TAXI.com

Hi taxi friends.
Hope all is well.
I watched the taxi tv episode about the Vienna smart orchestra and is quite curious about it. On their website the have many great sounding samples but I am wondering if any of you guys have started using it and if you can share any thoughts on usability and sound quality. Have you gotten any forwards or placements with it.
Any thoughts will be appreciated. And sound examples would be grand.
Stay happy guys
Regards Asbjørn

Hi there, yes I have it. I'm a big fan of Vienna Instruments and Pro stuff in general. I first bought the double base as that was all I could afford.

The idea is to use it to quickly sketch out orchestral ideas. It's good for that as it naturally splits your piano keyboard (88 keys) and blends orchestral instruments across the keys depending in instrument range.

It does't, in my opinion, give you all you need to add the clever articulations etc but it helps get an orchestral part written into your track with very little effort. Once I sketch out the basic melody I can then build the tracks with fuller library sounds.

It might be possible to write a track entirely with the smart orchestral but I guess because I have many of the libraries VI sell (Not as many as I'd like but enough) I always replace the pieces.

Hope that helps. PS I also use other libraries such as Native Instruments alongside VI to get a more realistic sound/blend.

Vienna's deep and their sketch tool's samples will match up nicely with anything you might need, to augment it. Which is to say you'll need to augment it. You could say Vienna's libraries are well-developed, and you can also say they're long in the tooth. It'd also be correct to say Vienna's samples were recorded for the purpose of doing realistic orchestral mockups and not for tasks that are more specific to production music. You'll have to listen to the samples and demos and decide if Smart Orchestra is right for your needs. One nice thing is the samples are all relatively dry, so you can apply your preferred ambiance; one bad thing is the samples are dry, so you have to figure out the locations of all the virtual instruments in the virtual space.

Thanks for the straight stuff. That sounds like my experience with NotePerformer as well - I really wanted to like it but I don't think it would meet the standards expected here. At least with my production skills anyway.

Requires SSD drive, per specs... has anyone used it with a regular hard drive?