Orchestral VSTs

[Rolling Estonian]

The price point and complexity aren't for the faint of heart IMO.

Aint that the truth! Tried a few years ago and had so many issues that I just gave up. Thankfully I have no problems with Amplitube, that would really bite as it's my go to amp/effect sim.

M

[starise]

@Mark Bliss,

Great suggestions. I believe trying the free version is the way to go initially to see how a person likes working in it.
Kontakt is typical German music software. Small graphics with lots of hidden stuff lol. Works really well though.

Some of the things a person needs to learn are the buttons that collapse the different windows in it and, for multis, the routing which is also to be found in a hidden window. What some aren't aware of is that Kontakt has a full compliment of effects and reverbs. This can all really change how something sounds.

A lot about Kontakt is misleading. It doesn't actually sample. It's more of a sample library reader.

All the basic stuff a person needs to know about it can be had listening to a few YouTube videos. Like anything else, there are probably parts of it you'll never use and parts of it will become second nature.

Mixcraft is one of the easiest daws I have every used to set up a Kontakt multi in. I simply watch a 5 minute YouTube video.

To the OP. I think you'll like the UVI player. I liked it more than Engine. Good luck!

[mixyguy2]

Just a couple more things I'll throw out there for anyone who is looking at the options available.

It's a actually difficult to find Kontakt for sale on the NI website.If you poke around a bit you'll evetually find it.

Any reason you didn't include the link here? (And yes their web site sucks badly and yes they are obviously pimping Komplete hard)

As mentioned, once you get Kontakt there are both free and low priced libraries from third parties. The difference between third party libraries and the ones certified by NI are how they show up in your browser. All certified libraries are in the Kontakt browser with easy to find graphics. The 3rd party libraries are not as easy to locate.

? I found it quite easy. Click "add libraries" and just navigate to the folder with the library file in it.

I should mention a competitive library player called ENGINE. I have a few of their libraries. Not quite as intuitive as Kontakt. Still a fully workable alternative if you can get the libraries for it you like. ENGINE is free though. Most ENGINE libraries have a price. Here's some info on that here- https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2017/0 ... ne-2-free/

Interesting option, thx for that. PS and however that link points to a library, not the Engine, FYI. Search on "MAGIX Best Service Engine 2" and you can find links to the engine.

Yet another option is this with the UVI player. Looks like a nice orchestra with a small footprint. UVI player is also free.You get some sounds with it.
https://www.uvi.net/en/orchestral/orchestral-suite.html

The player might be free, but this link points to a $199 orchestral suite FYI. The free player can be found here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/univer ... yer-by-uvi

[mixyguy2]

I should mention a competitive library player called ENGINE. I have a few of their libraries. Not quite as intuitive as Kontakt......

Ouch! Theres a VSTi less intuitive than KontaKt?

Kidding. A little.
Actually after witnessing a demo of how KLI libraries can be used in the latest version, I am considering taking another (3rd or 4th I think) stab at Kontakt. But still, I suggest anyone unfamiliar with the thing try out the free version for a while and see if it suits you. The price point and complexity aren't for the faint of heart IMO.

Yes, truth there. Which is precisely why they'll never get my business. Plus I absolutely hate the idea of this proprietary BS where a plugin has to be made to work exclusively with their crappy Engine/UI.

[starise]

Just a couple more things I'll throw out there for anyone who is looking at the options available.

It's a actually difficult to find Kontakt for sale on the NI website.If you poke around a bit you'll evetually find it.

Any reason you didn't include the link here? (And yes their web site sucks badly and yes they are obviously pimping Komplete hard)
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... t&t=finder
I should have included the link.

As mentioned, once you get Kontakt there are both free and low priced libraries from third parties. The difference between third party libraries and the ones certified by NI are how they show up in your browser. All certified libraries are in the Kontakt browser with easy to find graphics. The 3rd party libraries are not as easy to locate.

?

I found it quite easy. Click "add libraries" and just navigate to the folder with the library file in it.

It all depends on the library. In some cases many 3rd parties libraries out in multiple zip file arrangements which are supposed to merge with not a lot of direction on how you're supposed to merge them. There are apps for that. Paid Kontakt libs are usually easier to load and navigate. If you have three or four hard drives things can sometimes begin to get confusing. Lets just say things don't always fit the way intended, and I've had a few issues with some 3rd party libs. This doesn't happen often. Once you add the library it's pretty painless.
Another advantage to Kontakt registered libraries is they are noted on the NI server. If, God forbid, you had a computer problem and had to reload, all registration is there. With 3rd party libraries, tracking down registrations can be more difficult. None of this would keep me from buying 3rd party, but it is a consideration. For me, it's much more intuitive in the heat of a mix to have everything right in front of you and not need to go looking on drive F for a lib, and this is the advantage in buying those libraries.

Yet another option is this with the UVI player. Looks like a nice orchestra with a small footprint. UVI player is also free.You get some sounds with it.
https://www.uvi.net/en/orchestral/orchestral-suite.html

The player might be free, but this link points to a $199 orchestral suite FYI. The free player can be found here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/univer ... yer-by-uvi

In the end Kontakt is king. The others are ok and since basic versions are free it's still an option. ENGINE is software descended from Yellowtools. I don't think they have developed it much since. I suspect Best Service uses it because they don't need to pay the fees to NI. These guys all need to make money somehow, so if they provide a small library with the free download, they want more of your business in the future.

[mixyguy2]

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... t&t=finder
I should have included the link.

Thanks, but I don't see it on sale at that link-?

In the end Kontakt is king. The others are ok and since basic versions are free it's still an option. ENGINE is software descended from Yellowtools. I don't think they have developed it much since. I suspect Best Service uses it because they don't need to pay the fees to NI. These guys all need to make money somehow, so if they provide a small library with the free download, they want more of your business in the future.

Which is precisely what NI does. I don't doubt Kontakt/Komplete are better than anything you can get for free, but I quite disagree they're "king." I found their UI poor and their sounds/libraries a mixed bag. For ex I had chance to try Session Strings and was underwhelmed. I'm just not at all an NI fan.

[starise]

I can certainly understand your sentiments on NI. You aren't alone in feeling like that. When I said NI was king I didn't mean that everyone thinks they are wonderful. Not everyone likes the king

They are the undisputed leader in sample library players in terms of popularity. I mean, go to any group of serious game and motion picture composers and guess what they all use? They might have other stuff like UVI or ENGINE, but they PRIMARILY all use Kontakt. This is because it is stable and has way more creative features that the next runner up, you can build huge and I mean HUGE templates in Kontakt. These guys might be running 500 plus tracks on Cubase using multiple servers to do it. You can't really do any of that with the others. Also, Kontakt is continually updated, runs on Mac or PC and is about as stable as software gets. Most serious sample library producers write for Kontakt because all of their clients use it. Any serious daw developer will make sure Kontakt can be incorporated into their daw and hopefully make it fairly painless to set up multis and tie it all into a mix. I think Mixcraft has done a stellar job of this.

Now the libraries NI make are subjective I suppose. There are some really nice ones IMHO. All depends on what you're doing with it I guess. The drum kits in Komplete are pretty awesome as are their pianos. Some of the orchestral stuff is beginning to be dated, yet if a person is trained in composition and puts those sounds together properly you could use it in a block buster movie and people would be impressed. JMHO. They keep updating their libraries. The nice thing about Kontakt is once you have it, the door is opened to just about anything depending on your level or expertise and computer power. Don't be like me, buy some of it and hardly every use it lol.

[BillW]

Back to orchestral VSTs-
I looked into uvi orchestral suite as an alternative. From everything I read it seems excellent for the money ($199)

But given my limited budget - and the fact I'm using it for adding orchestra backgrounds to classic rock and later maybe classic R&B, I still have to compare it to Garritan Personal Orchestra ($119 at Sweetwater).

So I did a full instrument list and Garritan actually had more. More doesn't necessarily mean better obviously - and it may be the sound of UVI is better. Plus there actually are a few things in UVI that Garritan doesn't have (gongs for example - though I have a reebie that seems ok)

I don't see any demo or sample versions available for either one - just youtube videos

I need to decide soon - so with an absence of a clear cut winner I figure may as well decide based on price and pick Garritan.

[starise]

Here's a Garritan review-

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ga ... rchestra-5

Seems to deliver a lot for the money.

[BillW]

Watched a couple videos and browsed the manual (in particular to learn about how it handles articulations)

Seems fine for what I need. But then I looked at UVI and while I couldn't find any tutorial videos the one demo (no talking - just playing various instruments) made it seem like some of the effects were better - in particular it seemed like a string piece moving from one note to another in a legato style (or maybe its portamento) was achieved by keying simply holding a key and the tone kept going up. Again, no description so maybe I was not seeing exactly what was being done (for example, when did it stop? How long to go say up 12 notes? How to control?

I might try to find out more - but I see no reason to spend an extra $80.

[starise]

Garritan pocket orchestra is included in Dimension Pro a software rompler that was for sale at 99.00 from Cakewalk. The Garritan pocket orchestra is basically the same thing you are looking at buying for 149.00

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ca ... ension-pro

With Dimension Pro you get not only the pocket orchestra but lots of other sounds. Unfortunately Cakewalk was traded to another company and they haven't announced when they will sell that product again. I am hopeful they will once again sell Dimension Pro, we just don't know when it will be. If you can afford to hang back and wait a bit this option will likely open up again.

I was going through the sounds included in Mixcraft last evening. Many of them really are pretty good and might work well buried behind guitars in a rock mix. JMHO YMMV.

[BillW]

Yes - regarding the Acoustica Instruments. They do in fact sound very good and it's only because I'm getting a bit more ambitious that I'm considering an upgrade.

(My current project is Nights in White Satin; I have the mellotron pretty good and strings / French horns / timpani in the last section using Acoustica. (Flute from Chris Hein Horns)

If that was all I was going to do, I'd be OK.

But just for fun - I'm going to try to do the orchestra intro and the longer orchestra section at the end. Without a score or anything to go by but my ears - it will be challenging.

And fun!

So that's my motivation. I might simply try to score it myself first using Acoustica and then if I get frustrated and can't do a good job, move on from it.

(BTW - I have some very old recording of myself using my Yamaha keyboard (66 keys) and the instruments there are even better. I should say "were" - I gave the keyboard to my daughter who plays piano very well and wanted something to play around with in her apartment. She gets the family piano when she eventually buys a house.)

[starise]

Good luck with finding a solution that works for you well.

When running any sound library it's a good idea to make sure the minimum software system requirements are met. Libraries impact resources probably more than anything else and will bring some systems to their knees. If only using one hard drive, it needs to run both the OS and stream samples all at the same time. For something like you are doing it's probably ok for a sound here and there. Having two hard drives, one for OS and one for samples is the way to go if you intend to get deeper into this. Computer memory is another issue. I recommend 16gb RAM minimum for larger sample library setups.

Back in the day there were the Keyboard romplers or rom memory players. They are still around, but things have come a long way and keyboards have more memory. Today some keyboards like the high end Korgs have an internal hard drive. Back in the day a violin might be 3mb in a rompler because all the memory was on a small chip. There might have been only 128b mb in the entire keyboard. They didn't have as much to work with then in terms of hardware. Some of the computer sample players are carry overs from that era. The benefit to them is they can load sounds fast and if the sounds are managed well in a composition they don't stick out as particularly cheesy. In other cases they do. This is the primary difference between the lower ended computer based romplers and large sample libraries....and probably why 80's music sounded like, well...........80's music.

One other alternative is modeled instruments. Not sure I think Pianissimo might be a modeled piano. You can get the quality of a real piano using a fraction of the resources a sample library takes up. For some reason samples still seem to be bigger than modeled instruments. My guess is, they can't model everything well.

[Northfield.Lenox]

Did the CE version of Miroslav Philharmonic 2 get discussed in this thread? It is quite reasonably priced, I love it. It includes a lot of the version 1 content.

[BillW]

Northfield.Lenox:

Thanks for the reminder on the CE version of Miroslav Philharmonic 2. It's funny how one can start going down a certain parth and forget other options that were not researched.

At the beginning of the this topic I brought it up - there was an opnion on it and I hastily discarded it as an option.

Still not sure, but the price is not bad ($149 at Sweetwater vs $119 for Garritan Personal Orchestra) so I'll do a bit more research. The instrument list seems comparable.