TAXI.com

Well, I long ago concluded that the East West winds leave a lot to be desired. And the winds included in the Kontakt library are very limited as well. So, would anyone have suggestions for better alternatives? I assume that the Vienna material is out of my price range (plus, if it requires an ILok, that's a deal breaker). But I'm open to any and all reasonable suggestions!

Thanks!

Richard

"Your iLok does not work with VSL products.

All Vienna Instruments and VSL Software (permanent and demo licenses) require a ViennaKey.

Alternatively, you can also use a Steinberg or Arturia Key, if you have one or can get one faster (they are usually available in music stores, and it’s the same copy protection system, “eLicenser”)."

They have special edition libraries and single instruments. From $100-$147 for one of the special edition woodwind libraries, and the singles run around $67-$80 each. I think that includes VAT, so maybe they are a little cheaper without vat?

What it looks like is that the libraries contain more instruments with few or fewer articulations than the singles. I would think for example a flute or clarinet singles with more articulations might be preferable to the libraries with fewer articulations and less used instruments like bass clarinet and contra bassoon, especially if you already have the east west and Kontact instruments.

Hollywood winds is $199 from cinesamples

Hollywood winds are good for special things, but I don't consider them a replacement for dedicated wood winds. For example, all the winds in HWW are played in unisons or octaves. You cannot use just flutes, or just clarinets.

The VSL winds are still decent. The articulations that come with the special edition and special edition + give you a number of choices. I image most of the same are available in this packages Len spoke of.

There are also Cinewinds by Cinesamples, and there are some others that Kayle Clements has that are relatively inexpensive. Maybe he will chime in

Berlin Woodwinds from Orchestral Tools are very very good, but pretty pricey. Worth checking out. They have different chairs which is very cool and they have a very sophisticated runs section which sound great and are also compatible with their string runs library. That means that you can have string and woodwind runs that are synced and sound great because they are tempo synced runs that are played by players. I picked it up after meeting the guys at NAMM and being very impressed with their stuff. Be prepared for a large CPU hit if you want to load a bunch of instruments. (BTW: They have a Glockenspiel library that is one of the best I've heard and it's about 99 bucks).

The clarinets from SampleModeling are superb and my understanding is they are working on oboe and bassoon but there's no indication of when they will come out. I would say they are worth waiting for. The thing is, after you buy the whole section, it won't be inexpensive either.

I've had good results with Westgate Studios as well. They are Kontakt libraries, I'm not sure if they will work in the player or not. They are a little long in the tooth at this point but they do sound good. The articulations are all separate instruments so you have to set up banks or use separate tracks for the different articulations. They are recorded dry which is nice for flexibility. You can buy the solo instruments as downloads. I would recommend sticking with the solo instruments, I've never found sampled woodwind ensembles very effective except for something like Hollywoodwinds where actual chords are sampled. I've never really found a use for "3 unison clarinets" in a single sample. Most woodwind sections are small anyway and I like building sections from different libraries unless I just need something like pads or staccato chords, then something like HollywoodWinds really comes in handy because it's very quick to use.

HTH,

Mazz

Thanks guys. It looks like there are some interesting choices available.

I found this video from VSL demonstrating a type of performance matrix which seems to add realism to changing articulations, although I don't know if the extra level of planning and programming is more of a hassle than it's worth. The video features strings, but I assume it will work with their woodwinds too.

http://www.vsl.co.at/videoplayer_mp4.asp?ID=244

Richard

Here's a quote from sound on sound mag
"The Vienna Instrument Player is not choosy about what type of instrument it plays (although it will not import sounds from other sampler formats), so you can switch between strings and woodwinds within a matrix, or even layer brass and percussion in a cell.

Up to 12 matrices can be assembled in a preset and selected via keyswitches. VSL gleefully point out that this system makes 1728 (12 x 12 x 12) articulations available to a single MIDI track — and while that's 1720 more than most people will ever need, it demonstrates that the VIs incorporate very powerful tools for dealing with the large number of performance styles that occur within an orchestral piece. Happily, as the VIs all contain countless factory matrices and presets, you can start to make music without having to do any programming if you prefer."

Richard, I'm not familiar with vsl, but it should actually cut your planning and programming. It's like a mini sequencer-template type of thing. Along with the factory presets, many times people are allowed to exchange user presets, or you can start with a preset perhaps, edit it and save it as a user preset maybe, not sure.
In other words, instead of having 1 articulation as a keyswitch, one keyswitch would control a pattern(or sequence) of two or more articulations. It's sort of like if you programmed a controller to play 3 or 4 notes for a chord by only hitting one key or pad,
except in this case you aren't doing notes you are triggering a sequence and/or layer of articulations.
It seems like a very cool and useful feature imo.

"...The articulations are all separate instruments so you have to set up banks or use separate tracks for the different articulations." after I read what Mazz said about a Kontakt library, I'm even further convinced of it's usefulness,lol!

mazz had it - the westgate winds seemed fairly inexpensive and decent.

there are other bells and whistles built into the VSL Instruments Pro plugin (btw - you pay extra for this one, its not their standard instrument player - I just stuck with the standard player) - like you can randomize pitch curves for multiple players (check the demos of their dimension brass).

Len911 wrote:
Richard, I'm not familiar with vsl, but it should actually cut your planning and programming. It's like a mini sequencer-template type of thing. Along with the factory presets, many times people are allowed to exchange user presets, or you can start with a preset perhaps, edit it and save it as a user preset maybe, not sure.
In other words, instead of having 1 articulation as a keyswitch, one keyswitch would control a pattern(or sequence) of two or more articulations. It's sort of like if you programmed a controller to play 3 or 4 notes for a chord by only hitting one key or pad,
except in this case you aren't doing notes you are triggering a sequence and/or layer of articulations.
It seems like a very cool and useful feature imo.

Yeah, it seems cool, and the realism of the samples and phrasing is impressive. My only concern has to do with the composition process. Unless you're Mozart and the notes just pour out of you in a state of perfection with no need for revision (and what fun would that be?), it is highly likely that before a final decision is made on the choice, durations, and phrasing of the notes, etc., you're going to be doing a lot of experimenting. So, if I'm following this logically, you would either have to adjust the matrix every time you made a phrasing or note duration change (so the matrix would continue giving you the right articulations), or you would need to bypass the matrix during the writing process, and only use it when the compositional choices were finalized. If that is correct, then you would need to figure out some other way to initially find articulation(s) that were adequate enough to get you through the writing process before setting up the matrix to match the final arrangement.

Am I totally misguided about this?

Richard

"Yeah, it seems cool, and the realism of the samples and phrasing is impressive. My only concern has to do with the composition process. Unless you're Mozart and the notes just pour out of you in a state of perfection with no need for revision (and what fun would that be?), it is highly likely that before a final decision is made on the choice, durations, and phrasing of the notes, etc., you're going to be doing a lot of experimenting. So, if I'm following this logically, you would either have to adjust the matrix every time you made a phrasing or note duration change (so the matrix would continue giving you the right articulations), or you would need to bypass the matrix during the writing process, and only use it when the compositional choices were finalized. If that is correct, then you would need to figure out some other way to initially find articulation(s) that were adequate enough to get you through the writing process before setting up the matrix to match the final arrangement.

Am I totally misguided about this?

Richard[/quote]

I think you might be over-estimating the difficulty of the matrix. Don't forget there are factory presets, and if you find a particular sequence of articulations useful, you might also name them and save them as a preset.

I found this explanation quoted from a 2006 sound on sound article:

"Designing this has allowed VSL to improve some of the less well-integrated parts of their library, and put everything under the control of one neat VST- or AU-format plug-in. For example, functions that used to be handled by the stand-alone Performance Tool, such as interpreting performance data and calling up appropriate legato and note-run samples from the library, are now integrated into the VI interface. This allows you to combine many different articulations in an editable, recallable preset, triggerable on one MIDI channel.

Different performance articulations are loaded into the top cell on the left of the window by dragging and dropping from an articulation browser that can be accessed on the right. Each of the articulations is represented by a cell in the 12 x 12 matrix below, and you can then define the keys you use to step vertically and horizontally through the articulations in the matrix by means of a simple controller assignment page on the right, or by using a hardware controller and the built-in MIDI Learn function.

Up to 12 custom switching matrices can be saved and recalled by more keyswitches, but if you don't want to work at this detailed level, there are plenty of pre-assigned Presets and a so-called Universal mode in which the most suitable articulations for a given instrument are pre-mapped to one controller. There's even a built-in Performance detection algorithm, which can analyse what you're playing and seek to call up appropriate performance samples to match. If you 'trill' on a flute sample between two notes, for example, the VI will detect this and pull up one of the new sampled trill performances instead of playing back discrete sampled notes. You might object that all these performance samples could eat up your sequencer host's available RAM, but VSL have created a Learn mode that analyses passages you record and detects precisely which samples you've used. The rest can then be jettisoned from your computer's memory using the built-in RAM Optimiser. You can restore samples at any time, permitting you to change the phrase later if you wish."