Congratulations!!! You are going to love it.

Just fyi... if you haven't been to the Spitfire site lately... Albion II is on its way in a couple months or so.

And of course, a really nice update to Albion I is immanent!

In the bigger scheme of things, it isn't really that much. I don't know what your Summer schedule is going to be like... and I think it would be far more important to focus on school first, but if you're able to work a bit during the Summer break you could most likely afford it easily.

I remember a while back two brothers I knew worked all through the Summer to pool their money together to get an Apple IIe. ...and that was almost four times more expensive than Albion at the time!

If you REALLY REALLY want it then you can figure out a way of reaching that goal.

Yep. You're very good at being optimistic, and yes I'm sure I can find some solution. Thanks.

You have to be optimistic, especially in these times!

Good luck on your musical journey... and don't get too hung up on getting the latest and greatest. If you can get it, then absolutely go for it. But if you can't get it or can't get it until later, don't let that stop you from creating great things with what you already have.

Ack! I made a mistake! If the 30% discount is applied to the pound price, then Albion is approximately $280~, excluding VAT and Paypal conversion. It would probably go up to about $300/$310. Paypal isn't exactly friendly to foreigners, as the currency converter that paypal uses makes products more expensive than they ought to be.

Hi, is there any truth in this comment I read at the VSL forums (original thread here, 4 posts down) which reads:



So you can't use Spitfire sample libraries like Albion and Solo Strings for commercial releases?

And they are selling a limited number of licenses?

Was the poster just trying to persuade towards buying the VSL product? This is my guess are there weren't any warnings alerting me to the above restrictions when purchasing Albion.

Please can someone clarify these restrictions with me as I am considering other Spitfire products at the moment like Solo Strings and Albion II.
Last edited by meldavid on Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:57 am; edited 1 time in total

It's incorrect. Before the relatively recent site update, there WERE super expensive sample libraries available only to a select few people. These even included contact numbers of real musicians. So no, Albion and Solo Strings are available to the public.

I just recently go this library with a student discount!!! No looking back here!

$300. Heh. Enjoy!

Isn't it more like $399? I paid $574.38 AUD, so x 0.7 = $402.066 which is roughly the same as US dollars.

Wish they also had discounts for non-professional musos or the unemployed, lol. Do they ever send out discount vouchers for future purchases, or have sale periods after the special introductory price? I didn't have Kontakt when Albion was released so missed out.

I'm definitely going to need some good solo instruments to complement Albion,
although the Kontakt factory VSL will suffice for now.

I did a mock-up of Secret of Mana's intro theme using Albion's strings and brass, and it sounds excellent, although the winds didn't work as well as a solo flute with vibrato. Will be posting it on Youtube when I've tidied it up.

Are there any impulse responses of the studio they used to record the Albion instruments?

And what tape saturation plugin can you apply to non-Albion instruments to get them to gel together better? Is Sonar's Pro Channel saturation plugs ok? Or VC-64 Vintage Channel?

They have 4 different mic positions so a couple of those capture the ambience/reverb.

And yes...it was roughly 399usd with the student discount. I only have a student id because I've been taking a few classes here and there to keep me up to date with my day work

So the taxes/conversion added $100. Sigh.

So, would you recommend having Albion as your first orchestral library for use with everything? I was thinking that combining it with La Scoring Strings first chair (the solo instruments) would be great.

I would honestly say yes. The similar option is ProjectSAM's Orchestral Essentials which is $399USD normally priced, but from what I've heard, it is quite good, but always big sounding, so it may be less versatile. Albion sound's are quite beautiful and warm. There is some delay, purposely recorded for realism, so in the manual it does mention that you may need to adjust your track delay compensation as needed. But it does cover your orchestral needs...strings, percussion, effects, impacts, ambient...etc. The dynamics are great, especially for softer playing but it is capable of bigger and louder too. Check out Alex Pfeffer's demo on youtube. And they should be releasing a nice update to it shortly with added sounds and a rebuild of its Ostinatum script (think of LASS's ART script). You won't be disappointed, and with a EDU discount if you have that option, you really can't go wrong. Also, from what I've heard, LASS is a good compliment for solo and divisi parts, so FC may be good for the solo stuff. I still need solo strings, but am still deciding which direction to go. I really like LASS, but I'm also really liking 8DIO's stuff, though more expensive and doesn't have a solo strings version that has all strings, not just violins (ie. Adagio Violins) but they sound so amazing.

Imo, both Albion and OE are good to have. They both offer combinations of instruments that might be more difficult to do convincingly using a traditional style library. The ready made combos serve as a nice shortcut to those common combinations. Amongst other things, OE has a lot of nice special effects type string, etc. effects that would be almost impossible to do otherwise.

I think I would recommend Albion first over OE. Albion just has such an absolutely gorgeous sound and is so inspirational to work with, and the ostinatum script is fun (and is going to be made even better as was mentioned).

For solo strings I eventually want to get Spitfire. In the meantime I have Dan Dean Solo Strings Advanced, which was just recently on sale for $50 - which was an unbeatable deal, imo, if nothing else, at least for the short term.

The delay issue has somewhat been adressed in the V2 update. (a little tighter spiccs + retuning of the Brass Hi longs etc.) There is also a new delay compensation function avaiable for selecting room/ambient mic positions without the close mics. And V3 brings Round Robin Legato transitions as well