Amicus717

9 hours ago, Max Arwood said:

I was looking for some nice timpani for a project I am working on. Anyone have any suggestions? I thought this one sounded better than what I have. 

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

From Eduardo Tarilonte:

"I am beyond excited to introduce to you “Quetzal, Ancient Sounds of Mesoamerica” along with the brand new Engine player.

This unique sound world brings to life the mystical era of Mesoamerican civilizations and allows you to experience the sounds of a forgotten time up close. Discover a majestic collection of clay flutes, original reproductions of the instruments of the past, and be inspired by ancient drums and over 80 soundscapes.

Quetzal offers over 7,000 individual samples and more than 50 playable instruments. With elaborate multisamples and various articulations, Quetzal provides a versatile and authentic sound palette for any production.

Experience the magic of Quetzal as it becomes your gateway to a realm of ancient wonders and timeless mysteries.

I really hope you enjoy it and find it inspiring for your music. Thanks as always for your support."

https://www.bestservice.com/en/quetzal.html

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

Mine is 45% also...

7 hours ago, Nick Blanc said:

Lumina is on my wishlist for years now, but still too expensive for what I would use it for.

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. 

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

And €24 for the Sordino Strings on their own, 25GB worth. 
Got it as a Christmas freebie two years ago. 

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.

4 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

Who has it?

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. 

9 hours ago, Fleer said:

Tutti Free any good?

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.  

13 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I love their Ostinato libraries. 

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.

22 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

So Sono fanboys if you could only own one library which would it be?

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 . 

11 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

Your opinion probably wont change.   Some of them need an 88 key controller for the key switches if you don't want to pencil them in.  They are similar to using loops except now you can drop the midi in a track.  Also there is a small learning curve using a GUI like this. 

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. 

32 minutes ago, Kirean said:

Since I haven't really played around with sample based libraries, how versatile are they in the end?

As a person who is not too keen on (sample/)loop libraries due to fear of the end result sounding too similar with everyone else using the same thing, is that fear relevant with Sonokinetic's stuff?

Seemed like almost every Youtube video I checked, the person was still throwing tons of instruments from other libraries on top to make things gel and flow better.

 

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. 

11 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Unless if it’s your kind of sound … at the edge of silence

Best of the Albions for me. 

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

1 hour ago, Fleer said:

I’ve got BBCSO Pro, Albion One, Albion Tundra...

I have to admit, Tundra has intriuged me. It sounds like an interesting  library, but I worry it would be good for one kind of sound that you might need twice a decade, and otherwise would sit unused taking up HD space...

I can understand the polarizing nature of the Spitfire products. I don't own a ton of their stuff -- Albion ONE, Solstice, Loegria, Appassionata  Strings and BBC Core -- and even with that small selection, it's a really mixed bag that goes from great to useless.

I got a lot of use out of Albion ONE, although it's fallen out of my template as I've gotten more expressive libraries. But for a while it was one of my desert island libs. I do think it's a great starter tool for folks wanting to create trailer music or similar. You can do a lot with it in that genre, but it really isn't useful outside of it. 

Loegria has some nice patches, but the overall product is really uneven, and has weird stuff like the horribly tuned recorder patches that I have yet to successfully use in any project. I actually thought they had retired Loegria, as I bought it cheap when they were putting it out to pasture, but it seems to be back. 

Solstice seemed like a good idea, but I was dissappointed with it. It's got a few good patches if you're doing the music for Wicker Man II, but beyond that...

However, BBC Core has become my main goto for orchestral fundamentals and currently forms the heart of my template. I think it's outstanding and for the price offers a lot of great stuff. The Appassionata Strings meld with BBC pretty nicely if you play around with the mic settings, and I use it as a supplement to the BBC strings if I need to punch up the schmaltz. They are great for that.

41 minutes ago, Carl Ewing said:

Ya - LA Scoring Strings was their first big library - and is an exceptionally detailed library - with reeeeallly  deep programming features. Possibly the most advanced instrument scripting on the market. But it is also exceptionally classical sounding - i.e. quite dry / sharp, some would say cold, and can very difficult to mix. The legato is absolutely gorgeous though, and is highly customizable (you can get extremely natural long / deep bends that no other library has been able to replicate). Tone wise - complete opposite of most modern orchestra libraries, which have a much warmer tone and are much easier to mix with other libraries, especially in modern scores. Note: I use LASS a lot to back up wetter / warmer libraries. It cuts through mixes like no other, so great when you need certain leads or short articulations to cut through a mix. 

Here's a very short example of the LA Scoring Strings tone: (there are some great neo-classical / complex string arrangements done with it that sound incredibly good - it's short articulations, when programmed well, are second to none):

IMO - it can be one of the most beautiful strings libraries around - many, many people are loyal to it's sound - but trying to mix with it - and learning how to program it - it takes a lot of time. Other libraries are much more intuitive and streamlined to just load, play, record and done. Anytime you open LASS you're likely in for hours of engineering. It's definitely a key reason  (along with the very dry tone) why it faded from most conversations. But it's still highly respected, I find mostly with really traditional / classical types.

However, AudioBro eventually released Modern Scoring Strings, which is also exceptionally well programmed / produced, but it still has quite a classical tone, but much warmer (imo) than LASS. Easier to work with & mix with, but requires some heavy manual reading.

Short example (seriously, the portamento / legato in their engine is incredible):

As for Genesis Children's Choir - well, it's just the greatest damn thing ever. It's just a "buy it, you'll never need another children's choir ever again". I played it for days when I first bought it. I'm very biased. I am a little bit concerned about the Eternity demo...as it has a much colder / plasticy sound than the children's choir (especially those sopranos), but hoping it's just the person who did the demo and that it's easy to tone it down a bit.

Anyway - I've always been a big fan of AudioBro. I think they just took a much more classical direction that isn't particularly popular with certain composer crowds (especially VI-Control crowd, which seems to lean much more to the Hollywood sound - seen in the Orchestral Tools / Spitfire Audio obsessions). I totally get it, but I still find AudioBro libraries beautiful in what they do. But in a very specific style.

 

(EDIT: I have never tried their Brass or Drum / Percussion libraries. I honestly don't even know what they sound like. I'm guessing they're very good, but I don't want to listen because then I'll buy them lol.)

Those sound amazing. I don't need another string library, but now I need another string library. 

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

I really like the demos and that's a compelling sale price. But I'll be candid. While Soniokinetic makes very high-quality sample libraries --  and I own a number of them -- I sometimes find their user interfaces are unnecessarily complicated to the point that I've deleted a couple of their libraries only due to that fact. Perhaps I've been spoiled from straightforward user interfaces and working with user experience and usability experts in my professional life (cue a troll to mock me for sharing that). By comparison, if you look at e-instruments user interfaces, they allow the user to delve deep into controlling their libraries and make meaningful edits with ease. I wish Soniokinetic could make some progress in that area. 

I agree about Sonokinetic's interfaces, for the most part. I like their libraries, and I've developed ways to make good use of them (for a while I found them fun to play around with but it took a while to figure how to fit them into my template and workflow).

But their interfaces drive me nuts. I sometimes think they emphasize style over intuitiveness and ease of use, and it irritates me. Making orchestral music is hard enough without having to decipher the interface along the way. 

5 hours ago, Kirean said:

So I've had 

• Ancient ERA Persia (originally Dark Era, but since I got Groth earlier this year, might be not necessary)
• Forest Kingdom 3

on my shopping list for the past six months or so.

The only thing I'm worried about is Best Service's own player as I haven't heard too many good things about it.

Anyone got any experiences with either library?

I have all of Tarilonte’s Era libs. They are in a class by themselves and worth it, regardless of the player. 
 

Persia is great, Forest Kingdom 3 is even better (one of my favs). I use them both regularly. In particular, FK3 is my current goto for ethnic flute sounds. 
 

As for Engine - the interface is ancient and clumsy, but its otherwise perfectly useable. I’ve never had any issues with it.  

7 hours ago, aidan o driscoll said:

Great games .. AND I have the actual tee-shirt to prove it also .. still wear it, got it in an actual boxed edition of Half Life way back

My fav game of all time. I have retail box versions of this, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and HL2. But I don't have a t-shirt. I'm envious :)

3 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

I think all of us forum regulars check that box whether we admit it or not. 

Check!

Can't help myself. I am so well-libraried, I could never purchase another library ever and want for nothing. But where is the fun in that? Holding on to your money is so overrated...

6 hours ago, hockeyjx said:

Probably blasphemy to many, but I think 90125 is the best Yes album all the way through. Particularly the vocals on Leave It. Vocals start shortly after the 2 minute mark.

90215 hit when I was in high school, and my buddies and I thought it was the greatest thing. It introduced us to Yes' music, and we went on to become major fans.

Love this album, have listened to it end to end maybe a million times, and hope to do so a million more before I shuffle off...

I noticed they finally fixed the spiccato repetition keyswitches in the 2.0 versions of Cinestrings. They did not work before, and Cinesamples confirmed this and gave me the impression it might take a while to get patched, but I downloaded the most recent update and it's all better...

I'm as big a John William's fan as there is, and I could list 20 of his scores here without hesitation. However, it's nice to highlight other worthies who don't quite get the same spotlight.

One of those is Bruce Broughton, whose score for the Steven Spielberg produced movie Young Sherlock Holmes is a neglected masterpiece from the mid-80s. It's a big dose of full-throttle orchestral thunder in the classic tradition, from charming and melodic to bombastic and apocalyptic, courtesy of the Sinfonia of London and a 16 voice SATB choir. The main themes and motifs are top-class, and very memorable. This is the main theme, and it's great:

I've been collecting study scores the last few years, and I've been lobbying the various score publishers (Omni Music, Neumation, Chris Sidall, etc) to publish this one. They all agree it's brilliant, and a couple of them have expressed an interest in getting it out there.

Here's hoping. It's got a ton of great music in it. 

3 minutes ago, Keni said:

 I can’t wait! I also look forward to checking out Next as I do operate both OS

Yeah, I'm in the same frame of mind. I think this is going to be really interesting. Very curious to know what the new Sonar will offer and what Next will be like. 

I don't hold BandLab responsible for the Lifetime Sub fiasco, and while I felt like a bit of a sucker after I bought one and Gibson pulled the plug, getting an actively supported Cakewalk for free all these years has been a nice way to get over it. 

If BandLab has enough confidence in these new products (and the market) that they think they can charge for them, well it makes me really curious to know what will be on offer.