What do you use?

I tend not to do the traditional orchestral sounds, so I'd say:

Winds : EVO Grid 4 and Tundra

Brass: Hollywood Brass, MA 1 and Iceni

Perc/Drums: HZ Perc, NVA Action Drums (loops), EZ Drummer/BFD 3 and a load of Looploft loops (prefer the feel of a real life performance for Drums/Percussion)

Strings: 8dio, Mural, Hollywood Strings, EVO Grids

Piano: Olafur Felt, Una Corda, The Gentleman, Malmsjo

Synths - Zebra HZ, Alchemy

 

I have several libraries, but I'm using Hollywood Orchestra Gold specifically as a solution to the problem of mocking up a realistic orchestra.

The advantage for me is that I don't have a strong enough background with a real orchestra to correctly balance multiple libraries into a realistic cohesive whole. HO does that for me- everything is recorded in the same space, by the same people, in position on stage, and I trust the dynamic balance. Because of this, I feel I can expect that music written to sound good live is more likely to work in the samples and vice-versa. So, as I study traditional orchestration and writing, I can be more confident that what I learn will be useful for work in the samples, even if the mockup IS the end product and its never played or recorded live. Maybe at some point in the future, if I feel like I'm really comfortable with how the instruments SHOULD sound, I'll be able to mix libraries for realism, but I'm a long way off at this point.

There are also a few important disadvantages to what I'm doing. The play sampler is slow to load and more taxing on memory than Kontakt. As a result, I don't have the computing power to run the Diamond version, so I'm missing out on some of the articulations and mic positions. I'm also missing divisi and solo strings, although I don't write solo strings in samples because I think they usually sound bad.

It's also worth discussing that most of the music I am asked to write has nothing to do with traditional orchestral realism, so when that's not the goal, a few problems stick out, especially when trying to use it for the "epic" or trailer thing. The short strings in the main mics are not great for the "zimmer/trailer batman ostinato" sound. Composer Danial James did a fantastic tribute to that sound, which was achieved using close mics with LASS divisi at low velocity to capture the short percussive bite that's so important in that music. As mentioned, HO Gold has neither divisi nor close mics, so it's very hard (for me) to get that kind of sound. I've also had a harder time getting the huge, angry, growling low brass sounds that are important in that music. So when doing that music I'll purposely ignore orchestral mixing and realism, freely mix and match libraries, and simply choose (or make) sounds for the emotional impacts of their timbre.

 

Woodwinds: Almost exclusively BWW with some EW Gold orchestra here and there.

Brass: Strezov Brass, Sample Modeling, Hollywood Brass, Cinebrass and I love the Jasper Blunk freebie patches

Strings: Cinematic Strings 2, LASS, Cinematic Studio Strings, Soaring Strings, Symphonic Sphere

Perc: Spitfire Redux

Harp: Symphonic Sphere

For Reverb I use QL Spaces.

For those who are interested how that template sounds, I did a mockup from Mike's Race which tought me a looot of things about treating VI's and mixing

https://amadeus-pakmur.com/The Race Mockupv2_MIX.wav

It is a little bit older so I didn't use CSStrings and HWBrass, which I got just recently, but other than that not much has changed since.

 

Berlin Woodwinds, Berlin Brass, Cinematic Studio Strings - that's my "real orchestra + time to waste" template. Sounds beautiful!

The "productivity" template is like 70% Spitfire, 20% Heavyocity & Eastwest and Musical Sampling, and some bits and bobs from other developers.

So, two very different approaches. I still think OT's Berlin for all its flaws is peerless for when you need/want the two dozen individually sampled woodwinds and brass. It's impossible to be productive with it though. Not when you can just load up an Albion. OT seems to have acknowledged this themselves as they are serving up an Albion-style library baked from their Berlin sample set.

With regard to CSS, I think it is by far the best strings you can buy... the problem is getting it to land on the beat another productivity drain when you can just use Mural or Albion and the flaws don't pop out too much if your string part is simple.

 

Woods - Berlin as the core with SF for extensions (bass clarinet, bass flute, etc) I also use the 8Dio Alto Flute because it was the cheapest way for me to get an alto flute w/o buying redundant bundles

Brass - SF as the core with Adventure Brass used primarily for sketching. Albion One Low Brass and Nasty Brass when I want to get .......nasty

Strings - Are all over the place. SF is the core but I add Cinematic Studio Strings when I want to soar and 8Dio stuff when I want to be in your face.

Percussion - SF Redux, HZ Vol 1 and Albion One.

The only other thing worth mentioning is the set of Numerical Sounds Impulse Responses I got one of Peter Alexander's (R.I.P. good man) orchestration courses. I use them in VSL's convolution reverb plug and they are the magic sauce in getting all of these Libs to sit together.

 

I had no idea so many composers used such a variety of sample libraries in the same mix, some seemingly incompatible, to great success. I have a lot to learn here.

My sad list of investments, as it is:
Winds - Spitfire, East West
Brass - SampleModeling, Spitfire, East West
Perc - Audiobro, Heaviocity, FXpansion, East West
Strings - Audiobro, Auddict (hope the rest come soon), East West

I'm currently looking to invest in some new winds with better flexibility, and with the success I've had using SampleModeling brass so far, I thought that would be the right way to go. Yet, while there's much love for their brass here, I see none for their winds... hmm...
Do the SampleModeling winds have certain issues that preclude them from anyone's list?

 

TD
Nothing sad about your set up. You have everything you need. Are you using Audiobro's LA Drama Drums? How do you like them?

 

I am and they're absolutely stellar. Really not surprising considering the quality of LASS.
It was originally an acquisition of desperation due to some issues with PLAY, so it was a risky purchase, but so far I've been more than satisfied with its performance and quality.

 

Mike, are you using this set up you described above in your Live Composing videos (the four first ones and the recent "When You Don't Feel Like Composing" ones) ?

I thought I heard you refer in one of them to using a single string patch presumably covering the entire string range, and if so what is it ?

Thanks so much for your generosity and willingness to help others over the years. Truly a class act,

Bob

 

Thanks Mike. And that full-range string patch would be .... ? ?

Bob

 

Ah, template talk.

Woods: 8dio Claire stuff. I'm in the market though, nothing has really grabbed me and these were OK.
Brass: Spitfire, Cinebrass, a bit of Sample Modeling
Orch Perc: Spitfire Redux
Epic Perc: Spitfire Hans, Damage Hiroshima Toms, a bit of custom stuff
Strings: I have all of the 8dio Strings (mostly use Adagio) and mostly like them. If you put in the time to edit in keyswitches they can sound very nice, and the dynamic swells are very fun. Not too wet, I like that the dryer strings and the Spitfire brass & perc give me a bit of front to back imaging.

But I'm still trying to catch up to what Thomas Bergersen could do with the first VSL library.

 

Wow I haven't heard that Bergersen piece in years, thanks for posting that. Such an amazing mock-up. I also love the little demo he did for Samplicity Reverbs on their website, so good!

 

Kinda throws the whole "but but but... everything needs to be in the same room!" out the window, don't it?

Which of course, was never true anyway.

 

Hey - good place to be in the beginning

And realize - it only gets better from there.

 

First post here--love the site! I use Sample Modeling for winds and brass, with MIR Pro (Teldex) for the space. I use a WX-5 wind controller, which makes all the difference for me. There may be better tones out there, but the WX-5 gives me the expression I need and SM gives me the real-time timbre response. If I'm composing something staccato/marcato I'll use something else, since the expression isn't as important as the color. But for the more expressive pieces (which is my preferred bailiwick), I value the real-time control over color.

WW: SampleModeling, or Hollywood Winds Diamond

BR: SampleModeling, or Hollywood Brass Diamond (Berlin Brass/Uist for fx)

PERC: Hollywood Perc, HZ01, Wavesfactory Sharine & Suspended Cymbals, Timphonia, Ricotti Marimba, Soniccouture Vibes

HARP: HP1-Chocolate Audio, HP2-Pianoteq (HP3-Spitfire)
CELESTA: Pianoteq
PIANO: depends, but EW Pianos Platinum works on a lot

STRINGS: Hollywood Strings Diamond (+Tundra, Uist, CSS)

JP

 

Woodwinds:
Cinewinds Core. I really like the flute and the bassoon is quite OK, rest.. not so much.
Clarinet and Oboe from Spitfire Modular days.
ALBION 1 and ONE with the occasional ICENI.

Brass:
CineBrass Core, Pro and Descant Horn.
Spitfire's Trombones.
Spitfire's Phalanx Horns, Trumpets and Trombones.
Berlin Brass (still learning).

Percussion:
Spitfire Percussion Redux.
Occasional Damage, 8Dio taikos etc.

Choirs:
Soundiron's Requiem Lite
8Dio's Liberis and Insolidus.

Piano:
Soundiron's Emotional Piano.

Strings:
Harp - EWQLSO Platinum (I've the kontakt version! )
Spitfire's Mural (full).
Spitfire's Albion 1, ONE and ICENI.
Cinematic Strings 2.
Cinematic Studio Strings
Adagio (Full) (getting slowly rid of this).

Ethnic / historic:
East West Ra and Silk, Tarilonte's Era Medieval Legends.

I recently got East West's ComposerCloudX and time will tell wether it's of any use to me. Already love StormDrum 3 though.

 

Yeah, I'm liking it less and less every year. I love the phrase endings on the legato, although it usually involves a bunch of editing to get right. But the recording feels a bit thin in a mix, and there are some scripting bugs that annoy me.