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What is your preferred brass library?


Amicus717

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Hi folks,

I've never been entirely happy with my current roster of brass libraries, and am looking to expand my palette a bit. However,  I'm finding it tough to figure out which direction go in, and I'm curious what other folks are using.  I'm trying to find a brass library that will work with my existing template, which means it cannot be a resource hog, is highly configurable in terms of articulations, and covers the basics really well. I do old school orchestral stuff pretty much exclusively. 

My current set of libraries:

Hollywood Brass - has some nice patches, but I am not a big fan of Play, and in general I don't find the library to be very efficient. HW Brass' various French Horns patches are its best feature, but I don't like its trumpets much. 

NI Symphony Series Brass -- the ensemble patch is quite decent as a quick and dirty way to add brass to a project, and the section patches have their moments. But I find the legatos unconvincing, and I don't find the sample set to be very deep - in particular, the trumpets have a couple of recurring samples that jump out as being different than their kindred and I find it really distracting. 

Albion ONE - love this library in general and use it a ton, but really don't like how they have distributed the instruments and ranges on their brass patches. And the trumpets sound thin and very synthy, and I really hate them. 

Da Capo - Adequate as a sketching tool, but not very configurable or detailed -- and no trumpets at all, which always struck me as a little weird. 

VSL Special Editions - very configurable, and they sound good (including the trumpets), but the Special Editions are quite limited and the full versions would be far more useful. However, I am very reluctant to get deeper into the VSL ecosystem, due to their draconian copy protection and licensing issues. 

Looking this list over, it seems to be all about trumpets. That is partially true; I don't have a trumpet patch or library that I like. But I'd also like some great horn and trombone patches, too. 

I'd be curious to know what other folks are using, and what you like, with the emphasis on a very traditional orchestral brass sound.


Thanks!

Rob

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If money is not an object, I don't think anything comes close to Fable Sounds "Broadway Big Band".  A few months ago they offered a 50% off sale so maybe near the end of this year they'll do it again.

https://fablesounds.com/broadway-big-band/

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I have become a fan of the Spitfire Studio Brass (I use the core version): https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/instruments/brass/spitfire-studio-brass/ The sound is nice and there is a plethora of articulations there.

One that I use a lot is Performance Samples' Caspian: https://performancesamples.com/caspian/ This is quite the opposite of a long list of articulations, but the are extremely playable and the sound is very cool.

Don' have this, but their Trailer Brass is very very nice: https://www.musicalsampling.com/adventurebrass/

I've also heard a lot of raving about CSS: https://www.cinematicstudioseries.com/brass.html

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10 hours ago, msmcleod said:

This is by no means the best out there, but is perfectly usable, much better than something like TTS-1, and a bargain at current price of £4 / $5.22 :

https://www.pluginboutique.com/products/1837-Orchestral-Companion-Brass

They also do woodwind and strings versions for the same price.

Seing that Amicus has better options already than these I would definitely avoid buying these. Soundwise these are eons behind everything else mentioned here.

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10 hours ago, Toddskins said:

If money is not an object, I don't think anything comes close to Fable Sounds "Broadway Big Band".  A few months ago they offered a 50% off sale so maybe near the end of this year they'll do it again.

https://fablesounds.com/broadway-big-band/

These are really not an option for traditional orchestral writing. They're missing complete instruments that are required when writing orchestral music.

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Thanks for the input, folks. Much appreciated.

Tapsa, I had completely forgotten about the Studio Brass series from Spitfire Audio -- just watched the walkthrus on their site, and that might be exactly what I'm looking for. Really does sound great, and priced rather well for a Spitfire library. 

I've heard raves about the Cinematic Studios Brass, too (and their string libraries). I wish developers would release demo versions of their stuff -- even just a single instrument with a restricted range and lower sample count, or whatever -- so that it would be possible to a get a really good sense of how a library will perform and fit into a template.  CSB sounds really good, though. It's $500+ (Canadian) for me to buy it, which is probably a fair price, but it would be great to be able to experiment with even a small portion of the library before dropping that much coin on it. Dirk Ehlert did a walkthru of it, so I'll have to give that a listen.    

Appreciate the suggestions.

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One thing I've noticed in these forums - Cinesamples doesn't seem to get a lot of love from folks, aside from the Tina Guo library. In fact, I rarely see Cinesamples being talked about.

On VI Control (and elsewhere) I've heard very mixed things about Cinebrass (some really like it, some really don't). Curious if anyone has ever used it?...

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1 hour ago, Amicus717 said:

One thing I've noticed in these forums - Cinesamples doesn't seem to get a lot of love from folks, aside from the Tina Guo library. In fact, I rarely see Cinesamples being talked about.

On VI Control (and elsewhere) I've heard very mixed things about Cinebrass (some really like it, some really don't). Curious if anyone has ever used it?...

Cinesamples' problem is the price.isn't easy to take the plunge. I know that Tom Holkenborg likes their strings and that the freebie snare ensemble they had a fee years back is probably the best snare ens I've used.

Wish they'd make their libraries more modular to buy.

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