Favorite VIs per instrument

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mixyguy2
Posts: 574
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 4:54 pm

Favorite VIs per instrument

Post by mixyguy2 »

Wondering what others are using and how they stack up....some thoughts offhand for me:

Grand Piano: the Denver Grand and Ivy 162 are both free and IMO both excellent. I see no need to buy or get anything else
Upright Piano: the Rain Piano by Sampletekk is great IMO; as advertised, a "lot of character"
Organ: I don't use organs much at all, but CollaB3 is a nice B3 tonewheel organ emulation IMO, and various synths have solid organ patches
Electric Pianos (Rhodes etc): Lounge Lizard EP4 wins this one for me, but tbh I have heard numerous respectable patches in many synths for these as well, including free ones
Sax: I haven't found a truly good one, but while it has a niche sound, the very inexpensive Sensual Sax was well worth the price.
Guitars: I haven't really messed with these too much yet, but Ample Sound's acoustic and electric offerings are the best I've heard. I have heard good things about Shreddage and Orange Tree's stuff but haven't used.
Strings: I have 8Dio's Anthology Strings and am very happy with it. Really good sound IMO. They have a lot of sales, so definitely go that route if interested.
Brass: 8Dio again, with their Century Brass ensemble.
Trumpet: Norrland. Free trumpet and the best I've heard, including paid.
Violin: Embertone's Joshua Bell violin. Excellent
Drums: I tried EZ Drummer but IMO the free MT Power Drum Kit, if you're not looking for anything crazy, is plenty.

Synths: too many to mention. :) I have tried many, free and paid. Full Bucket has some great free retro synths. NI's Absynth is good despite being older. u-he is probably king of synths though, both free and paid.
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TrevsAudio
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Re: Favorite VIs per instrument

Post by TrevsAudio »

I must confess I'm not a big user of Virtual Instruments, but when I do, I find Mixcraft’s offerings to be more than adequate for my purpose. I have a few go-to's; namely Cavernous Strings, Dreamy Hall strings, Cello, Upright bass, Majesty Trumpet, 76 Trombones and the French horn ensemble. I found a 3rd party sax that sounds pretty good and is free – try DVS Saxophone – nice and breathy. 8)

I’m also a big user of Toontrack products which I find to be excellent. I'm a bass player so EZDrummer is great, and I have a nice selection of add-on packs to cover all my genres of interest. I've recently upgraded to 3, but find the GUI headings too small, so I'm sticking to EZD 2. But certainly, worth the upgrade for the additional core libraries.

Not being an ivory tickler, EZKeys is great for grooves and chords too, and I can of course plonk out a melody if required on my tiny 32 note keyboard. :D .

EZMix has some really great guitar and bass tones. In fact, I never use my AmpliTude 5 software anymore. It also has other great effects for vocals, mastering etc.

Finally, despite being a bass player, I have MODO Bass which I sometimes use for very basic bass lines because of the great choice of basses available with the software. I just play the bass on the guitar and convert to MIDI.
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cactus-head
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Re: Favorite VIs per instrument

Post by cactus-head »

This is a tough one...

For me, once I latch onto an instrument I tend to keep using it so may end up being biased. I've watched and listened to many videos and demos of all kinds of VIs and still stick to my choices as I've come to "know them" how they work and such and their sounds.

I used to use a lot of SF2 players and had accumulated a pretty good SF2 library. I use Sforzando that plays converted sf2 files to sfz.

Orchestra in General: Before I got it, my impression was it was just a gimmicky, inexpensive "throw away" kinda VI but I have to say Garritan Instant Orchestra surprised the heck out of me. It's SOOO easy to get huge cinematic orchestrations balanced and effected across instruments and ensembles. Along that vein, I've come to enjoy and use all of Garritan's libraries.

...and I've used Acousticas Orchestra instruments with some out of the box effects and have gotten some nice sounds. A little EQ reverb and some fattening, and it sounds pretty good.

Big Band/Jazz: Garritan once again. I've heard some better trumpets and saxophones out there, but all around and for the price I'm willing to pay, I still can get away with some pretty cool tracks using this. Takes some tweaking and a lot of MIDI manipulation to get falls, shakes droits, bass and guitar effects, legato etc to sound like real instruments.

The absolute best horns (sax, trumpets etc.) I've heard demoed are from WarpIV Music Production. I'm not even sure if those instruments are still available. They cost in the high hundreds and collections were in the thousands of dollars - a little too rich fr my blood

Piano: Garritan GPO; believe it or not Acoustica Pianissimo with some tweaking and EQ and effects. I have Garritan CFX lite which has a ton of great reviews and examples (especially for the full version) - but there's just a little something about the gain of the samples. It's good, but I find controlling the nuance of the music difficult.

Electric Pianos - I use hardware and have a PX-5s for all kinds of various e-piano sounds. Although, since Lounge Lizard was mentioned and I haven't actually tried it before, I'm trying it while I'm writing this and really like it!

Jazz/Rock/Praise Organ: VB3 Organ that comes packaged with Mixcraft

Pipe Organ: Garritan Pipe Organs - a whole plethora of various organs with all the "stops"

Guitar/Bass: Ample sound. I've listened to many examples and reviews of various guitar VSTis and Ample Sound just sound real. I've played parts on actual guitars and the same parts on the virtual guitars and my buddies have no idea which is which.

Choir - EWQL symphonic choirs. A bit dated now in terms of when it was created and the functionality, but the sound is incredible if you take the time with it. The word builder is a neat feature, but almost useless because of the amount of work required if you are trying to do entire songs from scratch. Much easier just to use the built in phrases. The solo voices, effects, oohs, aaahs, mmms etc. all top notch and can really add to your tunes.

Synths - so many. I have to say I like Glass Viper quite a bit and minimogue . Plus I use hardware too

I also dig into the loops and samples that come with Mixcraft. It's easy to add stuff to OmniSampler and use it as a VI. Also general sound fx, background ambience, scene settings etc. - a lot of useful stuff in the library.

Drums: The sounds in Realidrums are just right for me. There's enough tweaking and selection to get the sounds I want. Plus there's some cool pattern complexity tuning that's pretty awesome. I like the patterns that come with MT Power Drums but I'm not a big fan of the sounds.
mixyguy2
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Re: Favorite VIs per instrument

Post by mixyguy2 »

trevlyns wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 10:59 am I must confess I'm not a big user of Virtual Instruments, but when I do, I find Mixcraft’s offerings to be more than adequate for my purpose.
I agree that they are surprisingly good and I have used as well. I have used for ex. the strings and happy with results....but it isn't just about the quality of sound; where 8Dio also shines is the various articulations and options available.
I found a 3rd party sax that sounds pretty good and is free – try DVS Saxophone – nice and breathy. 8)
I forgot about this and totally agree! It's really basic but has a very nice general sound.

cactus-head wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:31 am Orchestra in General: Before I got it, my impression was it was just a gimmicky, inexpensive "throw away" kinda VI but I have to say Garritan Instant Orchestra surprised the heck out of me. It's SOOO easy to get huge cinematic orchestrations balanced and effected across instruments and ensembles. Along that vein, I've come to enjoy and use all of Garritan's libraries.
I think they were top-notch back in the day, but that day has passed. :) For the money IMO you can do better, but since you already have, I get that it could be more than enough.
Big Band/Jazz: Garritan once again. I've heard some better trumpets and saxophones out there, but all around and for the price I'm willing to pay, I still can get away with some pretty cool tracks using this. Takes some tweaking and a lot of MIDI manipulation to get falls, shakes droits, bass and guitar effects, legato etc to sound like real instruments.
That depends on the VI. :) They have come a long way in recent years. Seriously if you're interested try the free Norrland trumpet. I haven't heard anything better and I've heard some pricey ones. FWIW
The absolute best horns (sax, trumpets etc.) I've heard demoed are from WarpIV Music Production. I'm not even sure if those instruments are still available. They cost in the high hundreds and collections were in the thousands of dollars - a little too rich fr my blood
I was curious as I've never heard of so I looked - they still have a site but looks like it hasn't been touched since at least 2010, and again quality of plugins has come a LONG way since then (and prices have plummeted).
Choir - EWQL symphonic choirs. A bit dated now in terms of when it was created and the functionality, but the sound is incredible if you take the time with it. The word builder is a neat feature, but almost useless because of the amount of work required if you are trying to do entire songs from scratch. Much easier just to use the built in phrases. The solo voices, effects, oohs, aaahs, mmms etc. all top notch and can really add to your tunes.
I've just started looking into choirs, don't have a real need at the moment but do want to try using at some point. I like what I hear of Strezov too.
SirLanceALot
Posts: 94
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Location: Georgia

Re: Favorite VIs per instrument

Post by SirLanceALot »

cactus-head,
have you upgraded to VB3's latest version?

***Several years ago I upgraded to VB3 v1.4, and it's incredible! Especially the Leslie.
I attached a sound bite.

I also upgraded to the latest VB3-II version, which can run as a VST or a standalone.
But..I'm still liking the previous version better, it really rocks!
I can't get the latest version to sound like v1.4

Just a few thoughts.
LA

Link to using VB3 1.4 with Mixcraft. -->VB3 1.4 (64bit) ROCKS! ***You''ll agree if your a serious Hammond player.
Put on your headphones and crank it to dig Guido's Hammond & leslie emulation! It doesn't get any better than this! 8)
https://cdn.bandmix.com/bandmix_us/medi ... 703988.mp3
(timing stinks because I was multitasking and not concentrating)
Lance
Mixcraft user since Ver 1 (when it still fit on a floppy disk!)
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