totally different scenarios - so its hard to say how much you will be able to do on your particular machine.

I use Cinebrass and LASS (which is intensive on the CPU and sample streaming) and there are many other choices out there like all the Cinesamples stuff, and the Native Instruments branded stuff.

The East West Stuff is good, the 8dio stuff is good. There is not really anything bad, but they all do have different work flows.

Check out the walk through videos on the various manufacturers websites to see how they all work.

CAVEAT - all the walkthroughs are generally done on supercomputers so its no indication of how much you could hope to on your own machine.

Have you checked Youtube for videos pertaining to what you asked?

Good luck!!!

[Holmseth]

I use Projectsam Symphobia, which is quite light on cpu. One patch use about 1\4 to 1/2 of one ram in Kontakt 5. That is pretty good compar3d to say cinematic strings, which use about 2 full ram per patch.

I do stream the samples from an SSD, which helps a lot on loading times (but doesnt change the ram use).

Btw, Projectsam is not just efficient, but also awesome sounding!

Thank you for your comments. Projectsam seems like a good alternative but may be a bit pricey at just over 1000 dollars as I won't be using it that much. I will look into it and maybe the have a lighter version of the program. Thanks again.
Asbjorn

[mojobone]

My first orchestral purchase was CineSymphony Lite; it covers most of what you need to get started in a single fell swoop. You get tutti brass, tutti strings, tutti winds and a percussion layer with excellent tympani and some mallets. Only a couple of articulations each, but pizz strings is one of those, so you can crank out the dramedy right away. If you have full Kontakt you can re-save patches with just baritones, just french horns, etc so each can be driven by its own MIDI channel, double the tubas with the bass viols, etc.

Broad strokes covered, but without divisi and more articulations, you can't quite do pop sweetening, chamber music or that sweet cover of Eleanor Rigby, so I got Kirk Hunter Spotlight Solo Strings for that and for pop, funk, ska and reggae horns, Session Horns Pro, which has pretty terrific Bari sax and Tuba in addition to muted trumpets, trombones &c. Takes some tweaking, but you can just about get your Chicago on, with that. I don't yet have much for solo woodwinds, I just use an old 16bit Kawai Gmega for that, (it was just lying around) but it has a pretty impressive English Horn that's not just an oboe with a filter.