Miroslav Philharmonik Pre-Orders Open!!!

[Squids]

Most companies don't want to do as much work as SR does. Sometimes I (and our team) think we're a little crazy for going as far as we do. If you only knew how nuts it is and the hours we're pulling to wrap up Philharmonik. A lot of stuff we're doing we're thinking "Well, its not that we HAVE to do this but it sure would be COOL!". So we do it. We just want to make great products within a reasonable time frame and we put a lot of effort into it. It's so much more GRUELING than you'd think and I bet there are some companies or people that set out to try it and then realize quick "No WAY am I going to be a slave to this!!!!" and cut it short somewhere. We're dedicated to the end result which is what I want as a musician myself and thankfully so do a lot of you.

As for things getting better, I am a big picture thinker. A lot of companies can be short sighted and go for a fad, take the money and run. You can see some of this if you look over the history of the sample industry. Our stuff lasts longer because we deal mostly with sounds that are usable over and over again in different styles of music. Ironically, this is also the case with the Miroslav material it just needed some updating, TLC, new programming features and of course a releasing of a lot of material he captured that was never going to see the light of day! So sad that would have been after what we've discovered in it. I feel like we uncovered a hidden treasure!

But, anyway, instead of just being happy with sales of past products I reinvested the money into a larger staff, more new material (and there is a seemingly endless amount) and of course we learn the more we do so naturally things will get better if one is looking to grow.

As for the Philharmonik piano vs. "The One" from SS2, it is a totally different sound and I love both. "The One" is the mega version of the C7 that we have (in fact, it is almost the same samples as our $99 Premium Grand C7 product... practically but not exact). Triple strike and all that. A real punchy Yamaha sound which is great for pop and jazz.

The Philharmonik grand piano is a Steinway Concert Grand Model D in a concert hall setting (not too ambient though, but the sustain pedal down samples are because of the harp res and it is GLORIOUS multi-dynamic and pretty large). What I like about it is its pianissimo feel is the best I've heard from anything. You can play it very soft and then really aggressive for a very classical sound. In fact, when I get around to it I am going to try to hack a piano concerto demo for you guys (or at least some kind of film scoring thing which is more my speed).

[Mr. Tunes]

well i surely appreciate the work you guys put in when i'm cranking out tunes faster than a german on the autobahn. i dont fumble for sounds ever thanks to these products, and it's a big part of my success as a young composer. i look at all the other products out there and i wonder what i would've done if i didnt come across this amazing world of playable sound. it can really give one an edge on the other composers to work in this environment.
my colleague calls me "the factory" cause if you give me about an hour i can produce something impressive. but i think the real factory is in florida. i actually just cranked out 3 tunes 3 hours just now, and i'm happy with all of them. not that i like to rush or anything but i get stuff done quick when there's good sounds on hand.

now my question about miroslav this morning is: are there lots of patches that have mini-riffs in them(not sure if this has been asked yet)? kind of like the flute trills in reason orkestor? maybe harp strums? timp rolls etc? i have used those reason flute trills in just about every orchestral piece i've done this year and i'm going to get called on it sooner or later if i dont get my act together.

i saw the Herbaliser perform last night. they are a great group and are big users of the original miroslav library. i think they are going to be pleased with this new product

[Squids]

Yeah, there is some stuff like that. We have more material that will be released later that is even more performance oriented. But, some glisses, trem and trills here and there.

I discovered some awesome tricks with the new Stretch and PS/TS. Interactive duration of detache is pretty amazing and something only Philharmonik can do (or at least at this quality result IMO). But, besides that I was able to get a very interesting "interactive growl" effect with some horns. This was with Stretch. When you speed up a brass vibrato it gets crazy but sounds VERY much like a horn player's growl effect. You can speed it up and slow it down with the modwheel and it's pretty unique! I've never heard anything like that in a sample before. There a bunch of little secrets like that in Philharmonik that I will be revealing over time.

[Mr. Tunes]

ok great news. i know you are also planning some more performance licks for esoundz downloadables right?

But, besides that I was able to get a very interesting "interactive growl" effect with some horns. This was with Stretch.

this is the other thing i was looking for too ironically! i like horns swelling and growling a lot. they add that realistic character to a score

[telebunke]

There a bunch of little secrets like that in Philharmonik that I will be revealing over time.

Looks like Philharmonik will be in need of a transparent documetation of what feature can be controlled for which patch.
Hypersonic has a great solution for this. It can show an explanation text for a patch, so you got "instant view patch documentation". Things like "use modwheel to do swells".

tele

[Caleb]

I like the demos on the Miro. However, the smaller demo clips seem to sound like they have some sort of artifacts or something which make them sound weird. It may well just be me.

The two longer demos are wonderful.

Are there going to be any demos of solo instruments?

I really love using a cello or a flute in a piece of music by itself with piano, drums and guitar. It would be nice to see how well solo instruments stand up.

Caleb

[pricer]

will Philharmonik ship in a box or DVD case? will the boxed edition delay issue be arising again, i seem to remember it being a one-off issue?

[jmeredith]

Hey Squids

Are Alex and the esoundz staff around, really busy, or taking a long weekend? Just wondering because I sent an email to Alex on Tuesday and hadn't heard back yet - wanted to make sure he's not buried under any boxes or anything

[nexussynth]

Good to hear about the piano in Miroslav. I remember thinking that the piano in the EWQLSO Silver package would be just a throwaway but it was quite good and I 've used it a lot more than I thought.

Now the steinway in Philharmonik sounds to be like a real winner! I was hoping for that.

I've telling people that this Miroslav is a whole lotta' library for not nuch money. Even with the price going up it still gives more than the competition.

Of course I am WAY pleased it could be had for now at such a great deal in the cross-grade.

I wonder what the 'extra' something is. If I can guess I'd say maybe a built-in version of the CSR-1 with just one of the hall presets and no programmable parameter except wet/dry balance or something? THAT would be spectacular and no tweaking of reverb would be needed really, if it's the same as the demo video of Philharmonik!

Or maybe one of the reverb algorythms from CSR integrated into the ST2 engine for Philharmonik?

At any rate, I am anxious to start using all this!

[Squids]

Alex is around. Maybe he didn't receive your email. Try emailing again and you can always CC me. If ever someone doesn't get back to someone and I have record of it then I show up at their desk with my Squid tentacles poised and ready! Just kidding. They're pretty sharp on that stuff so something must have happened. Please try again.

Other stuff... I played the piano again today. It's very nice. It's not perfection but it has character and I love playing it. A very musical quality to it. Definitely darker than "The One" in Sonik Synth 2 but it blends well with the other orchestral material.

So, maybe I'll try to reveal a little something every day or so about it. I can't tell the secret yet but you guys are fun to listen to when you guess. I can tell you that this particular cat will be out of the bag on the 5th of July on www.philharmonik.com so go there for an eye and earful of cool stuff!

I just discovered that this existed today: http://www.macmusic.org/articles/view.p ... EN/id/100/

Okay, so something new and special about Philharmonik. Well, one of the things that makes it special is that it is more than just an orchestral sample library. It is an orchestral workstation module. It is designed for BOTH multi-part composition and arranging as well as performance. In order to make it ideal for performance with combis we did some really cool things that took a lot more work but are worth it. We had a combination of multiple ensembles recorded together by Miroslav as well as our own mixing and relooping/mapping of various combinations such as brass and strings, strings and choirs with the Miroslav material. The result is not only some beautiful patches on their own but also a great element for a rich full orchestra combi! This way you don't need to open all 16 parts in layer just to have a full orchestra combi. It also takes up less CPU. This came out GREAT! It's lush, magical, inspiring, bold and beautiful. Combis can be made very quickly with these mixed orchestra elements and you feel like the conductor on the keys! This is another unique feature of the library. Of course to do this required a tremendous amount of work on TOP of everything else. But, it was worth it. This module is one of my favorite instruments to play. Maybe it will be yours too soon.

[g3g4g5]

I own a Miroslav Sample CD in UNITY format. (Bitheadz Unity). The license that came with the CD (on the inside of the shrink wrapped Jewel Case) said that the user MUST credit the Miroslav Library in any commercial song.

Is that the case with this library?

If I may use the library for musical compositions WITHOUT crediting the sample library every time, I will buy it.

If I MUST credit the sample library when used in my musical compositions, I will pass (The Unity CD went unused).

I am excited about the product -- what is the license to use this Miroslav sample library? Must credit be given?

[Mr. Tunes]

hey g3g4g5(interesting name!), i believe that in this scenario IK/SR "aquired" the samples to be placed into their own product, with their own policies. so i feel like this will be more similar to the policy found in Sampletank2/Sonik Synth2 which would not require you to credit them everytime. if that was the case i would be seeing their name on a lot more cds! but dont take my words to be truth as I am just a fanatic of the company and not an employee. they will clear it up for you.

that seems like a really old sample library policy thing. if i had that unity cd when you did, and I felt strongly against that credit, I probably would've went ahead anyways and not put it on the cd liner notes. but i guess your work was getting major label recognition if it compelled you to not use the cd at all.

it's not really fair to make people credit the products they use if they paid fair money for them. it's also almost impossible to enforce in some ends of the industry like the jingle biz which has no crediting on the end of an ad. and there are also a lot of people that go uncredited on albums. what if one of those people used the old miroslav library, but they werent even getting credited? it's unlikely miroslav got credited too in that case.

for questions like these make sure you email squids to clarify policy before buying the products. it's the preferred method of dealing with the copyright issues for the company.

[gareth]

Hey Squids, hopefully this is an easy question. I'm a fairly typical "lazy" sample user in that when I'm using orchestral stuff, it's basically to make a pop tune classier. I want resaonable realism but basically I want to get some parts that work in a pop mix, up and running fast. I tried out a friends VSL library once and decided not to bother because it was much too much like hard work to get a nice orchestral string thing going. All the choices of articulation were, I'm sure, awesome for people who know and understand the orchestral genre but they were a pain for me. I bought the Apple JamPack 4 and I'm loving it! 70% of the time it gets me what I want straight away. Now then..for the other 30%? Will the new Miroslav plug in be easy to use or will I be back wading through a huge chunk of that $4000 library to find something I can use to put warm string wash under a gentle verse? Will I have to spend ages stacking various violins to get what sounds like a section playing fast with a short attack? I'm sure you get my point, can I keep being lazy or will a great result still depend on a great effort? :-) By the way, got SampleTank 2XL, Got Sonik Synth 2, got stacks of extra library. I'm a fan for sure so this question comes with love!

[Mr. Tunes]

great question. i think that this product will be great for both the lazy composer(myself included) and the nitpicker.
you will have all the instruments with extra presets, but then when you are really lazy you have the combis like you've seen an abundance of in sonik synth 2, and those will be made for you to start chopping away with immediately. as squids just mentioned above they are working on some intense combis geared towards people like ourselves who will have a full orchestra waiting for us to start using

i understand what you're asking about cause when it comes to assembling an orchestra you dont want to be spending hours finding the sounds - you have to capture your ideas before they float away

[Kim Lajoie]

Gareth,

One of the great features of Philharmonik is the combi presets - an orchestra under your fingertips! It'll be really easy and fun and inspiring to select a combi preset and just play! With Philharmonik you'll be able to get a great sound really quickly. After all, that's what IK's whole product line is about - getting great results quickly, so you can stay focused on what's important - making music!

-Kim.