Amicus717

And wow, is this a nice freebie.

Just so folks know: the interface and feature-set is identical to the Orchestral Strings library they released last week -- they mention that this a companion library for it -- and it works the same way, and has the same features. Obviously, the Orchestral Strings has more articulations than the Sordino Strings, but otherwise they are twins.  

Admittedly, I've only been noodling around with the Sordino library for a half-hour or so, but I find that it totally has the exact same vibe and feel of the full Strings library.

I figured anyone eyeing the intro pricing for the Orchestral Strings library might find this info useful.

Rob

1 minute ago, cclarry said:

Mine registered ok....

Fourth try was the charm. Registered properly. 

Hmm, hit a speedbump. Tried to register the library with Native Access, and got this:

"The serial number does not belong to a known product"

Anyone else get this?

Down to 50 licenses, and falling faster than I can type this. That didn't take long. 

Update: it hit zero before I could post. That has to be a record for their freebies.  

So, I grabbed this one. Watched all the walk-thrus and listened to the demo recordings (which sound gorgeous), and decided that it was a really intriguing library. 

This is a preliminary assessment as I've messed around with Orchestral Strings for about three or four hours, but so far I like it.

My impressions (and as always YMMV):

It's very Sonokinetic, and by that I mean it's got a certain vibe and style that is unique to their stuff. The user interface is stylish  and quirky, and a bit annoying (just like all their other ones). The string samples sound really gorgeous, and the legatos are subtle compared to many other libraries that I have; in my experience, Sonokinetic has never gone over the top in regards to portamentos or slurs, and this new library follows the pattern. The transitions are smooth and low key, with lots of configurable elements so you can tailor it to suit the task. I do find that the portamento slurs are a bit too understated for my tastes. I have no shame when it comes to schmaltz, and am one of the few people who actually likes throwing in a few 8Dio uber-slurs from their Anthology Strings when I need a super-dramatic melody line. Orchestral String's slurs are much more polite, although that does make the library pretty agile and responsive. 

The run and phrase tools are interesting. I've only spent a bit of time with them, but they are pretty easy to work with. I don't find the runs entirely convincing -- especially in the cellos -- but I haven't yet used the run tool in an orchestration or mix, and so it probably isn't fair to judge how they sound when fully exposed. The higher strings sound a lot better in the run tool. However, I have Sonokinetic's great Modal Runs library, which sounds quite convincing, and I tested it alongside Orchestral Strings. They blend together seamlessly, which makes sense as I believe they both use the same players, in the same recording space. I can see me using Modal Runs a lot with this library, and to great effect.

The ability to effortlessly stack articulations together and blend them back and forth is nice. So far, I've had good results mixing the straight and expressive strings, the sustains and the spiccato, the trems and the sustains, etc. Potentially very useful.

On the downside, I find that the library is pretty CPU heavy -- it eats up a surprising amount of horsepower when you've got all the main patches loaded up and running. 

Interesting side-note: 8Dio's Century Brass library was apparently recorded in the same hall as Sonokinetic's Orchestral Strings, and when I tested them together, the results were pretty nice. To my ears, they did sound like there were in the same acoustic space. I like Century Brass, so this should be a nice combo for my template. 

Rob

1 hour ago, ZincT said:

Cool that they did this so that anyone who missed them last time can have another go ?

Also, it made it a bit less stressful for me as I got them the first time around. 

Yeah. Freebies are great, but it's kinda nice to sit this one out...

6 hours ago, pseudopop said:

I agree that 8dio string instruments often feel less agile than some other libraries, but I don't regret buying them. Like Amicus717 said they have their own sound which I find suites certain situations better than the more refined libraries, though I only have strings from the Agitato series which I believe many think is one of 8dio's better ones.

In fact, looking at my library it seems I mostly have just vocal and percussion libraries and some exotic instruments from 8dio, all of which I think are quite good for the money I paid for them. So maybe I haven't encountered the issues you mentioned because I haven't used their orchestral libraries so extensively?

Anyway, my biggest issue with 8dio libraries is the long load time.

I have mine on an M.2 drive, and it helps a lot.

I like their percussion libraries, too. They can be quite useful, although I find them kind of heavy on system resources and only load them up if I need that specific sound. But they're nice to have in the arsenal.

6 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

It's all subjective, of course. and our workflows are a major piece of this --- how important playability is to us. To those who love midi editing string and orchestral parts, they may love having the motherload of articulations the way 8Dio does them with libraries like Deep Solo Strings. Personally, playability is everything to me. I'm not going to go through and edit things as pros do, I'm creating music for my own enjoyment, but want it to sound good, so if it requires a ton of midi editing -- like 8Dio does (and that's relative to other libraries that have more intuitive scripting that make them very playable -- like Fluffy Audio's libraries that I recently picked up_, I'm out. In my case,  for a number of reasons, including pretty bad tendinitis. But yeah, as I just wrote in my previous post, midi editing is unavoidable if you're looking for a very realistic performance. But I think it's pretty important to feel inspired when playing and when I recently picked up another library that was incredibly more playable that a friend who composes music for games recommended, the difference was incredible. I really don't want to go back to my 8Dio libraries. 

On another level, I clicked on the link in your sig file after reading your post and listened while writing my response and really liked what I heard. You're very talented! Kudos!

Thanks, PavlovsCat! Appreciate you listening.

And yeah, I agree about playability. It's really nice to have, if you can get it. I have gotten into the habit of composing fast -- get stuff down at breakneck speed and don't think about it too much, then go back and examine the mess and see if something cool can be created from it. So playability can make a pretty big difference in that situation, and my newer libraries go a long way towards making that work. I'd never use 8Dio in that role.

I think 8Dio creates libraries with so much content, they sometimes stumble by accident onto a patch with a great vibe that you can't find anywhere else.

Their Deep Solo stuff doesn't interest me at all, pretty much for the reasons you mention.

I have a pretty big selection of 8Dio stuff, mostly bought on steep discounts and big sales (which is how everyone buys everything, nowadays, I think). I do get why their libraries experience a lot of criticism -- they are not the easiest to use, and I agree they seem to emphasize lots of articulations and sample content rather than refinement or simplicity of use. 

But they have their moments. Over the past few years my library collection has really expanded and I've got a lot more options to choose from when revising or expanding my template, but I still have 8Dio patches in there -- even though my current template is bigger and a lot more sophisticated than ever. There is just a certain vibe about some of their stuff, and in select moments it works for me.

The Anthology Strings legatos are a good example. They're not elegant or polished in the least. They're totally over-the-top and more than a bit rough around the edges. You gotta use them really judiciously. But when I want to record a string melody line that totally blows out the schmaltz-o-meter, I turn to the Anthology Strings celli or violins "Legato I" patches. I have yet to find strings that combine the same mix of melodiousness and blunt-force-trauma legato transitions that 8Dio gave to their Anthology stuff. They work really well in those moments, although I'd never use them in any other role. My Spitfire, Cinesamples and Musical Sampling string libraries do most of the heavy lifting. But 8Dio still has a place. 

FWIW, I also find that if I want to make stuff as realistic as possible, I still need to do a lot of note-by-note and line-by-line polishing and editing anyway, regardless of library.  Using the 8Dio stuff doesn't really make that any worse, from my perspective. 

By my standards, a low-purchase BF:

1) Audio Imperia - Jaeger Hangar 4 (Vocals By Merethe Soltvedt)

2) Red Room Audio - Pallete Orchestral FX brush pack

I was eyeing a lot of other stuff. In particular I was this close to grabbing Albion: Solstice for it's "intro" price, but while it has a some stuff I think I'd find useful, I've also heard it has a lot of filler that I'd never use, and there has been some criticism of the scripting (especially the legatos).

1 minute ago, Carl Ewing said:

I always go through these big libraries and delete everything I don't want, and put what's left into an organized-by-genre sample library database. Took about 1.5 hours, but in the end, I only have the stuff I like, trashed the rest, and got it down to 3GB from 22GB And now I know the only thing going on the drive is stuff I can use...which I know will save me time down the road. Don't even want to know how many days I've spent scrolling through sample libraries over the last 20 years - finally decided to always filter through new purchases right away, and get rid of the crap.

I did the same thing went I built my new machine. I have lots of super-fast drive space but still had to economize, and eliminating the "never-gonna-use-it" stuff was pretty essential. Also, it just kind of feels better knowing the only stuff on there is front-line material. 

Regrets, I've had a few...

1) Pretty much every plugin I've bought except Nimbus, a couple of IK compressors, and Shimmer by Valhalla. That's not a knock against plugins. Plugins are great. I just bought many that I was never, ever destined to use. I'm sure no-one else has done that.

2) Anything that says Kirk Hunter in the name -- sorry, I know there are some Kirk Hunter fans here, and I've heard decent stuff done with KH libraries. I've grabbed a few over the years, mainly due to "epic-what-the-hell-why-not" discounts. But I've never really found them useful, and their Kontakt interfaces are so old-school they give me debilitating  Windows 95 flashbacks.

3) 98.5% of the phrase-based libraries I've ever purchased. I don't say 100% because I'm ever the optimist and still have hope that one of them might come in useful at some point down the road.

Either way, that is an epic steal.

Nimbus is a beast -- a smooth, clear, polished beast of exceptional transparency. In my very humble opinion, the best reverb for orchestral work or similar. 

Gotta confess, I don't recall hearing about this developer before. Does anyone have any experience with their stuff? A few of those libraries have piqued my interest...

Listening to the walkthru. Great sounds, Tapsa!

I should consider adding Phase Plant to my arsenal, it seems....

I ditched all the Abbey Road, Scarbee and Session Strings stuff, plus DrumLab, and just about anything related to pop, rock or similar (except Session Guitarists acoustic libraries).

Kept the pianos, ditched the Symphony Essentials for the full versions, only have a few of the synth relates libraries installed. I find that the more 3rd party libraries I acquire, the less Komplete stuff I tend to use or keep installed. 

Hi folks,

Have a bit of an odd bug going on here, and I'm wondering if anyone else can reproduce this. I noticed when building a new template in my DAW that a few of my Kontakt libraries were behaving badly. In particular, the interfaces for a few them had become unworkable: whenever I tried to adjust any one slider or dial on the library, every other dial and slider on the interface also changed. I first noticed this when I uploaded the "VSL Celeste" patch from the Kontakt Factory library, and tried to adjust the reverb mix. Every other dial on the Celeste interface started changing also, and I wasn't able to work any of the controls separately. 

After a bit of experimentation, I discovered this happened whenever I had multiple patches loaded in an instance of Kontakt after a copy of the Symphony Series Percussion patch "Cymbal 1" was already loaded up. When loaded after the "Cymbal 1" patch, some libraries (but not all) would suddenly start exhibiting this behaviour (including most of the Factory Library patches, Albion One patches, and a few others).

Patches loaded up before the "Cymbal 1" patch would not have this problem. I tested this with the same "VSL Celeste" library, and if I loaded it up before "Cymbals 1", no problem. If I loaded it up after "Cymbal 1", it would become unworkable. 

Last night I was able to reproduce this behaviour in both my main DAWS (Cakewalk and Cubase) on two separate machines with independent installs of Kontakt 6 and all the above libraries.  

Can anyone else reproduce this on their own machines?

Thanks,

Rob

Of note: this is the full version of Symphony Series Percussion that I am using, not the Symphony Essentials one. 

4 hours ago, Reid Rosefelt said:

The original UVI World Library was not supposed to be very good.  I believe it was ported from MOTU.

When they made it into World Suite they added a ton of new instruments.  I think all of them were from Precision Sound.  If you look at Precision Sound, you'll see that the stuff added is the same.  There are some super gems in there.   I love the accordions.  If you were to buy them at the Precision Sound half price sale, it would cost you a lot.  Of course, the PS instruments are Kontakt.

The same thing happened with World Suite 2. They added a lot more new instruments.  I'm not sure from where.  Maybe their own?

If you look at EthnoWorld it's very similar.  The stuff from EthnoWorld 1 is not as good as the stuff from the newer versions.  There is a variability in quality with libraries as huge as these.

I'm pretty familiar with both and I think EthnoWorld 6 is MUCH better, both in quality of sound  and features.   I don't know what the price is for you to upgrade, but if anybody is deciding between one and the other, EthnoWorld 6 (instruments only) will be cheaper on Black Friday.   It lists at $259 and with 40% off it's about $155. 

The only issue I can thing of with EthnoWorld is that 6 came out 4 years ago and I wouldn't be too surprised if version 7 would turn up before too long.  Currently, upgrading for 4 or 5  to 6 is $159, which is more than 6 costs new during the sale.  Every now and then they have sales on upgrades.

I like having both.  Each has instruments the other one doesn't have.  Also World Suite was my first one, and it started my exploration of world music. 

Thanks, Reid. 

UVI World Traditions (I think was the name...) was so comically bad it was in a class by itself when it came to buyer's regret: there were samples with loop points so close together and artlessly done that the looping went full machine-gun after maybe a second or two; misspelled headings and instrument names scattered throughout the various menus; and my personal favorite, under Balkan Instruments they had an Alto Sax - a very vanilla set of soundfont-worthy alto sax samples, with no explanation as to how exactly the alto sax was considered a Eastern European classic. The entire package was seriously bush-league.

There was literally one or two patches in the entire library that were actually useable, and "useable" in this context is a very generous assessment. I didn't pay a lot for it ($39 bucks on sale, I believe) but I was very unhappy that they still offered a product so obviously out-of-date and unsuitable even as an entry-level library.  Judging by the tech and programming used to create it, World Traditions should have been removed from their catalog around, oh, say 1995.   

I haven't touched their stuff since, and it sounds to me like I have no real reason to change that. Even minus the World Traditions fiasco, I have never been overly keen on the UVI Player and it's workflow, and all things being equal, I'd rather have EthnoWorld 6 anyway. 

Info here: https://www.uvi.net/world-suite-2

I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has this. I bought the original World Instruments library from UVI a few years ago, and it was a complete disaster (maybe the worst library I ever bought), and I've not bought a single UVI product since.

But I have heard rumours that World Suite 2 is pretty good...

Musical Sampling's latest: https://musicalsampling.com/anthemchoir/

This interests me. I’ve been intrigued by The Orchestra for a while, but I don’t know if that sort of library will work for me, so I’ve been a bit hesitant…

Yeah, tried that, but didn't work.

I did, however, get a letter from NI Support, saying this: 

"Dear customer, we are aware of an issue where certain effect plugins remain in DEMO despite of being activated as full version in Native Access.

The issue is known (bug: DAEM-1570 - Effects keep asking for activation) and our colleagues in development are aware of it.
We have found the root cause of the issue and we are expecting to release a hot fix at the middle of next week."

So, it's a bug! And NI is on the case. 

Hi folks,

I've just completed building a new PC, and have just reinstalled Komplete, including all the various effects. For some reason, every time I try to load one of the effects in Cakewalk (or any of my other DAWS) , I get a popup saying I have to "activate", "buy" or "demo" the plugin.

When I hit "Activate", it opens Native Access, and then I can use the plug-in. But this happens every single time I try to add it in. I own all the plugns, Native Access says they are installed, etc. But I gotta "activate" them every time. 

Has anyone experienced this? Any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks,

Rob

Watching the walk-thru by Paul Thomson, and it looks and sounds very intriguing, so far. 

A library for re-scoring The Wicker Man (the original 1973 movie, not the 2006 remake, which could be rescored with a kazoo)... 

I just noticed that RME released an updated driver for Fireface UFX, 802, UCX, UCX II, UC and Babyface/Pro on May 4th, 2021. I never seem to get notices for this, so for any RME users who might have missed it:

https://www.rme-audio.de/downloads.html

PS: there is also a firmware update from March 2021...