Amicus717

Engine’s interface is a bit clunky, but once you get past that, it’s fine. Totally worth the minor hassle if you’re using it for Eduardo Tarilonte’s libraries.

Mr. T, I am of the same generation as you (I'm 53), and have had moments like this. Fortunately, they were transitory. For me, the most energizing way to get back into it was this: I had other folks come to me for music/recording stuff, and being creative on behalf of others was incredibly helpful. This was not for money or profit, just as a friendly service to people I knew. One example: my girlfriend does voice acting with an online troupe (they do satirical old-school style radio plays), and I started helping her record and edit her voice-work. Nothing complex about it -- I break out my AT4040, she reads her lines, and then we select the better takes, edit the results down, I do a bit of dynamics and EQ processing, and send the audio file to the director. Simple stuff, but I really enjoy it. Using my expensive gear to actually create something that other folks will listen to is great. We don't make a cent from it, of course, but that hardly matters. It's nice to be productive, even if it is simple work that doesn't bring a paycheck. Another example: I know quite a few folks who do historical reenactment, and during the pandemic lock-down when those groups were unable to get together, they started making videos for YouTube. These were mainly short documentaries or profiles of various members and the historical stuff they were working on (making garb or armor, practicing medieval crafting, etc); or performance videos featuring the bardic arts (ancient songs, monologues or old stories) -- basically the kind of stuff they did in person when the world was normal. A few of those folks were aware that I did soundtrack music as a hobby, and asked me to create little bits of intro music and themes for these videos, and I must have done about 20 or 30 of them over an 18 month span. Again, not for money or fame or anything, except some heartfelt thanks and maybe 200 views on YouTube. But it was incredibly energizing. Most of these were maybe 15 or 20 second bits of simple scoring -- really basic stuff, maybe four or five instruments and a single musical motif -- and didn't take much time at all. But working on a "commission" for someone else that requires you to match a specific theme and fit to a certain video timeline, etc, was a lot of fun, and the creative energy it unleashed carried over to my own work in a big way. One of the themes I did was actually over a minute long and quite complex, and turned out so well it ended up as one of my showcase pieces on SoundCloud. Doing that one had some significant side-benefits above and beyond being creative: a) in the course of making it, I delved deeper into a few libraries that I hadn't really used properly since I got them, and that proved very beneficial, and b) it was a really tricky mix, with tons of stuff going on, and getting it right took a lot of trial and error, all of which was a great learning experience. So the best advice I can offer is: see if anyone you know needs a bit of help with something musical, or something that requires recording. Even a 20 second triviality can be enough to get the the fire lit again. We make music for ourselves, ultimately, but I am firm believer that making stuff for other folks rebounds back and makes us better at what we do. Rob

Their samples are really lovely, and the programming seems good. I have Symphobia 1, Lumina and Adaptive Runs, and they are all first class libraries. Symphobia 1's new interface, in particular, is great. Very easy to use and flexible. I probably won't be able to resist Symphobia 2 at half price. In fact, I know I won't...

AlbionONE is terrific. Do check out the video walkthrus that they have for it -- they cover the whole library in detail, and it really helps get a taste of what it offers. It's not just a symphonic collection, it's also got lots of stuff for hybrid, synth-based and other kinds of music. This is the Orchestra walkthru - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeofqKnnPcg There are a ton of others, all worth watching.

Prayers for both of you...

I've got two M.2 drives in my machine, totaling 3 TB of storage. I put my biggest goto libraries on there -- the ones I fire up with every project -- and they do a great job cutting down on load time. Still takes me about 5 - 7 mins to load up my main template, but that's a huge improvement over my previous DAW, where I'd open a project then go for lunch.

Oh yeah, my main machine is something of a beast It's great. But I've got a couple of orchestral templates that are HUGE, and it made sense to farm out some of the libraries. Also, frankly it was fun to setup and experiment with.

I've seen demonstrations where a CPU-eating library will run more efficiently in VE Pro on the same computer, than within the DAW directly. I'll have to dig around YouTube and see if I can find it. As for latency, I don't find a noticeable difference between the libraries running on my main DAW and the ones running on the VE Pro server. Although I should mention that I tend to run things at a larger block size and higher latency simply because I use a pretty big template and I've gotten pretty used to playing with 11ms latency (and higher).

I have it, and currently use a two computer setup. I built myself a brand new i9 uber-machine this past spring, and re-tasked my previous DAW as a VE Pro 7 server so that it could run some of the instruments in my orchestral template. It's not a bad way to go, although I haven't found VE Pro to be seamless or completely stable. When it works, it works really well. But I've had a few issues with my main DAW not being able to find or reconnect to the VE Pro server when I load up a project; the VE Pro server will occasionally start CPU spiking for no reason I can figure out and I have to close and reload the server instruments. Stuff like that. There are work-arounds for it all, but it can be a bit annoying. But if you're running a big template of high-end libraries, it's nice to be able to offload some of the processing.

$10 is a total steal for these. Nimbus, to my ears, is gorgeous and transparent, with a really smooth and wide-open sound. Great for classical/orchestral stuff.

I actually don't ever recall seeing it on sale. before...pretty rare for this to happen?

I searched but didn't see this posted previously -- RME updated their USB driver on Dec 14th, to ver 1.219 https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads.html

Great. Really liked it - smooth, wintery, a very relaxing listen. Also, the imagery is great. Looks like beautiful countryside where you live. Rob

Very nice, Wook. Has a slight hypnotic vibe, but also kept me just a bit off balance with the timing and rhythm. And I mean that in a very good way; it is a nice mix of elements, and keeps the listening focused on the music. An enjoyable listen.

I like it! Hypnotic and calming, and builds rather nicely. Very enjoyable listen. One detail that I noticed -- is there a ghost of a hint of clipping or distortion in the right channel at certain parts? eg: I noticed something around the 0:16 to 0:24 mark and a little afterwards. Very subtle and at the edge of hearing, just the slightest hint of crackle...

Great channel. Just watched the video above, and perused a few others. I always like seeing what the pros are doing, and this is some interesting stuff. Nice post, Bitflipper. Rob

Hi Justin, I use Albion One all the time, and have built a sizeable orchestral template that incorporates a good number of Albion patches, especially the strings patches from Albion Orchestra. There are a bunch of different ways to do that, based entirely on what feels right to you, but my current approach is this: 1) For strings I prefer using the individual articulation patches rather than the main group patch. This means I go into the "Individual Patches" folder and load the Sustains, Tremolo, Spiccato/Staccato etc articulations all separately into their own midi track. This is not technically necessary as I believe you can load up the strings main multi-articulation patch as many times as you want and Kontakt lets you control the various articulations simultaneously while only loading the actual samples once. But having each articulation in its own lane better suits my sense of organization. These primary Albion patches form the backbone of my string section, and I think they sound just great -- glossy and big, with just enough ambience baked in. I then mix and match patches from other libraries to fill in whatever gaps are left over, such as section legatos and special fx patches. I don't much like the Albion strings legatos, as I find they are kind of limited and too low-key for my tastes; and other libraries have much more robust sets of fx and special articulations patches. So I mainly use patches from 8Dio, Musical Sampling and Sonokinetic for these roles. It takes a bit of touchy microphone mix, pan and eq work to get the various patches working together, but it's doable if you're careful. My current setup has the Albion string patches set to a mic mix that uses the decca tree with a hint of close mic to create a slightly closer-than-the-default sound, and then I tailor the other additional stuff to match. I have never gotten the various libraries to match 100% perfectly, but you can get pretty close, and within the context of a full orchestral mix I find that this works quite well. Albion Orchestra comes with a full set of runs patches, covering different scales and octaves, but to be honest I've never really got the hang of using them, and anyway I have runs libraries from Sonokinetic, CineSamples, Project SAM and Red Room Audio that are much more configurable and easier to use. But admittedly the Albion runs do sound pretty nice and obviously their sound meshes perfectly with the main string patches. 2) The woodwind patches in Albion are ok, but kind of limited and not granular enough for me - I prefer to use more configurable patches from VSL and CineSamples for that purpose. 3) I have a couple of the Darwin Percussion Ensemble patches in my template, mainly the Easter Island hits, Cymbals and Gongs, and the XXL Percussion patches. They are quite nice (I think the Easter Island Hits are the nicest deep percussion booms that I have in my library). I have found some of the Darwin patches to be a bit twitchy when it comes to velocity layers, so they sometimes take a bit of work in the piano roll view to get everything calibrated properly for the music in question. I tend to get the most use out of the Albion percussion patches when I'm doing more hybrid,/contemporary orchestral stuff. For more classical orchestral percussion, I tend to use other libraries, like NI Symphony Series and CineSamples. 4) The brass patches in Albion One are not my cup of tea at all -- kind of synthy and lacking character, to my ears. I never use them. The other stuff in Albion One -- the Steam Band and Brunel Loops -- are fun to have around and they see occasional use, but they are not part of my standard template. These two tracks were done using the setup listed above: https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/a-song-for-the-trillium-queen-adrielles-theme?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/the-soldiers-hornpipe-ver-4?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Hope this info helps. I don't use all of Albion One, but the parts I do use are pretty integral to my work flow and are mainstays in my template. Rob

Oh yeah! Exhibit A...

Yeah, I doubt I'll even attempt it. Really, I just want to watch the music happen on the page while listening. The score breakout matches perfectly with the double CD re-issue of the Krull soundtrack by La La Land Records, which I also happen to have on hand. So I've been literally sitting down and just listening and following along. Very educational. Anyway, select pages from this score are so dense with notes, lines and esoteric notational whimsy, that at first glance it looks like bizarro wallpaper. I can see SmartScore taking one look and throwing up a BSOD, just because...

Oh, it does! Mind you, that's almost part of the charm. I'm actually getting kind of jaded and tired of the excessive, realer-than-real CGI that they currently dump all over today's movies. Sometimes it looks pretty good, sure, but just as often it looks plasticky and fake, and breaks the illusion just as effectively as bad bluescreen work from 1983.

Restraint got nothing to do with it. I just didn't think of it. Dammit.

Well, I mainly got the score for the purpose of study, and it's just as well - I can say with certainty there is no sheet music to midi converter in the world that will work with this puppy...barely 10 minutes into it, and I've come across string writing that involved 16 divisi parts across all four sections, and one page that had five bars of music...and five separate time signature changes to go along with them.

Well, that's true, although it's developed a pretty good cult following in later years and I think it's now seen as a high water-mark for the golden age of 80's fantasy cheeze. I saw in theatres as a young teenager and thought it was pretty boss, at the time. Yeah, the story makes zero sense if you think about it even a little, and despite the lavishly appointed sets, Krull never escapes looking like a dolled-up soundstage full of bad theatre fencers. But the music is really great, and that helps a lot. It's also a lot of fun to see Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane in pre-stardom roles.

I may need to learn how to use macros for this one.

Fleer, are you and Larry trying to bankrupt me? (I already know the answer is “hell, yes”)