Project Sam Symbhobia products really great? WET question addded

[Caine123]

Since jesper kyd mentioned those in an interview years ago i was always interested in a orchestra library. I got kontakt 5 and nexus2 orchester libs but wonder at this price if project sam symphobia would be top class and maybe the only ones needed for orchestra instruments?
Combining dark ambient with classical stuff should be neat ;D

[Armagibbon]

Yea project sam is top cant go wrong but you gotta understand what you want from it. Everything they got sounds huge outta the box its f*ckin great but you wont be doin beethoven with it.

[bill45]

They sound great.I wouldn't say they are the only ones you need for orchestral stuff though.

[Caine123]

im no pro orchestra guy, so i read that these libraries make it for no orchestra pros (round robin, heavily editing of velocity etc.) easier and sounds great! still it sounds pro afaik?

or is it like nexus? having the same sounds all people are usin over and over?

[Armagibbon]

Think it depends on the library you lookin at but symphobia 1 is a standard cus it got a classy sound and tons of real nice fx that always seem to work where you need.

[Try-Harder]

They are great, but very expensive and more niche than orchestral libraries like East West Hollywood Orchestra.

[noiseboyuk]

The philosophy of the Symphobia series (and Orchestral Essentials for that matter) is that - in the main - rather than build things up instrument by instrument, you work in sections which have been recorded and orchestrated in such a way as to sound very good, very quickly. So individual instruments are, say, the strings section, and then they have multis which stack these together to create an entire orchestra (in Symphobia 3 these are called Stories and these live in individual patches) The best of these are terrific - not phrases, all playable, but skewed in a particular direction. In Symphobia 1 (which has the best multis imo) these are in categories of Comedy, Drama, Action, Horror etc. They are quite different to the Nexus Hollywood series SQs, which are loops and a top line in the main. The Symphobia series is far more realistic. Then there are some effects, gestures and a few short phrases. These are the ones that can get over-used - and I've been equally guilty -but they do sound great in the main.

On top of that there are some individual instruments too, legatos etc.

IMO, its a series that is designed for quick working but still sounding great, with a classic Hollywood sound. They're not designed for detailed orchestral writing, where you write individual lines for each instrument, and they're not a replacement for those kinds of libraries.

I've done a few videos over the years on youtube which goes through pretty much everything. After Symphobia 1, these have been NFRs in the interests of full disclosure - I said "yes" to them on condition I could say exactly what I thought of them and they've been great ever since, never once wanting to have any influence over what I do. When things don't work for me I say so, but overall its fair to say I'm a fan. Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtBlIr ... juZs8vHU1g

[Caine123]

thanks so much!

i watched those videos and am a little bit skeptical now! i checked also ALBION 1 out and it sounds really different and more complex but very nice. i have to compare again if ALBION also sounds WET.

symphobia seems to have only? wet instruments which is kinda bad? i mean what if you want to use your own reverbs, wouldnt it clash?

im nowhere an experienced REALISTIC orchestra player etc. i mainly do electronic stuff and sound design stuff, but when i use pianos pros would definitely hear it's out of a pc player and not pro real piano player .

Albion seems to be very specific and the whole suite for 2500 bucks is just too much for me as a hobbyist so i thought project sam symphobis 1 (or maybe all 3) atm are a bargain and could cover maybe all orchestra needs?

[brainzistor]

In Symphobia things are separated in Close and Stage sections.
For both sections you can use reverb.

Here, I made a short demo what's the difference between Close and Stage, both are dry, no reverb,
first is Close:

https://soundcloud.com/brainzistor/symp ... e-vs-stage

Stage has more fuller sound and slight ambience while Close is dry, without any ambience
and you have EVERYTHING in Close and Stage.

Now, what people won't tell you is that things like this:
https://soundcloud.com/brainzistor/work-in-progress

with Symphobia you can create in something like 2 hours which is simply impossible to do with other sound libraries because Symphobia works like that and that's the main reason why people love it.
I did this in like 2 hours 3-4 days ago, but I was busy with other things and didn't finish it yet...

It's not just about the sound, it's about how something works. Do I like the sound of Symphobia or not, it's completely irrelevant to me. I just want to start FL Studio, bang my music and that's it.
That's why I love Symphobia, it's as close as possible as taking a real instrument and jamming with it
because I play guitar and drums and I'm accustomed to when I have inspiration to just take instrument in my hands and to create something and not to struggle with technical difficulties which in a typical sound library is going through 50+ piano rolls.
I have other sound libraries and use them too, but Symphobia is my main tool just because you can work very fast with it.

[noiseboyuk]

Caine - sounds like you have a learning curve ahead of you...

The majority of orchestral libraries are recorded in a stage with a sound to it. This is usually a selling point, so you get an authentic orchestral sound as heard on scores and indeed concert music. While artificial reverb and space emulation on dry instruments can certainly help, the general feeling is that the way a room responds to orchestral instruments is still best sampled in situ.

That said, there are a few exceptions and room sizes can vary considerably. Until last year, all VSL was recorded completely dry in a specially designed silent stage, along with other instruments such as those from Sample Modelling. You need to add both early reflections, tail reverb and spatial placement to have it sound like it's in a remotely convincing space for orchestral instruments. Libraries such as LASS by Audiobro and the Hollywood Orchestra series by East West are a sort of middle ground, recorded in rooms which have a short decay, so sound superficially dry but aren't anything like as sterile as VSL's silent stage. Typically users would add their own tail reverb, but not early reflections as these are picked up with the ambient mics. CineSamples, Orchestral Tools, Spitfire Audio's main range, VSL's Synchron series, East West's Symphonic series and ProjectSAM (among others) all record in spaces with are far more reverberant, and most of these spaces are used routinely for film, TV and game scoring (often along with the players and engineers), so out of the box they sound "right" without the need to add much or any extra spatial processing. While all these rooms sound different to each other, IMO the difference is not so pronounced that you can't mix and match with a good deal of success.

Most of these libraries have different mics to fine tune the perspective you need. Just using close mics, however, usually doesn't sound very good, the tone of the instrument is usually compromised (often thin) unless there is some ambience around it from the room. The Symphobia series has two or three mic perspectives that can be freely mixed to taste.

If you must have a close, dry sound then you need to avoid all the ambient libraries, including Symphobia and Albion. For most of us, the recorded space is desirable, even though it can lead to its own problems.

[jancivil]

IMO the difference is not so pronounced that you can't mix and match with a good deal of success..

per se. Alrighty, then.

This has to be countered. This is not good advice, IMO.

The difference can very well be quite pronounced, in_my_experience, to my ears, which I trust.

EG: if one is going for the big, brown noise floor Spitfire loves, if you're going to use the spread, the Decca Tree and so forth, one better be ready to stick with that as such and here's your sound, which is their sound; and this is why they are doing it, a *pronounced* effect. It does not in my experience mix well with, eg., CineSample's LA room. So one can turn some mic placement OFF (better with CineSamples' design than with the Spitfire approach, afaicd; Spitfire very dry is not as great as they want you to receive it IMO).

Synchron Stage is a new approach for VSL. It's not just baking the reflections in as with these others. I'm not going to get into the weeds with it in this post, but this is a design consideration that is not the same thing as eg. Spitfire or Cine. BUT what they're doing is creating templates for it in MIR Pro so that dry libraries are going to suit the sound design about as well as can be imagined at this writing.

It's not going to matter to someone that is all about Symphobia (and I have nothing to say against that) but for general consumption that notion is just very glib and I felt it should be countered with another view.

Here's another which I can't ignore:

While artificial reverb and space emulation on dry instruments can certainly help, the general feeling is that the way a room responds to orchestral instruments is still best sampled in situ.

It's hard to imagine someone with experience or even knowledge of MIR to come down so conclusively as that opinion. NB: "the general feeling is...", well here's me with a specific conception that isn't a feeling, it's based in information and a little bit of experience. I, and this is a specific and limited remark*, would in any case prefer this to having to cut down on what is, definitely, the big selling point of Spitfire and of these make-quick-work-out-of-everything libraries (and CineSamples, albeit one can get a dry sound out of that without subverting what, hey, people in general appear to "feel" about Spitfire, which loses too much in_my_opinion, in_my_experience in the cases I've dealt in. It can be done but advisedly, I believe.

Noise floor as pronounced as it is in certain cases, has to be a known entity if there's audio editing {NB: Gain} done in post-, which should be obvious. Again, this is moving off of the original question but you went for it, so...

(*: this is not me selling anything or doing 'VSL is perfect while Spitfire et al suck' or some other straw man in case you're tempted to do that one again.)

[Caine123]

thx a lot guys, yeah i still got a lot to learn! definitely!

so would you still say using symphobia for example which is recorded in a room i could use in a mix with send reverb and add symphobia too which should be implemented well with the send reverb? e.g. i got a DARK CATHEDRAL preset of R4 and use a longer tail, would it work or sound out of place cause the symphobia library is recorded in a tigher place?

i hope this makes sense!

[noiseboyuk]

Perfectly fine views jancivil. I'll admit that "general feeling" is appallingly vague but genuinely reflects the totality of opinions I've read for the past decade online. MIR is sometimes met from those who have used it with withering put downs, I have to say, which from what I've heard is way OTT criticism (I don't own it). In terms of space emulation, IRCAM SPAT is generally considered to be greatly superior but a) very expensive and b) CPU-hungry.

Perhaps more compelling evidence than my vague feelings about how many people say what, is that dry orchestral libraries have been extremely thin on the ground since VSL started releasing them while there has been a virtual tsunami of ambient libraries, and VSL themselves have now moved to an ambient series. This doesn't say which is best, but it does suggest that the market currently prefers ambient libraries.

FWIW - I may be on my own here, I think the future is in dry libraries. IMO its easier to solve the problem of making dry sound convincing than it is to solve all the problems of ambient recording, though I think for practical purposes this still lies in the future. I'd have preferred MIR 2 to Synchron. I have no axe to grind, just trying to sum up the market for someone who is clearly new to this.

As for mix and matching, it's very much a tangential topic that I was foolish enough to mention. IMO I think the differences are overstated - not that they aren't there, but they are not impossible problems to solve. And I'd guess you may think differently. C'est la vie.

Caine - I'm afraid I don't quite understand, no. How you mix with Symphobia will totally depend on what effect you are going for. Do you want other elements of a mix to sound like they live in the same space as Symphobia? If so then yes playing around with reverbs and spatialisation tools to match on the other elements will help. But that's not always desirable depending on what you're doing, it doesn't always have to sound realistic, it just has to sound good.

[Caine123]

Perfectly fine views jancivil. I'll admit that "general feeling" is appallingly vague but genuinely reflects the totality of opinions I've read for the past decade online. MIR is sometimes met from those who have used it with withering put downs, I have to say, which from what I've heard is way OTT criticism (I don't own it). In terms of space emulation, IRCAM SPAT is generally considered to be greatly superior but a) very expensive and b) CPU-hungry.

Perhaps more compelling evidence than my vague feelings about how many people say what, is that dry orchestral libraries have been extremely thin on the ground since VSL started releasing them while there has been a virtual tsunami of ambient libraries, and VSL themselves have now moved to an ambient series. This doesn't say which is best, but it does suggest that the market currently prefers ambient libraries.

FWIW - I may be on my own here, I think the future is in dry libraries. IMO its easier to solve the problem of making dry sound convincing than it is to solve all the problems of ambient recording, though I think for practical purposes this still lies in the future. I'd have preferred MIR 2 to Synchron. I have no axe to grind, just trying to sum up the market for someone who is clearly new to this.

As for mix and matching, it's very much a tangential topic that I was foolish enough to mention. IMO I think the differences are overstated - not that they aren't there, but they are not impossible problems to solve. And I'd guess you may think differently. C'est la vie.

Caine - I'm afraid I don't quite understand, no. How you mix with Symphobia will totally depend on what effect you are going for. Do you want other elements of a mix to sound like they live in the same space as Symphobia? If so then yes playing around with reverbs and spatialisation tools to match on the other elements will help. But that's not always desirable depending on what you're doing, it doesn't always have to sound realistic, it just has to sound good.

no problem , i uploaded a quickly made dark ambience with some hit etc. first the dry version with no reverb = dry then the wet version with a DARK PLATE on send and all 3 instruments routed to it, i would wonder myself when i would add not some low BRASS part + strings from symphobie if they would clash with the DARK PLATE reverb or not.

dry
https://clyp.it/vykxzigi

wet
https://clyp.it/idgmytau

[noiseboyuk]

Caine - it's a mixing decision really. Personally I wouldn't worry about trying to make it all sound exactly the same, that patch is in no danger of sounding like an orchestra, so no need to be ultra-purist