Hello everybody. I just purchased Papelmedia's soundfont bank (sf2). Let me tell you I have had more fun with it than any of the so called State-of-the-art sound samples. I have used Sampletank, Halion, Garriton, Edirol, GPO, Synful, Reaktor - you name it. Guess what I paid for it - $39.00! No, that is not a misprint.

You will need to have large sdram as the bank takes up 300MB of space. If you have to spend a hundred bucks to upgrade, it would be money well spent. As far as I can gather, somebody has access to an orchestra and a studio and made a soundfont for themselves. Then they built a small site to sell it.

They have a page that invites you to send a midi and they will make an MP3 of it using your midi and their bank and email it to you. I sent in Beethoven's 7th Symphony Second movement and received the MP3 the following day. I would be happy to email a copy of it to anyone interested, but you can send in whatever midi you want to hear.

I don't work for them or have any financial stake in their success. I simply have been frustrated for years wanting a nice soundbank and not willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for something I don't love. If you are in that same boat, I have thrown you a lifeline. They have several free samples, so check them out.

Heres the link: http://www.papelmedia.de/english/produkte/index.ht m

You might wait and see what happens at NAMM....Rumor is there are up to 8 new orchestral sets coming out competitive with Silver and GPO...one by the VSL group

When is Namm?

Starts January 20.

Thanks for the papelmedia link.
I might check them out.

Very small price - even if you get one or two really useful instruments out of this it's probably worth the price.

Caleb

check this site out for ESQL silver demo. I was quite amazed with the stuff they can do with that library. I'm plannign to get a copy for myself.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.p hp?f=52

A bit confused, here as from my research I understand that GPO hasn't got any WET samples ( that's why the free reverb plug-in).

Silver contains only the CLOSE mic recordings which wouldn't give much reverb either. It's Gold which has STAGE mic recordings with its natural reverb
(likewise the Platinum version with extra FAR mic positions).

GPO has wet samples, still you need different ambiences dry or wet; in fact, if wet and dry samples are used you immediately change the reality of the sound spectrum as some instruments are in one kind of room while the other is in another.

There are various changes as you move across the stage but that's the point of having plugins to emulate halls and performance conditions.

RE: EWQLSO Silver, the update is about $300 and makes it much more capable as a complete orchestral system. So that EWQLSO Silver purchase may cost $550 by the time you get the latest samples.

EWQLSO Silver has a magnificent sound. I don't agree about the film scoring stuff. It is a very capable set that used properly does whatever is required. The problem which the upgrade fixes is the lack of many solo instruments which change the whole feel of the orchestra. EWQLSO Gold is quite capable of anything. With the Silver and upgrade you'd have a fully functioal orchestra with a great sounding hall. then the issue becomes dry or the natural reverb of a great hall recorded by a incredible team of engineers.

That said I really enjoy GPO. It has a lot of interesting articulations and sounds very good for all but the most discerning user. It's also ready to go out of the box, which is quite nice.

Lastly, if you want a gonzo, low-tech orchestra for film look to [b]bigfish[b]audio. Prosonus - The Orchestral Collection has many useful sounds that are different sounding, particular the effects. If I was scoring a cartoon it would be my choice library. To me it has the same charm a mellotron has but it's much closer to it's competitors than the M-tron. Bluntly, I can get some fantastic orchestral arrangements from the M-Tron with all added libraries, but that's about $150 or less and the M-Tron is capable of being used in almost any kind of music, though I wouldn't seriously consider it as a classical sample setup.

Do figure out what you plan to use the orchestral library on. When I first used Prosonus - The Orchestral Collection I didn't think it was worth mention until I used it in some electronic pieces and it stood out like the voice of hell (in a good way) which took an entirely different approach in GPO and EWQLSO Silver, both of which I have.

Then again, I spend more time these days comparing synths and evaluating which has become a valuable lesson in tolerance. Once you get a feel for whatever it is you are using it's funny how things you don't think much of shine in a mix. I understood how the Matrix scores used, in part, the Prosonus library.

As an all arounder at a price friendly point, the current sample set is GPO in my opinion.

Right, so you agree with me on this point.



Erm, I do compose professionally and have used a wide variety of libraries. I have a good handle on MIDI orchestration and how you cannot sequence two libraries the same way. I know how to use automation, velocity, quantization, layering, and crossfading to create a more realistic sound. I also know what GPO's strong points are - I do own it, you know! But again, aside from the solo instruments, it simply is not as convincing as libraries like QLSO Gold, even WITH proper control. I mean, just look at the size of the whole library - 2GB, compared to 16GB with QLSO Gold and hundreds of GB with VSL.



Right, but you still cannot create all the articulations provided by other libraries, and it's generally more of a bother to create the ones that you CAN replicate. For instance, contrabassoon slaps and french horn rips. You can't do that with GPO. In addition, it's a safe assumption to make that many people looking for orchestral libraries are not interested in getting their hands too dirty programming, which is something you need to do with GPO to get a really great sound out of it.



But in the current version, there is no choir.

I hope you didn't interpret my post as an attack on GPO or something of that nature. I love GPO. I use it all the time. I recommend it to people looking for a solid orchestral library, even if they already have something like VSL Opus, because GPO really is unique. However, the negative points I outlined still stand. No library can do everything.



As x_bruce mentioned, it comes with wet versions of all the patches. The wet versions, I believe, use built in Kontakt reverb, which unfortunately isn't all that great. Dry is a much better idea.



No, Silver still has pretty noticable reverb. Play an 18 violin ensemble patch next to a dry synth patch and you'll quickly see how much natural verb Silver has. GPO's dry samples are completely dry, in comparison.

wow... thanks everyone who replied, gave me a lot of info. big thanks to you x_bruce, you really hit the nail on the head as far as what i wanted to hear -- more personal reviews of the products in question than anything else. i completely forgot about that prosonus library -- had seen ads for it in magazines and always wondered about it. but yea, basically i plan on using whatever i get for a variety of music -- straight ahead electronica, industrial, hip-hop, film score style stuff...

i'm a music major in college and know enough of theory to know where i'm going with a piece. just basically wanted to hear opinions on what the most versatile of the libraries are -- i can listen to demos all day but it doesn't really give me a clear indication of the variety of instruments presented, and what sorts of situations they can be used best in. i'd rather hear from people who have first hand experience. anyway, this thread is proving rather useful. i'd definitely love to read more about the kind of mileage people have been able to squeeze out of these libraries in term sof multi-genre usefulness. thanks again everyone.

No, GPO does *not* have wet samples.

There *is* an instrument program set that enables a "Reverb" control knob which controls Kontakt's built-in reverb. But it's not part of the sample.

- m

Remember how old the Prosonus library is. I remember seeing that around before I actually started buying hardware in 1995. I'd get that if I wanted to round out my collection, not start my collection with.

Devon

Since you original mentioned that you're considering SampleTank 2XL or an expansion pack, here are two pieces I've done; one uses SampleTank2XL exclusively, the other uses EWQLSO Silver exclusively. You can see that ST2XL is able to create quite reasonable orchestral pieces. You'll also see that EWQLSO Silver is a very warm lush, full sounding orchestral library.

SampleTank 2XL

EWQLSO Silver

I guess it comes down to budget and what sort of sound you want to get. We are spoilt by choice these days though.

Well, right, that's technically the case. But the GPO manual and GPO program itself refers to those programs as "wet" samples.

Very unfortunate wording, then!

- m