Amicus717

I tend to mix it up a lot, but as a general overview I use a combination of: CinePerc from Cinesamples NI Symphony Series Percussion (the only Symphony Series library that delivers the goods, in my view) Spitfire BBCSO Vienna Synchron-ized Special Editions Spitfire AlbionONE (the Easter Island hits, in particular) Orchestral Tools Ark 1 FWIW, if I had to choose just one of the above, I'd actually choose the NI Symphony Series Perc lib. It's a lot better than it's Symphony Series siblings, to my ears, and has fairly comprehensive set of instruments, plus a consistent control mapping across the various patches and articulations that works well for me. And I find it fairly easy to blend with other libraries. The other Symphony Series libraries do not thrill me at all, and I barely use them, but the Perc one gets called up a lot. Hope this info helps.

I have both of those percussion libraries. They are ok. The timp patches sound good, but are pretty basic in terms of articulations. There are single hit patches using soft, medium and hard mallets, plus crescendos and rolls in a variety of dynamics. I find the velocity layers change a bit abruptly, especially for the soft mallets patches. So in my view: very basic stuff, but decent enough to use for simple projects. Personally, I don't use these timp patches in my projects at all, since I have much more complete timp libraries available. The loops and percussion combo patches in these libaries are much more useful to me, and I do fire them up occaision. The various metal and drum patches are decent. Overall, I think $19 is a fair price. Frankly, I wouldn't pay more. That's just my experience, as someone who does full orchestral mock-ups. YMMV. Rob

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I have Adventure Strings, Soaring Strings and Adventure Brass. They are quite good for the stuff I do.

Mine is 45% also...

Lumina is pretty nice and I use it a fair amount, but it strikes me as a library that folks will either use a lot or not at all, depending on what they spend most of their time doing. I use it mainly for the solo legato instruments, which are lovely and also heavy on cinematic schmaltz, much like the rest of the library. If that's not your thing, it's a pricey pick-up even on sale. I'm glad I have it, but it was a luxury purchase rather than an essential addition to my template -- I have lots of other libraries that could cover the same ground if needed.

It's a good deal. These string libs sound very nice and have lots of useful articulations and configurable elements. That said, I am not keen on the GUI, and I see them as a library that needs tweaking and careful keyswitching and the like -- these aren't the kind of patches you load up and start jamming with. They're the kind of patches you load up when you've finished your sketch and have the arrangement nailed down and can spend a lot of time tweaking in the piano roll. That's how I use them, anyway. As always, YMMV

I didn't even bother trying, this time around. I don't find the Ostinato libraries useful at all, and something about this annual, frantic click-and-refresh-a-thon for the limited freebie every year just makes me feel like a trained monkey on a leash. So I sat it out.

I do. I personally like it the best of all my Sonokinetic phrase libs. However, that’s really subjective; Sotto is exactly like all the others, and I just happen to find the phrases and textures in Sotto to be particularly useful. But that’s just me. If you’re on the fence about the usefulness of their phrase libs or dislike them, Sotto won’t change your mind.

Yeah, it's fun. Sounds pretty good, and it's only 400+ mb -- so it's not eating HD space. It's a lot of short recordings, so while there isn't a ton of content, it's got enough to be useful. I can see me using some of these little patches.

Their orchestral sample-based libraries are pretty good, too. Orchestral Strings has a lovely sound and lots of articulations and setup flexibility. Ensemble Woodwinds offers the same. The both blend seamlessly with the phrase libs. I find them a bit resource intensive, though, and they wouldn’t be my first choice for quick work or sketching. Neither are they good enough to eclipse my other options; basically, they’re a nice additional color in the palette, with some unique features. And a really irritating GUI.

If this is only regarding the phrase libs, then based on the ones I’ve used the most, so far: Sotto Capriccio would be runner-up; Grosso a (very) distant third. That is really subjective, though. I mean, depending on what kind of music I end up writing this year, maybe I never use any of those libs at all, and Largo becomes my goto. I see all these libraries as the same beast in different clothes. None are better or worse than any other, and it totally depends on what you’re writing .

Their GUIs are awful, frankly. Stylish and clever and occasionally intuitive. Overall I think their stuff is a very mixed bag, and I would never pay full-freight for them.

I use Sonokinetic’s libraries as accents to my main template. Basically, if I need a particularly agile string line or some bowing pattern, brass flare or woodwind noodling that simply isn’t possible with conventional samples, I will dig through my Sonokinetic libs for a sample loop that does the trick. It can be effective at pushing the illusion of a live orchestra, but it took me a while to figure out how to do that. So, I see Sonokinetic’s stuff as useful supplements to my main tools. I’d never try to build a track using nothing but their loops and overall they don’t get a ton of use — but when I find a way to drop them into a project I really appreciate what they can do.

It turns out my sound spends more time at the edge of bombastic. Tundra would probably be wasted on me.