What Do You Need to Start With Virtual Instruments?

Hi John, I'll take a swing cause I have a minute.
Your work computer looks fine, there is always the option to bounce (render tracks to audio) if you really get into trouble.
Assuming you're not looking to buy a new pc:

There are some ways to do things cheap, and a couple you can't get around (you'll need kontakt for example, the good news is it comes with a lot of instruments).
1: Nothing special, something Steinberg or Focusrite will get you there. Just get one with the correct amount of in & outputs for your need.
Unless you really need a dedicated volume knob, most of those small usb interfaces will be fine.
2. The more the better, 16 is the minimum i'd say.
3. I believe Mike made a template once using (only) the Kontakt factory library for the 'galaxy quest challenge'.
If the link is still up it's probably somewhere in the VI-C megathread.
4. (1 and 4 are kind of the same thing, maybe you meant a DAW? / Program to run things in?)
If you're talking DAW (you'll need one), there are a lot of options but Reaper is your best bet for the budget (<100$ i believe)
There are some free ones out there but they won't be nearly as powerful / flexible as Reaper.
Brace yourself for the learning curve though, it won't be easy at first.
5. Yes, you'll need them online when working or there won't be anything for your project to communicate with,
the good news is you probably won't need to have ALL instruments online with ALL articulations for your uses, (which is what a lot of us do).
If you are a 'pro', time = money and you could have been writing instead browsing for the right instrument and then waiting for it to load (which seriously only takes like 30 seconds anyway).
So, to simplify.. if you're job is to write a string quartet, you just load 2 violins, a viola and a cello patch and nothing else (for that project. Once you switch projects the samples will be unloaded from ram freeing up space to load another project, etc....)
If you're doing big orchestrations things might get a bit more tricky with 16 gb but not impossible, you'll have to be selective about which patches to load.

Once your track is finished you can 'bounce' it to any format you wish (probably mp3 or wav). I which case you no longer need anything more to play your file except something like vlc or windows media player.. you can even upload it.

6. Things can escalate quickly when talking samples, I recommend just starting with what comes with Kontakt and browse the web for free instruments, there are some great ones.
Generally the more expensive the library the more stuff it will come with (more instruments, articulations, luxurious 'baked in' room sound from famous studios)
but do you need all that?
You seem keen on running Spitfire, in which case you'll have to shell out a lot of cash (but you'll get some beautifully recorded instruments in return).

If you're really looking to purchase libraries, look out for sales (black friday is upcoming) and you could save a lot of money.

You did not give us a timeline when all of this should be up & running, you can get the basics down in a few days but to get the most out of it will take some time and practice

_T.j

Edit: found the link for the template, in Mike's post
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/mike-verta-masterclasses.27885/page-43

 

For using just libraries both CPUs should suffice. You can download ASIO4ALL and see how it works out. There might be some more noise than with a dedicated audio interface, and expect much worse performance than even Scarlett. That being said, playing libraries isn't that taxing, especially for an i7, so you could theoretically be fine performance-wise.

You'll have to crank the sample rate all the way up which will introduce even more latency on top of an already big number (intergrated soundcards have big latency). So expect ~80ms latency. If you've never tried playing with latency, you'll only lose your nerves if you try. ~40 is as much as I can go before it starts to irk me. Of course, you don't have to play things in, you can sequence it with the mouse in the MIDI editor and then draw CC automation. But expect the 80ms latency to any and all audio coming out of your DAW. When you hit play, it's gonna be delayed. Your position cursor will be delayed. I don't think not being able to play your music to save €90 is a good deal. You can try, but you'll eventually go crazy with the latency. And if you're unlucky, with noise.

Just to repeat it in this thread you can get NI Traktor Audio 2 for €90. If you're not from Europe, I'm sure the prices are similar or even cheaper in the US. This is a pocket-sized device, little heavier than a pack of tissues, that you can carry from one workstation to the other. This is if you're mainly going to be using headphones. Even if you have some smaller speakers like KRK 3 or something like that, you can get a stereo splitter cable and connect them to "main" and it'll play just fine.

If you're working with higher tier speakers, Komplete Audio 6 is €222. Balanced outputs for less noise, better performance, higher sample rate. And much better drivers than Focusrite (stay away from their Scarlett range, one of the worst purchases I've made).

Benefit of buying all Spitfire or all Orchestral tools or all East West is that they're already balanced in regards to each other. If you load in Spitfire Percussion, Winds, Brass and Strings, all you have to do is set up mics to your liking and it'll sound good. Orchestral Tools are very RAM-heavy. I don't know about EW. Spitfire is ~18GB for 1 mic for the entire orchestra. Orchestral Tools have terrible purging. Spitfire have great purging. If you purge them, total RAM usage should go down to about 5GB and then as you play, it will load up the samples into RAM. These libraries are huge and you will never use absolutely all patches, all notes and all round robins therefore there's no reason to have 18GB loaded into RAM. Do note that if you're going to be having them on an HDD instead of an SSD, you'll have delays and slight breakups as you try to play samples which aren't yet loaded into RAM. This'll go away after a few seconds when they do load up. This is related to the response time and read speed of HDDs, with SSDs having ~0,1ms response time and at least 16x read speeds.

Mixing different libraries is where it might get difficult, especially if you're completely new to audio production. You'll need a reverb to add ambiance if necessary, an EQ to adjust for tonal balance and a compressor to adjust for a difference in dynamic range.

As beginner libraries, you could look into Orchestral Tools Inspire. It's a full orchestra, with a harp and a piano, as well solo instruments, which is rare in ensemble libraries. Check out the overview and specifications PDF. It's totaling at ~19GB, so it's definitely much less when loaded into RAM. For what you cited, I'm sure this will be more than enough for a fantastic start as you get familiar with Kontakt and working with libraries. The Spitfire equivalent is Masse, which doesn't offer solo instruments, or percussion, or a harp, or a piano.

I'm not sure I understand this question so I'll just write everything. You load the libraries into Kontakt, and they start loading up into RAM. You can purge them and then load up sample by sample as you play, as I've described above. You're entering MIDI data which is being sent to Kontakt to a designated MIDI channel which then plays audio on designated audio channels. So every time you press play, your DAW is in real-time reading the MIDI, sending it to Kontakt which is then, for every instrument you have loaded in, streaming the samples according to the MIDI data and the internal instrument scripting and playing them back as audio. You can freeze the track in your DAW which will then purge the instrument and samples from RAM (some DAWs don't purge) and convert it to an audio file. Or you can render it to a separate track as an audio file, but your instrument will still be loaded into RAM. Once you're done with everything, you render the entire project to a file and that's it.

 

I forgot about Inspire (haven't really looked at it properly) but that might be a very good call.
@Aaron Venture Does it come with single articulations?
(e.g. to simplify for John, can you just load let's say the Violin I Spiccato by itself?, If you only need that one articulation in your project
there is no reason to load a 1gb patch containing legato, trems etc.).

Also.. I just remembered buying a Scarlett for some emergency thing and i could not get it to work,
maybe Aaron is right, stay away...!

Last thing, but maybe the most important:
I've heard both horrible and fantastic mockups with all libraries out there.
Mike can make the kontakt library sound better than 2000,- worth of Spitfire samples in the wrong hands.
Working your skills should really be higher on the list than getting the 'best' samples, and also buys you some time to shop around and see what libraries you like best.

 

According to the specs PDF, it does.

I absolutely agree about the skill. Learn how to program libraries, how to get a good sound. Learn techniques, and compare your mockups to others and think about why you like what you like in other mockups and what you can do to achieve that or improve.

 

@Aaron Venture @T.j. Prinssen yes Inspire does have single articulation patches, but there is a problem with instruments combinations. For example for strings you can load only: Whole Ensemble, First Chairs Ensemble, High strings 8va, Low strings 8va and Violins I + II. So you can't get Violins I Spiccato directly. I have a mixed feelings about using Inspire in classes. On the one hand it does sound great out of the box. On the other hand it almost feels like cheating since most of the instruments are already doubled...

 

Yeah, I know. It's still more than what most "orchestra" libraries offer, and for €400 at that. On top of that, it sounds fantastic.

By the way, Black Friday is approaching, there are usually great deals to be found from a whole lot of developers. It might be wise to wait a fortnight.

 

From what I remember the top kids in the game: Orchestral Tools and Spitfire, don't go crazy on Black Friday. Last year the OT made a first ever Black Friday sale and it was only for Metropolis Ark I. Spitfire usually does a Christmas sale where you get a 15%-20% off of three libraries chosen at random form your Wishlist. East West is running right now a 50%-60% sale, until end of November, on most of their products. If you look in the right place, you can find Hollywood Orchestra Gold (all sections: Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion; but only one mic position) for a little less than 280$. But I suggest checking out their Composer Cloud. Educational license costs 20$ per month and you can decide if you like the Play 5 engine and the sound and playability of their libraries.
REAPER is my main DAW. It is also a great choice on a budget. Plus you get a 180 days full-feature trial. It is one of the most lightweight DAW out there, so if you're running a RAM or CPU problems with REAPER, you'll usually get a bigger probems with other DAWs. I recommend checking your system for what is eating up your resources. Preferably you should set up OS from scratch just with music production in mind and limit additional software to a minimum. It is also one of the most customizable workstations. However it is a though love with REAPER. It requires a lot of time to set it up the way you like and sometimes you'll need to make some workarounds. But one day it will start to behave just the way you want it. And at that point it will be fun to use.
I have M Audio Keystation 49. I chose it for my first set up and I feel it was a right choice. Sometimes I wish it had an one extra octave (for example for keyswitches), but it is not something that stops me from work. The responsiveness of the keys is O.K. and I very rarely must manually adjust notes velocity in the DAW, and even then, most of the time, it is due to my poor piano skills. Yes, it only has a USB port, but MIDI keyboards don't process or send any audio data. They send only MIDI events data and the speed of the USB (even 1.1) is more than enough to send the data to your PC without any lag. The conversion of MIDI data to audio signal is done inside DAW. So if you're having any audio latency problems, it is happening inside your PC. But with ASIO driver and decent processor you should be able to set up a very responsive environment.

 

@John Royski, 2 things:

1. Seriously consider upgrading your RAM!! 8GB (or even 16) won't get you very far these days.
2. A kickass starter library? a library that doesn't seem to get many plaudits anymore, but is actually still quite a beast, and surprisingly light on resources and wallet is: East West's Symphonic Orchestra Gold. (You only get one mic position, albeit a pretty good sounding one.)

 

That sounds like a good start. Using REAPER is a *great* starting point. You can use it for free as long as you want, then buy a cheap "hobbyist" license for 60 bucks. And, lest people say, Reaper's not "pro grade", Wil Roget scored the newest Call of Duty using Reaper, so there you go.

It's okay if the M audio and focusrite aren't your first choice for interface, you're trying them out for free! Incidentally, Focusrite has a new interface (the Scarlett Solo) which I think it much better for starting out MIDI mockup warriors (link below):

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/de...&creative=78546401796536&device=c&matchtype=e

Trying the free libraries is smart too, you'll start to learn the craft of sculpting the orchestral lines, etc. Then, as you expand into larger, more "pro" libraries, your skills there will transfer. I do think you should get the school to buy you Kontakt 5 (with the included 40 GB Sample library), it has a lot of good, solid orchestral instruments in there (I still use the harp and celeste).

Using your Keystation 49 through midi will not introduce any noticeable latency. The latency comes from the computer converting the digital audio files (orchestral samples) to analog, and back (necessary for playing lines in). That's where the latency occurs. Not the reception of MIDI notes. It will also power itself through the USB port, so you don't need separate power.

I hope that this helps. Good luck!

Mike

 

Fantastic advice! You've come to the right forum.

Has anyone mentioned East West's Composer Cloud? You could try Hollywood Orchestra for a month at relatively low-risk ($30ish). I actually find Spitfire to be harder on the system at times, particularly RAM. If you have your EastWest samples on an SSD it will make a significant difference.

 

I recently put together my very first template, which consists of the following:
WW: Alpine woodwinds (https://alpineproject.wixsite.com/main)
Brass: Adventure brass
Pecussions: a combination of the free Kontakt Factory Library and the built-in Logic EXS24 library
Strings: a layer of SCC Expressive strings (https://www.schristiancollins.com/vi-orchestra.php) and the Kontakt Factory Library strings

The only commercial library I'm using is "Adventure brass", the others are free. I can load the whole template with 8GB of RAM.

I still have to refine my template with better early reflections/reverbs, and maybe better EQing, but I'm slowly getting there. Here are 2 recent examples of my template in action:
John Williams' Rey's Theme: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfiz7j3mac5kck1/Rey's theme - Mockup.mp3?dl=0
A short stinger I wrote the other day: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zet6wu4c1oefx1p/williams-like stinger.wav?dl=0

I don't claim that this solution can be commercially competitive, and it has a lot of flaws, BUT maybe this can be a viable starting template. The instruments are all VERY playable.