Amicus717

My dad was part of a folk quartet way back in the day (early 60s), and they opened for Mr Lightfoot on four separate occasions when he played at The Riverboat in Toronto, a legendary coffeehouse (closed way back in 1978) that hosted many folk acts over the years. He said Lightfoot was the nicest man -- zero edge, friendly, very supportive of his fellow artists, and a first-class live performer. My dad's adventures as a touring musician during the mid-century folk revival are part of our family folklore, and my dad mentioned it to me this morning on a Zoom call. He was quite upset to learn the Gordon had passed away. He recalled the time they had finished their opening set and Gordon was on stage doing his, when a string broke on his guitar. Gordon decided to call my dad's quartet back to the stage while he got it fixed. As my dad recalls it: "he looked into the audience to where we were sitting enjoying the show, and said 'hey, let's get the boys back up here to do a few more numbers", at which point he smiled and gave my dad and his bandmates a friendly "c'mon get up here" wave. My dad says he and his buddies looked at each other with a "ugh, do we even have a few more songs we can do?" and then got back up, pulled some unrehearsed charts from their repertoire and just went for it. He said it was a great experience, and Mr. Lightfoot was very complimentary after the show. His passing is a real loss. I think my dad and I will be listening to Gordon Lightfoot recordings a lot over the coming days...

Core 2.0 sounds pretty good, and I like the legato more than I did with the previous version. The only issue I have with the upgrade is the short articulation repetition keys no longer seem to work. These are the green keyswitches that trigger a double or triple repetition in the sample -- very useful for fast ostinato passages and the like. The keyswitches are still there, but I can't get them to function. I contacted Cinesamples about this, and they agreed with me: they don't work like they are supposed to. The support person added that they'd send a note to their development team, see if it was something they could work on down the road. They suggested a workaround, but that doesn't work for me either. I guess I'm one of the few who uses those keyswitches, so it's not a high priority to fix. That's frustrating. I use them often enough that I have older projects that are now going to need some major adjustments, possibly by swapping in another library.

Nice setup! I'm a stickler for being organized, and that looks like a nice, productive workspace with no distractions. I cound't survive using only one monitor, though. That's old school

I’ve been doing this with my sample libraries: creating short, quick arrangements using only one library or library sets from the same developer (where possible). The idea was to force myself to learn how to use my libraries properly. It’s takes time to master the nuances and tricks that make libs work, especially orchestral ones. It’s been a surprising experience, and pretty constructive.

Yeah, I reached the same conclusion. The extra instruments in the Pro version are not must-haves (I have them many times over in other libs), and the mic positions are ludicrously space consuming.

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Yeah, I'm not interested in Musio. I already had most of CineSamples major libraries, so for me this was a free upgrade. I agree with your general take on it. I don't like subscription models in general, and have ditched all of them (I had Composer Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud for a bit, but cancelled them and have had no regrets about it).

So, this morning I re-installed CineStrings Core via Native Access, as per Cinesamples instructions, and have been trying out the revised library... My five cents, so far... Much nicer interface, and the legato is more pleasing to my ears and more natural sounding, IMHO. They mention on the site they've applied new sonic treatment to the samples, including better trimming etc. The overall sound seems smoother and cleaner, although I find the samples are still rather noisy, frankly. It's one of the gripes I've had with Cinesamples: their samples can be really scratchy when the mod wheel is dialed low, and there has always been a ton of ambient rumble and fidget noises (foot shuffles, clothing rustle, etc). That kind of stuff is still present, although it is reduced. I tested the new ensemble spiccato patch in a project I had worked on a few months back. With the original CineStrings Core patch, I noticed a lot of low end rumble that really sounded awful and was hard to tame, and it forced me to swap it for another library (Musical Sampling's Adventure Strings). I figured this would be a good test of their revisions, so re-opened the project and dropped the new CineStrings ensemble patch in there. It sounds much better to my ears - less rumble and not quite as thick on the low end. It's really early in my testing, but I do find the mapping feature to be a bit confusing. I'm currently watching the new walkthru on the CineSamples site, so hopefully that will help. But I didn't find the settings intuitive. I also can't seem to get the "double repetition" and "triple repetition" keys working for the short articulations, no matter what I do. I use this feature a fair amount, as it's great for really fast ostinato passages. I've reached out to Cinesamples support for help. Overall, I think this revision is an improvement, although the basic character of the library is the same (in ways good and bad). That's just my opinion, of course. I've still got stuff to figure out with the new interface, and it's one thing to test a library on its own, and another thing to place it in the context of a big project and see how it performs. So, YMMV.

I tend to stay away from making hard recommendations for stuff -- it is such a subjective thing, and someone's "greatest-library-ever!" is someone else's "unuseable-mess-of-a-library". For further reading on this issue, see: VI Control - pretty much every Sample Talk thread ever made. However, if I were doing an Eleanor Rigby cover, then I'd fire up Tina Gua 2. But that's just my two cents (actually, I'm Canadian, so that would be 1.5 cents). I honestly don't know if that will work for you, but it would be the library I'd start out with.

Tina Guo 1 has a very emotional vibrato and, to my ears, a laggier legato transition. If you're doing a faster passage, it drags and blurs a bit. Tina Guo 2 has minimal vibrato and the legato transitions are faster. It's more nimble to play for faster passages.

I have the Tina Guo series, and I like them a lot. The overall vibe of the original library is pretty dramatic and intense, with pronounced legato transitions. Tina Guo 2 is a more agile library with a lot of articulations, including shorts. As for how dry: they do come with default parameters that are pretty schmaltzy, and there isn't a ton of user-configurable elements, at least in terms of mix or mic settings. Basically, you have two mixes - Tim's Mix and Raw Mix - and some limited reverb settings that you can adjust or turn off (plus the usual Legato controls, etc) I don't know how dry you want things to be, but I did three really fast and dirty recordings and linked them below. All these are done with the in-library reverb effects turned off, and using the "Raw Mix" (as opposed to the curated "Tim's Mix" that is the default). There are no effects applied in my DAW: Tina Guo original library Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-1-dry Tina Guo 2 Arco Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-dry Tina Guo 2 Spiccato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-spiccato-dry-test Hope this helps. Rob

I have bought a number of libraries from Best Service, including most of my Eduardo Tarilonte "Era" libraries. I trust them, and their support has always been responsive and helpful. Great company.

I've always taken a "right tool for the job" mentality with this stuff. Project SAM's design approach is kind of love-it-or-hate-it, and I would probably never use them for any of my big orchestral projects, since I like to have a lot more control over the mood and texture of my arrangements. But I think the basic sound of Project SAM's samples are a good as anyone's, and if you need to do fast arrangements they are hard to beat. Buddy of mine has a podcast and a couple months ago he asked me to create a few short bumpers for different recurring segments. I messed around with a bunch of ideas using my template's go-to libraries (including Albion ONE), but after a week or two I wasn't getting anywhere. Decided to fire up Symphobia Lumina and was able to crank out three of them in an hour using the multis.

Guy Rowland has great video reviews of both: Orchestral Essentials 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl7d6jBTab8 Orchestral Essentials 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J-04SM2-no These reviews cover the basic instruments, and they link to follow-up reviews that talk about the Multi patches. These are older reviews so they show the original interface and patch setup. I have Orchestral Essentials 2, and it's great, although I have since bought the Symphobias (1,2 and 3), and so I don't really use it much anymore. But it's a great library with really lovely samples. It is ensemble patches, for the most part, and I think it's geared towards efficient composing using a basic and traditional kind of orchestral sound. As for Kontakt's factory library: it's adequate for very basic work, although I find the orchestral samples in both Factory Library 1 and 2 to be either quite dated (1), or nice sounding but very limited (2). To my ears, working with these patches would take a lot of careful tweaking or the results would be pretty midi-ish. I personally would consider the Orchestral Essentials libraries to be pretty good toolkits for basic orchestral work, and a genuine upgrade on what's in the Factory Libraries. However, it all really depends on what you want to do, and how you want to do it. I know folks who really love the Project SAM approach to samples; and I know folks who just don't feel at home in that kind of ensemble/multi patch headspace. So, YMMV, but I do think Rowland's reviews give a good overview. Hope that helps. Rob

Site seems broken. I am getting a "something went wrong" message when I try to check out.

Worth noting that this is available via the Steinberg store, also: https://www.steinberg.net/vst-instruments/mongolian-voices/

Hi folks, On Feb 6th, RME released an updated driver for Babyface, Babyface Pro, Babyface Pro FS, Fireface 802, Fireface UC, Fireface UCX, Fireface UCX II, Fireface UFX Version 1.227. https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads.html From the Readme: "News, changes and fixes Warning: this version is no longer compatible to Windows XP! V 1.227 (02/06/2023) - Babyface Pro: supports Boost mode for inputs 3/4. Requires firmware 203 and TM FX 1.80. - Internal: new relative paths following Microsoft rules - Added workaround for programs that not understand relative paths for the ASIO driver"

Info here: https://sonuscore.com/shop/mongolian-voices-ancient-phrases/ THE SPIRITUAL SOUNDS OF THE VOICE Invoke the old magic with these mysterious voices from beyond. These otherworldly calls will deliver you into strange and unknown places, enticing your primordial inner self to break your compositions free from all inhibitions. For the MONGOLIAN VOICES - ANCIENT PHRASES library, we tapped into the shamanic sounds of traditional Mongolian singing. Divided into three categories, Female, Male, and Throat, the library delves into the more mystical places of vocalizations. The Female and Male parts are based on the traditional long song, or Urtiin duu, a most ancient art loudly sung from the mountaintops, each long, drawn-out syllable evoking the deep, vast, open spaces of the Mongolian steppe. Then there’s the famous throat singing – the Mongol Khoomei – which relies on guttural vibrations and circular breathing, creating a completely alien, otherworldly sound. At first listen, it inspires visions of far out sci-fi/fantasy worlds or ancient religions. MONGOLIAN VOICES - ANCIENT PHRASES is the perfect vocal instrument to add a raw, esoteric flavor to your music.

Nevermind, challenge codes arrived! I'm good to go. Rob

Got both Animator and Orchestrator. I kind of figured the code would be sent by JRR, which I could then put into the ProjectSAM cart at the time of purchase.

Too good a deal to pass up... Anyone know how long it normally takes to get your code/serial from JRRShop once you'd made your purchase?...

IMHO, the Century Brass instruments are generally pretty decent. I have them, and while they are not my main brass library, they are a useful extra color to have around.

I completely forgot about this program, but I am positive I bought it back when I was still using Soundfonts and a SoundBlaster Audigy2...I recall it was pretty decent...

The price is much nicer to look at in Euros. I sometimes forget the exchange rate to Cdn is a lot less appealing...

Info here: https://www.strezov-sampling.com/bundles/view/ESSENTIALS Bundle.html