Sonic Implants soundfonts

[spacefox]

I see that Sonic Implant are having a bit of a winter sale (15% off on every product).

How does their brass and strings soundfonts somparede to the new affordable libraries, like GPO, EastWest silver and Kirk Hunter's new one?

Would you recommend it, considering the alternatives (I don't own any sampler, and use sfz with soundfonts for my sample playing needs)

[Gregjazz]

Check out their drum soundfonts -- particularly their new Yamaha drums. I personally think that the demos for the Yamaha drums are pretty bad and I sort of took a risk buying the soundfonts, but I didn't regret it! They are VERY nice sounds, it's just too bad that the demos didn't do them justice.

[bduffy]

Agreed, Gregjazz. Sonicimplants' drums are amongst the finest ever put to disk. But I don't think they have string sf2s anymore? I have the Solo Brass & Brass Sections somewhere, they were pretty good, but I haven't touched it in years, so that's a bad sign. God, I don't even remember what I did with the files...but I know I got my boss to purchase them to help me complete a project that required swing music...so maybe they were OK.

My go-to horns are the old Miroslav Brass/Woodwinds. The AKAI version is pretty cheap. Not the foremost in quality, but I like the way they sound in mixes - especially the French Horns.

[spacefox]

I'm more interested in orchestral type sounds, which are harder to come by in freeware - but thanks for the tip about the drums.

Buying from Sonic Implants has several advantages fir me: they are lightweight, downloadable adn I can play them in sfz (I try to avoid C/R and dongles). This is all irrelevant if the sounds are dissapointing.

What I'm asking is this: in light of all the new, affordable orchestral libraries - are Sonic Implants orchestral SF2s (the downloadable ones) are good value for money?
I'm especially interested in solo strings, but brass is also an option.

[pethu]

Compared to the high quality of their drums, bass and guitar soundfonts, the "orchestral brass" soundfont is a let-down and nowhere near the expressiveness of the modern crop of "orchestra-in-a-box" sample libraries.

Many of the samples are single-velocity only, and the ensembles are made up of multiple instances of the same samples - the resulting phasing is unbearable. Stay well clear.

Haven't got the strings, so no opinion there.

(This from someone who uses a lot of their other downloadable sounds on a regular basis and likes them very much...)

[MidiMan]

Well, regarding orchestral sounds you basically get what you pay for.

The Sonic Implants orchestral soundfonts are not bad (I got them all, the affordable ones that is. Not Symphonic String Collection Mini), but nowhere near the other libraries you mentioned. You can't really expect that with a 2,5Mb soundfont (Symphonic Brass) or a 64Mb font (Solo & Ensemble Strings).

I'd say save up and buy something else. Garritan comes with it's own player, so you wouldn't need a sampler anyway.

[spacefox]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think I'll pass on these then.

[lawapa]

I too have quite a few SI downloads plus CD's. But Having several lib's is never a bad Idea. Especially the orchestral type. I have the S Strings mini set on 4-CD's. No real comparison to the full library but it's stunning. I was hoping SI mught follow suit and release mini's of the major giga lib's. But with small downloadable soundsets compromizes are made and as you know a full lib can really bite cost wise. With dongle considerations I'd stay with SI as quality seems as good as it can be regarding lib size. And with all sets how much detail can you capture in a full orchastration? why pay over a grand for sonic details that get lost in the mix? Solo considerations aside if you want small ensambles you do need the Libs to pull that off and costs get you either way. As I improve my libs I still find myself using these smaller sets to sequence. A render to a full audio track using a much better set later is not a real problem. But all in all I stil think having more than one lib a real plus.