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Native Instruments Intro offer: 50% off your Project SAM Orchestral Essentials upgrade


Larry Shelby

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ProjectSAM’s iconic sounds are now available from the NKS shop with Orchestral Essentials and Orchestral Essentials 2 – both recently updated with improved browsing, advanced features, and a fresh new look.

What’s more, as you’re an existing owner of The Free Orchestra, we’re offering you an exclusive 50%-off deal until April 6!

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/catalog/nks-partners/

Edited by cclarry
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HI All,

Looking seriously at this as I am short of  decent orchestral sounds.

Anyone have any comment on their experiences with it. .........maybe, any reviews I can check out.

ALSO...Opinion about me waiting for supposed 1/2 price KONTACT Sale perhaps later in year?   ......

..would KONTAKT already have packaged orchestral sounds worth waiting for  ... & holding on to my funds till then?

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46 minutes ago, BAKTRAK said:

HI All,

Looking seriously at this as I am short of  decent orchestral sounds.

Anyone have any comment on their experiences with it. .........maybe, any reviews I can check out.

ALSO...Opinion about me waiting for supposed 1/2 price KONTACT Sale perhaps later in year?   ......

..would KONTAKT already have packaged orchestral sounds worth waiting for  ... & holding on to my funds till then?

These are high quality libraries, but they're focused on ensemble patches.

Kontakt 7 factory library is apparently pretty good. I'm guessing it's probably enough for you. Depends on what you have already and what you need of course.

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13 hours ago, BAKTRAK said:

HI All,

Looking seriously at this as I am short of  decent orchestral sounds.

Anyone have any comment on their experiences with it. .........maybe, any reviews I can check out.

ALSO...Opinion about me waiting for supposed 1/2 price KONTACT Sale perhaps later in year?   ......

..would KONTAKT already have packaged orchestral sounds worth waiting for  ... & holding on to my funds till then?

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

 

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I love Project SAM. And I'm afraid this will cost me money. They have a certain sound I much (!) more prefer than Spitfire. I hope Lumina gets a similar treatment, discount wise. I love their approach to layering and combining their patches. I'm not an orchestrator, so that helps A LOT.

They do some very smart scripting and it is very commendable they provide these huge updates.

 

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54 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I personally am not a fan of what ProjectSam does. Albion ONE sounds much better to me. Then there’s Orchestral Tools, quality wise quite a level higher at similar prices. 

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. 

Edited by Amicus717
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Thankyou Everyone,

I just returned recently and CbB Forum has not changed a bit.

Still a wonderful 'family' of music makers only too happy & keen to lend a hand.

You have given me much great info & direction to consider.   ?

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28 minutes ago, kitekrazy said:

New York Strip is an overrated piece of meat.

As is the tri-tip. That's why I'm planning to cook it sous vide. I have a pretty large tomahawk in my freezer which I'm gonna use as a test case/practise run. That reminds me, I need to get a cleaver/bonesaw to cut of the bone otherwise it won't fit.

I kinda want these libraries, but they are not on my wishlist, and I have a pretty good alternative. So I think I can curb my gas.

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40 minutes ago, Nick Blanc said:

As is the tri-tip. That's why I'm planning to cook it sous vide. I have a pretty large tomahawk in my freezer which I'm gonna use as a test case/practise run. That reminds me, I need to get a cleaver/bonesaw to cut of the bone otherwise it won't fit.

I kinda want these libraries, but they are not on my wishlist, and I have a pretty good alternative. So I think I can curb my gas.

I guess that depends on what you have with your meal.

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