NI Orchestral Tools Bundle Offer

[Larry Shelby]

Create a custom Orchestral Tools bundle and save 65%

Delve into Orchestral Tools’ full spectrum of professional scoring instruments. Create your own bundle with three instruments of your choice and save 65%. Or get 50% off all single instruments. Offer ends June 5.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/komplete/orchestral-tools-offer-2023/

Edited May 15, 2023 by cclarry

[Lee D]

Wow this is unusual

[Fleer]

But not that cheap

[kitekrazy1]

3 hours ago, Fleer said:

But not that cheap

It seems like they inflated those prices before the 50% off.

[PhonoBrainer]

No Glory Days.

[Carl Ewing]

Never touch these companies (eg, Spitfire, OT) except during holiday season sales. Prices have always been totally absurd. Avoided OT for years, and picked up the entire Ark series last black friday for a much more reasonable price. And instantly regretted it. Absolutely 100% not worth the asking price, nor the 50% off price.

And people complain about subscriptions like Composer Cloud, which is like 10 terrabytes of high quality products across a huge range of instruments for $200 a year.  And here we have NI selling OT's Time Macro for $200....and that's 50% off. lolol.

[laglag]

 

Spitfire and OT and VSL are really expensive?

[Yan Filiatrault]

Someone on another forum got a confirmation that Ark 5 is newly released on Kontakt with this sale. It was previously released on Orchestral Tools Sine player. 

[antler]

6 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Someone on another forum got a confirmation that Ark 5 is newly released on Kontakt with this sale. It was previously released on Orchestral Tools Sine player. 

Interesting - I thought they'd fully abandoned Kontakt as a platform. In any case, a tad too pricy for me right now.

[antler]

13 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

And people complain about subscriptions like Composer Cloud, which is like 10 terrabytes of high quality products across a huge range of instruments for $200 a year.  And here we have NI selling OT's Time Macro for $200....and that's 50% off. lolol.

I think the problem is more with the recurring payment.

If someone's a pro and they're doing this day-in day-out, it's undoubtedly a great deal that can be classed a business expense.

If someone's a hobbyist and they only make music occasionally, the recurring payment might not seem worthwhile. In addition, being locked out of your old projects if a subscription expires is a bit of a turn-off - though I know there's the possibility of bouncing the track.

[Jim Roseberry]

These libraries are expensive... especially if music is more a hobby/interest vs. career.

 

Orchestral Tools and Spitfire are both popular with professional TV/Film composers.  Probably the two most popular with our professional composer clients.

To my ears, both Ark series and BBC SO sound amazing (I own both).  Also have the EW CC subscription.

EW Hollywood Opus series is pretty decent for the price of admission.  That said, Opus multi-core CPU performance is significantly worse than Sine/Kontakt.

For this reason, Opus is not popular with professional composers running large scoring templates.

ie:  A layer of string parts in Opus can take ~30-35% of a 13900k CPU.  In Sine/Kontakt, the same type thing is ~2-3% CPU.

If you're not working with large scoring templates, it's relatively easy to work around.

 

Nashville Scoring Strings, Cinematic Studio Strings, Albion One, LA Scoring Strings, and Modern Scoring Strings are also widely used.

 

First time I fired up BBC SO and played a few notes, I smiled/laughed... as the sound is immediately impressive.

Edited May 17, 2023 by Jim Roseberry

[Fleer]

For me, Spitfire BBCSO and EastWest HOOPUS are must-haves. 

[Nick Blanc]

I'm not a composer so I'm not that interested in the Ark series or any other big cinematic libraries. I have BBCSO, Albion One and Project Sam's Orchestral Essentials, which is more than enough for me. But I do like the more electronic products of Orchestral Tools. Arkhis is awesome, Drones is great, the Fabrik series is very usable for me. These are high quality products in my genres.

[Fleer]

And then there’s the Salu series. 

[husker]

18 minutes ago, Fleer said:

And then there’s the Salu series. 

Better Call Salu

[kitekrazy1]

I'm a fan of VSL but like EW it's a single license. 

[Amicus717]

I have Metropolis Ark 1 & 2, and Inspire 1 & 2 (all for Kontakt), and they're quite good. They work from a different mindset than BBCSO (or EW, VSL etc), and I've had success using them for projects that I wanted to finish fast. To my mind, that is their key strength, and I use them in the same way I use my Albion libraries: to do great-sounding work very quickly, and with a heavy cinematic vibe.

So, I think how much you like them will have a lot to do with headspace - either you'll find their patch design useful and intuitive, or you won't really enjoy using them at all. And the cinematic sound is really baked in; it's go big, or find another library.

They are really pricey, and I think the average hobbyist could find alternatives that do similar things but won't cost nearly as much. I spend a huge portion of my downtime working on music, so I don't mind shelling out for this stuff, personally. I like having lots of options, and I just plain enjoy using libraries like these, so to me it's worth the money (although I only ever buy stuff on sale - I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for anything relating to music or software). 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Amicus717