Starise

I recently started a thread over on the Ning forum called " Good mid priced sample libraries" Because honestly I don't think you need to go get the most expensive libraries. Lots of people there are buying the VSL stuff. Granted VSL make good libraries I just think you can make great mock ups using far less. A trained ear might hear the difference. Here's one I recently made using a set of SONiVOX libraries. I bought Brass, woodwinds and strings plus the 88 as a bundle for 20.00 US. The strings are a little grainy but that has more to do with the way I mixed it. The 88 was a big surprise. It is pretty amazing! I also used the 8dio solo violin in this. When I bought it for 20.00 I didn't think I would ever use it. The cello is Cinesamples Tina Quo though. Even that wasn't terribly expensive on a deal. Originally this mix was too hot. I had to bring the levels down for this kind of music when not in a movie context. I think I managed to get pretty close for someone who isn't a pro. As others have said it has more to do with the room. The best monitors in the world won't help you if you aren't hearing things correctly. Even with lots of correction on my space mixes often come out bass shy and I have to work on the bass. This is because my space still isn't totally right. If it were me I would probably take the subwoofer out or have it set VERY low if your mixing room is small. JMOP. I am not as particular about instrument placement unless it affects how the sound will be. Some who mix for this are very particular about that. Sometimes I am, but only if the context fits.

Thanks!

As primarily a keyboardist I often have the keyboard set up to track both an audio and midi track. If the audio coming from the keyboard is something that really fits I'll track both. I mostly track guitars as audio but since getting hold of a few decent guitar libraries I've been more prone to just use one of those if it sounds good. As someone else already mentioned, I could potentially drag the audio parts to midi. One DAW I use doesn't let me write volume automation to a midi track so I'll often "freeze" that track. KONTAKT is not only a sample library player but a merge point of sorts and the place where you select whether you want to play a multi or a single instrument. You can play all sounds as one on one channel or you can set each sound up on it's own midi channel. Things can easily "go south" when selecting, labeling and directing audio out of KONTAKT. Don't ask me how I know that. Two things made KONTAKT really frustrating for me in the early days of it. NI still had some streamlining to do on their code for efficiency and computers weren't half what they are today. Back then there was no way I could load any kind of heavy library ( in terms of disk size) and have it play well. Both KONTAKT and computers have come a long way but NI still does frustrating things such as removing features from older versions that people used and didn't want removed. Most people who use KONTAKT professionally are staying in the midi domain until the very end. They can do that sort of thing at high track counts if they have a computer that will handle it. I wish software makers would give a minimum spec that really works with more than a few tracks. If the intention is to make big productions you will need a well spec'd computer. All of this works well for one man or woman ITB setups. I still think the best albums were made using real people playing real instruments. A decent musician can visualize how something is "supposed" to sound and make ITB compositions that fool just about everyone. That's at least part of it if you're going for realism in knowing how a real musician playing that particular instrument would play, what keys they might be in etc. TBH although the sounds that come with CbB are decent for a beginner I think anyone who is getting serious about making a more realistic presentation ITB should be looking at something like KONTAKT...don't forget though, there are lots of alternatives to KONTAKT as well. There's the older ENGINE player, SampleTank, UVI, Garratain has a built in player. Spitfire moved away from KONTAKT recently by using their own player.Many DAWS have a built in player for basic sounds that sometimes works very well. There are lots of others. I think the main draw to KONTAKT for those working on a professional level using lots of tracks is it's all in one easy to manage environment and is usually fairly stable. If you integrate the NI controller into that environment you have access to everything fast. Smaller ITB setups can add whatever they want to add randomly and if you only have 10-20 tracks you can make some great work on an average computer.

Wow, Sorry to hear that bro. There are really bitter people who had a bad experience with some people in "religion". I don't blame them for being bitter. There are all types out there and I think some of those places attract the kinds of people who think their purpose in the word is to tell everyone how right they are and how wrong everyone else is in a very condescending way. Been there seen some of it. No thanks. Yep for sure!

I sometimes use one of these- QuNeo It has flat sliders and the pads have different zones. Lights on it are an added gimmick? The lights actually help to see how you are adjusting it. No software comes with it though and it isn't plug-and play.

Reminds me of a forum I will not name here. It wasn't KVR but it's a fairly popular forum and I know the owner who has really built it up over the years into a great place. In this forum a few of us wondered what would happen if we had a free forum where there were no stipulations as to religion or politics. Even called it the "anything goes" forum. It lasted maybe two months. Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was like a roller coaster ride ending 1000 feet up in the grand canyon. For one thing, it taught me that people have some very odd views and tend to name call and use stereotypes about any view different from their own. One or two "take chargers" there were trying to set up who was ****** and who wasn't. Yeah........after a bit they just went away because I don't think they could handle the real world. I'll never forget some of the subjects we got onto were giants and is the queen a reptilian and does she eat mice? LOL! I happen to believe we in fact had some tall people way back when because I think we have found the bones. Man was I ever taken to task for that one. The whole thing was eventually closed down because a few there were reporting that it had them so shook up they couldn't function. Music production though, It's kind of difficult for me to argue about Mac .vs PC or AMD .vs Intel ....to me that's small stuff. I like to investigate it though. I had LOT of posts on the old Cakewalk forum. Many thousands. It seems the only one who was able to take their post count to the new forum was BAPU. Not sure how much he payed them for that

Thanks Pete for your comments. All companies have drama I suppose. I have never worked anywhere this wasn't the case. IK makes a great line of products and in spite of those periodic short term setbacks has managed to keep going. One of the oldest in this line of product and still one of the best. Kitekrazy, I went over to KVR. I couldn't find anything that reminded me of some past threads I have read there. Everything was pretty cordial for KVR. They had the kid gloves on. I believe they have banned most of the 13 year olds who forgot to take their Ritalin. 😁

All the methods of marketing and periodic issues with ST 4 as a program aside. I am using it now in a song and so far working well! The most recent version of ST 4 seems to be the most stable so far.So far I've only been playing with SampleTank and Miroslav Philharmonic. Both of those are deep enough to make just about any idea you have come to fruition. My history with IK goes way back. Remember Sonic Synth 2? It's still listed in my products area from 2012. My first purchase goes back to 2011. Back then I was using Sampletank on a laptop for live playing. After that I started to use hardware synths for the same things and sort of drifted away from it. When I started to compose ITB it seemed KONTAKT was the way to go since it also played 3rd party libraries. Only recently have I re examined what the new ST4 can do. The program has come a long way and is a real contender in the VSTi market. I'm going to try and make an entire song using mostly only ST and see how that pans out, maybe use the multi part of the program. I'll admit I'm still a little nervous about doing it because of the issue I had with earlier versions crashing. If it works out well though I might be seeing KONTAKT less and less. Especially if the sound paks which might compare favorably to KONTAKT are reasonably priced. No I probably won't ever be ditching KONTAKT, but ST4 will be a nice card on the table. I'll have to see what the KVR boys are saying. Might be another discussion similar to the never ending ones we heard about Sonar X-3. There were some legit bugs in it and there were some legit bugs in earlier ST for some. Not to scare anyone, but I've had the occasional crash even with the new build but I can't duplicate it with regularity so I'm thinking it might be an issue with how things are playing on my computer. It's sad really but when a product is released if there are issues the product seems to gain a reputation from then on no matter how good subsequent versions are. I think this was the issue with SampleTank. They have to write for both Mac and PC. Some of those issues weren't on both platforms. While I certainly do listen to what others are saying about the recent builds of ST, I will obviously be basing a lot of my views on my own experiences. In some cases a new idea or product is seem more as a target than an opportunity or a ** .vs ** because people love that kind of thing. Sometimes good points are made in those discussions. Other times it's a never ending loop of you know what :)....sorry man I write books.

Nice creation there. I am glad that your back to doing something creative.

Thanks Wookie!

This is truly amazing work. I think it begs for a vocals though. I've heard you sing. Have you considered it?

What ever...........I already wasted my time listening to it. No more. Someone else can comment Music should be fun and positive. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it If you think bashing another human being no matter how much you disagree with them is fun, I'm not into that. I never will be.

Bjorn, I like this a lot. Especially the flutes. Makes me almost want to go buy Omnisphere. I say almost because I probably can't afford it right now. Very relaxing track that has a western feel with a modern twist. Congrats on nice work here!

I love the very up front genuine vibe this has. Like some dudes in a garage who just tracked it while they were playing but knew what they were doing. I know better than to think this was an easy mix. Maybe it really wasn't difficult, but I suspect that you took some time to make it come across this way and give it this feel. Thanks for sharing Douglas!

This is excellent work. Nice vocals! I can't understand the language, and that's a shame. The mix sounds great on my system here! Thanks for sharing!

This really is a few levels above anything I have ever heard you do Wookie. I vote you number one contender for the the next Dr. Who episodes!! Thanks for sharing!

The only psychopathic buffons are the cry babies that can't give a fair election a rest and still haven't gotten over it. Some people love to hate...yes that's you. And they try to make it funny. It isn't funny to me.

Nice instrumental. Were you going for something atonal intentionally? The harp sounds very nice..maybe panned just a bit too far left. A very pleasant listening experience.

Well since we are not supposed to get political on the threads I won't go into details. All I'll say is they all lie and the alternative this time doesn't look much better to me nuf said. I never vote for anyone based on the person. I vote based mainly on the POLICY. Not everyone is on the vote Trump away side. In fact he has a good chance of making it again..

Great recording and playing on this. Youtube has better audio than Soundcloud. Has a great live feel to it since you tracked it while playing the main parts. Hat's off to you for such nice work!

Tom, Thank you for listening. I used the 8dio SOLO violin . They are phrases but you can tune them to your music. That was the only thing I didn't "play". A little choppy. Yes I see what you mean there. Maybe the strings need softened just a bit. Bjorn, Thank you for listening! I used 8dio SOLO violin and believe it or not a strings, brass and woodwinds from SONiVOX. I picked up brass, strings and woodwinds for 20.00 US on a sale. I can thank cclarry for that The cello is is the Tina Quo number one from Cinesamples. I have the number 2 but it's more legato.I had choirs in this and decided it was a bit too much so I removed them. Tom ( DeeringAmps) . I go back to things I've made and think to myself " what was I thinking?" I really do enjoy the process though. Glad I'm not the only one. Douglas, Thanks man! David, Thanks for being honest. That's the only way we improve. I need to go back and make a few changes. I attempted it earlier today but couldn't find the place . I can tell you what is doing it. My sidechain compression is too aggressive at that place. I have brass sending a side chain to the strings. I don't think the 128 mp3 did me any favors either. The main player here is an inexpensive SONiVOX library. FWIW. The library itself sounds pretty good all by itself. I just need to make a few things "less hot" in the mix.

Here is a recent composition I just completed.....ok maybe not because I keep going back to my mixes over and over again. I'll be honest. This started out in CbB. I had an issue with my Kontakt tracks getting all mixed up when I unfroze them. I had to do some salvage work and save what I could as track exports which ended up in Studio One. That wasn't my original plan. The main mix was made in Cakewalk but I added a few more tracks and mastered in Studio One. I appreciate any comments. I will be back to listen to others work here. I had to break away for a bit and needed my ears. I'lllll be Bach.

Sure thing Sergio. ARC 3 is on a pre order basis now for the mic and software, or was as of yesterday when I looked into it. I'll probably wait until the product is readily available. I'll post my results unless someone else beats me to it. This will only be helpful data if the software isn't "approximating" too much. Did you get one of those 23 and me tests genetic tests.? I'm white and from Europe originally........me and 500 million other people. lol. Not sure why this reminded me of that

I see your point. I have always seen ARC as an approximation but a really close one. If it wasn't close there would be no need to have it. And it had better be darned close. To me that means probably to within 1-2%. If my old mic is giving me a 10-20% deviation I really am not interested in the" correction". I won't beat a dead horse here. I've already typed plenty on it. If I had the assurance that my mic would be so close it wouldn't matter I would be fine with that. I was beginning to think this until Peter made it pretty plain that .................well I'll post the comment again Don't mind me I'm in some kind of an endless loop here. I want off the merry-go-round. If I buy a product based on accuracy it either is or it isn't. We can mince words any way you want to but to me the results are suspect. If I end up buying a MEMS mic the very first thing I'm going to do is take calibrations on both mics and make a comparison between the two. That's probably the only way I'm going to know how "accurate" the older system was. I'm just plain tired of talking about it now.....have a good day!

We will have to agree to disagree here. If something "works" but isn't considered to be reliable in my thinking it isn't working very well You are distributing a great product here and I'll probably buy it again. I think the MEMs mic is probably a necessity though. I can't confidently use a mic that even the company says the reliability isn't that great. Sort of defeats the purpose of a product that's supposed to make monitoring "more reliable".