Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover

[Colin Nicholls]

I've been playing around with the $49 Discover edition of Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra plug-in.

At $49 (or free after 14 days) I am not complaining, but there seem to be some important limitations here.

1. It's not multitimbral

You can select which orchestra section you want to use (say, Cellos) and you can set the MIDI channel. But the orchestra section behaves like a "patch" on a typical synth plug-in. If you change patch, the MIDI channel remains the one you selected.

In other words, if you actually want to create a project with many orchestra sections (and lets face it, that's probably the whole point) then you'll need multiple instances of BBCSO in separate tracks. They can all be on MIDI channel 1 if you want because you'll be addressing each instance with it's own dedicated MIDI track.

2. Articulation switching is not obvious

There are MIDI notes to switch between articulations but it is really not obvious what they are (C-1 ? That's off the left end of my 88-key board).

3. You can customize the keyswitch position but it doesn't save with the patch!

This has GOT to be a bug. If I drag the little keyboard icon to pull the keyswitch position back into frame on my 88-keyboard (but outside the play range of the chosen section, of course), then i can play a performance including switching between articulations. But that keyswitch position doesn't appear to stick with the patch. It defaults right back to C-1 (or wherever).

 

If anyone else has experience or thoughts using Spitfire BBCSO Discover, feel free to join the discussion!

[Nigel Mackay]

1) Nobody said it was multi-timbral. Very little is.

2) I would have a look, but with my PC, if I shut down I have to remove all traces of Spitfire and start from scratch. Includes LABS.

3) Ditto.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Nigel Mackay

[Lord Tim]

Can confirm that BBCSO Core works the same re: not being multitimbral, which surprised me a little bit at first. 

It's a hell of a resource hog, but I've taken a leaf out of the book that a lot of virtual instrument composers do and create new tracks with the most common articulations I think I might need for each instrument, rather than playing around with keyswitches. I don't do all of them, and generally have a "Aux Articulation" track that I set up with something uncommon, but it's a very fast way to work, but very much at the expense of system resources. (Needless to say this is a VERY BAD IDEA on my retiring M620 dual core machine with just 8 gigs of ram )

From what I could see in the interview that Jesse Jost did recently, articulation maps will make short work of fiddling around with keyswitches, which will be wonderful. I've always disliked using keyswitches and trying to remember what was assigned to what and where, so having an Arranger-like track with it written there it front of you will be, well, a Cakewalk. I'd be surprised if there isn't already an articulation map available for BBCSO somewhere that could be imported or converted.

[msmcleod]

Do they not still provide the Kontakt libaries too?
 

[Nigel Mackay]

It seems not.

[Scott R. Garrigus]

They still have libraries available for Kontakt, but many of the newer ones use their own player.

--
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