Things to do with a sound library

[mducharme]

Originally Posted by stevel

I've got to say, Mark, if you're reading, I much prefer synths than I do "samples" - it's funny because you can have the best sounding violin sample in the world, but when you drop it into a file, when it blends with the other instruments it doesn't blend!

This issue is usually due to lack of a good convolution reverb. If you don't have a convo that is putting the samples in the same "physical space" as one another they don't blend very well, unless they are from the same manufacturer.

But run samples through a convolution like Voxengo's Pristine Space or Tascam GigaPulse or AudioEase Altiverb, and they'll mix nicely, no matter which company made the samples.

Mike

[chckn8r]

For orchestral work, I don't think there's anything in the hardware arena that holds a light to software based libraries.

I use a combination of Giga (Orchestra version with packaged Vienna Strings), Steinberg Halion Symphonic and GPO. I was able to acquire Giga from a friend for a good deal, but then found out later that I needed to shell out $1K plus for a decent library, so it's sort of my last resort if things don't work on the other two.

I love the Steinberg samples - VERY nice and convincing - all major orchestral instruments (except for harp and piano - a big WTF expletive from me there - I can understand the piano as they sell a killer piano library, but no harp???), solo & tutti and a wide range of articulations and expressions. GPO has a small footprint on the hard drive (only 2Gb!!!) - you get a lot for your money. I met Gary Garritan - a VERY smart man and he paid a lot of attention to detail when recording and developing this library.

If you want something that's powerful, convincing and cheap, then yeah, GPO is the way to go - it'll take you a long way.

my two cents anyway.

D

[MaestroX]

Which Steinberg samples are you mentioning there Chckn8r?

I have Steinberg the grand 2 for my piano samples and it works well. I also have GPO but I loathe it due to its difficult setup in cubase (I don't have a mod wheel on my keyboard (even though it is a top of the range Yamaha DGX Portal Grand)). I've been looking at sibelius with the GPO extension which would be nice. I've only ever got the two stand along products to work together with Midi Yoke.

Have you have any experience with any EWQL samples? I've got to say, they are great for film writing. I have EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold +XP Addon and Symphonic Choirs (best choir samples available at the moment). I really wish I had the money to get the VSL samples , they are out of this world!

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by MaestroX

Which Steinberg samples are you mentioning there Chckn8r?

I have Steinberg the grand 2 for my piano samples and it works well. I also have GPO but I loathe it due to its difficult setup in cubase (I don't have a mod wheel on my keyboard (even though it is a top of the range Yamaha DGX Portal Grand)). I've been looking at sibelius with the GPO extension which would be nice. I've only ever got the two stand along products to work together with Midi Yoke.

Have you have any experience with any EWQL samples? I've got to say, they are great for film writing. I have EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold +XP Addon and Symphonic Choirs (best choir samples available at the moment). I really wish I had the money to get the VSL samples , they are out of this world!

I've been using the Steinberg Halion Symphonic Orchestra - just came out in the early fall of last year. I've been eying the Piano library for a while - but there are a lot of other things vying for the "next big thing" on my wish list.

Have you checked the options in the Kontakt player for GPO - I think you're able to re-assign a controller for volume.

Yeah, I've definitely been looking at the Symphonic Choirs package! That looks and sounds like a killer group of samples.

[mducharme]

Also serving the same market as Halion Syphony Orchestra are the Miroslav Philharmonik and the E-MU Symphony Orchestra.. Wouldn't be a bad idea to look at all three and compare the demos..

However, if you're looking at doing this more professionally in the future, you will need multiple sample libraries to mix together.. because you're always going to find, even in the most expensive sample library, that some samples don't sound how you want.. but ones from a different library do..

And especially with strings sections, mixing different sample libraries together is a sure-fire way to get a much more realistic sound than you can out of any one library by itself.

Each of the above products, while very good, includes both a sampler and a sample library.. if you ran those three at the same time, you have three samplers eating up CPU simultaneously... doesn't take much of that until you need a second computer just to run "Orchestra Package XYZ".

The advantage to going with a sampler like Tascam GVI or Kontakt 2 and sample libraries for those is that you can mix and match different sample libraries while only worrying about the one actual sampler using your CPU and RAM. This allows you to get a lot more use out of one PC.

You can go whole hog with one vendor, be it Halion, Miroslav. E-MU, VSL or East West, but as soon as you want to start adding on other samplers to fill in some fake instruments here and there, you may find you need a second computer just to run those samplers..

[chckn8r]

Originally Posted by mducharme

However, if you're looking at doing this more professionally in the future, you will need multiple sample libraries to mix together.. because you're always going to find, even in the most expensive sample library, that some samples don't sound how you want.. but ones from a different library do..

...

You can go whole hog with one vendor, be it Halion, Miroslav. E-MU, VSL or East West, but as soon as you want to start adding on other samplers to fill in some fake instruments here and there, you may find you need a second computer just to run those samplers..

Exactly right on both accounts. I've been mixing and matching different samples from different libraries to get different articulations, tones and timbres in my pieces.

The advantage of entry-level and mid-market libraries is they aren't as large (disk-space and memory requirements) as the huge high-end sample libraries. At times, I've contemplated re-purposing one of my computers as a sample-library slave when I max out the CPU with large orchestral works, but I've come to appreciate (and rely upon) being able to "freeze" instances of the samplers/soft synths (essentially converting the soft-synth performance to an audio file in the box) thus not having to deal with networking and recording issues.

I'd love to be able to have those large libraries and have dedicated machines to host them, but until I start raking in those massive royalties, I'll be just fine with what I have.