Philharmonik or GPO

[DevonB]

I'm sure others have far more detailed and descriptive responses than mine. For example, DevonB did reviews of both GPO and Philharmonik on Traxmusic.

Doug

Please, read my fairly exstensive reviews. There are much better libraries out there (which I have reviewed in magazines and bought over the years) but you're going to pay the price for them too. It depends on your demands.

GPO and Philly will BOTH get a lot of milage out of, but they lack in many ways what the more extensive libraries provide. The larger libraries demand much better hardware and more resources to run properly.

Each library has its strengths and weaknesses. It depends on what weaknesses you're willing to live with.

Devon

[luxth]

Hm - I have the opposite opinion. It's one of the worst aspects of Miroslav in my opinion - poor expression. Sure, it has all the schmalz you could ask for embedded in the sample - but it's not velocity sampled, so, except for in certain circumstances, it sounds rather static and un-expressive (even with modulation for expression, the core sound is the same).

Probably i wasnt clear enough. You mean controllers and velocities while I was referring to the expressivity builtin the samples and performance of the players, on a musical point of view. Woods are quite expressive and so are the strings. Look at flute, english horn, oboe and bassoon, theyre still probably unsurpassed speaking as timbre and playability. In my experience ten fastly recorded velocity layers couldnt ever replicate a single well played layer note. Thats the case of Miro. Not perfect, doesnt fit with every music genre at its best, but overall performances of the musicians are quite passionate.

Gpo's expressivity is mostly tied to volume/filter swells controlled by mod wheel and such. Those are two pretty different things. Gpo has been probably one of the most innovative ideas in the orchestral VI market. Samples are just not same league than the idea imho.

Personally i'm not fond of libs based on terabytes and thousand velocity layers. Best thing I've heard also on custom recorded libs are often performances based on one or two velocity layers. of course i just have a personal taste ...

Luca

[DevonB]

Personally i'm not fond of libs based on terabytes and thousand velocity layers. Best thing I've heard also on custom recorded libs are often performances based on one or two velocity layers. of course i just have a personal taste ...

Luca

...and you're not fond of them because why? What multi velocity libraries have you worked with? Miro, without a doubt, is a good set of static samples, I will not argue that. I've had my Miro set for over a decade. Amp envelopes to do volume swells are terrible, and really illustrate the limitations of the sample set. Mod wheel cross fading does sound better, but still doens't sound as good as the real thing still. Sonic Implants and Project Sam do a pretty good job with the brass in that respect, but it's still lacking the silky smoothness of a true player. Very few to only one velocity layer and relying on velocity scaling to manipulate from ppp to fff playing sounds terrible, which is where multiple velocity layers at least help.

Devon

[flugel45]

Another vote for Kirk Hunter's Emerald.

I'll be starting with the symphonic strings next week (For those who didn't now, you can buy the strings separately).


JD

[luxth]

Personally i'm not fond of libs based on terabytes and thousand velocity layers. Best thing I've heard also on custom recorded libs are often performances based on one or two velocity layers. of course i just have a personal taste ...

Luca

...and you're not fond of them because why? What multi velocity libraries have you worked with? Miro, without a doubt, is a good set of static samples, I will not argue that. I've had my Miro set for over a decade. Amp envelopes to do volume swells are terrible, and really illustrate the limitations of the sample set. Mod wheel cross fading does sound better, but still doens't sound as good as the real thing still. Sonic Implants and Project Sam do a pretty good job with the brass in that respect, but it's still lacking the silky smoothness of a true player. Very few to only one velocity layer and relying on velocity scaling to manipulate from ppp to fff playing sounds terrible, which is where multiple velocity layers at least help.

Devon

Because I dont think you can get that smoothness of a true player with 10 different layers. usually recording sessions are done horizontally, that means every layer is recorded separately. I'm not sure two A4 notes of different strenght recorded at 1 hour from eachother have the coherence of a real performance...

In my experience mostly it depends on which kind of pieces you work on. I usually work with symphonic templates, and in that case you can barely recognize a 6 layers performance from a good played two layers performance. On a chamber template things may change, but in that case there are a lot of other reasons why a performance doesnt sound realistic.

Just to give an example, the best things i've heard out there on clarinet lines are done with Vsl performance clarinet, thats usually a single layer instrument.

Assuming a real performance is unreplicable, what I suggest is to concentrate more on the global balancing of volumes rather than on number of layers per note. I'm just an average mockuper and I often got in trouble when dealing with more than three layers because of a substantial uncoherence between them in terms of relative volume and timbre.

Of course this is nothing more than a personal experience.

Luca

[Squids]

Without question Philharmonik.

[Squids]

Okay, I was kidding. But, on a serious note, these are actually the two most popular orchestral products on the market. But, Philharmonik sold more units in retail stores than GPO. These are documented facts within industry data. What does that mean? Well you could take it mean that a majority of people, at least those that buy from stores, seem to prefer Miroslav Philharmonik these days.

There are a lot of people that have bought both though because they complement each other nicely. GPO more for solo instruments and Miroslav for more lush ensembles and of course also Choir and other instruments.

I am of course biased because Sonic Reality did the sound programming and editing for Philharmonik. My personal love for the library would sort of be obvious anyway... why else would I want to work on it? Miroslav's samples, while not PERFECT, had an emotion to them that is VERY rare in an orchestral library. Even if you hear people's opinions on how these "flaws" may ruin it for them trust that they ARE in fact in a minority in the reality of sheer number of users that have it and have even emailed in, or posted in our forum or talked to me in person to say how much they love it... including a lot of well known pro musicians.

It really is a great orchestral and choir set and I can only suggest that you not let anyone sway you from it here. I see some esoteric tastes and suggestions. Not that they are wrong or that those are bad but... if it is this popular and loved (plus just listen to it and download the demo version which you can do now to hear a few sounds and get a feel for the module... which is more powerful feature-wise btw) not to mention PLEASE watch the videos I did which really show a lot of tips and tricks not to mention show some of the things Philharmonik can do that even the most expensive orchestral modules can't. Go to www.philharmonik.com in the downloads section. Check out the Stretch video in particular. It's pretty unique what you can do! Much more than you could do with the original library (that was around $4,000).

Take all of this, even my facts and opinions with a grain of salt. That is my advice. Try it out for yourself. Listen to some of the demos (also Luca did some of them and they are brilliant sounding in my opinion), read some reviews and decide if it is right for you!

I think as time goes by it will be more and more clear why Philharmonik is a really good choice, regardless of whatever else you have or might get. You will see what I mean (but for now the "no more dongle" and the addition of UB support and stand alone as a free update is but a taste of what's to come).

That's it. My 3 cents. A little more aggressive than usual for me but I tried to be respectful and if I wasn't as much as you'd like I apologize in advance. I have nothing against Devon or Gary or Kirk Hunter. Cheers to them! Best of luck and Happy Holidays. But I am here so... you have my POV to consider. Good luck to anyone making music with orchestral sounds and I hope whatever they pick it is in the end something that is musical and inspires them, rather than just going by other people's opinions and spec comparisons.

Just remember one thing... the ONLY thing that matters is what your music sounds like in the end. NO ONE who listens to your music cares how many gigs your library was or all of these other specs... what RESULTS can you get from whatever you buy? You can get some REALLY nice results from Miroslav Philharmonik in many cases. For certain things it is a must-have. For other things like shimmery aggressive Hollywood scores there are a few more expensive library/modules that are better at that particular thing... but overall I get most of what I need from Philharmonik alone and I have almost every orchestral product on the market (except Kirk Hunter's). But, again, I am also biased so please just make up your own mind at the end of the day. Surely you know what YOU like.

[DevonB]

Of course this is nothing more than a personal experience.

Luca

I understand. I still would like to know what you're comparing this to? What libraries have you worked with? Personally, I hate "This library is best", and come to find out, that's the only library they have used. Me personally, I have VSL, Kirk Hunter (though I wish I had Emerald. Only have Strings, which are incredible), Sonic Implants, Dan Dean, Project Sam, GPO, Philharmonik, the original Miroslav, London Solo Strings, and a few others my tired morning brain is forgetting.

I have found in some libraries EXACTLY what you're talking about with the performace being inconsistent between velocity layers. That's not every library though. Sonic Implants (or now Sonivox) Complete collection, is quite smooth, and is more dynamic and playable than Philly, in my opinion. It's also $3000 and 80 gigabytes. You get what you pay for. Don't get me wrong, Philly is excellent for what it is. It REALLY needs more layers though.

Devon

[luxth]

I understand. I still would like to know what you're comparing this to? What libraries have you worked with? Personally, I hate "This library is best", and come to find out, that's the only library they have used. Devon

Devon, i think youre a tad aggressive with this statement. I just expressed an opinion on a direct one to one comparison.

but, once you asked me again, I'm a registered user of Ewlqso Platinum xp, Vsl Opus1 and 2 and French oboe, Sonic implants Strings mini, all Project Sam libraries except TS2, Miro, Gpo, Gos lite strings, Westgate, Halion strings, Vrsound orchestral, Worra, Session strings, some Xsample and Advanced orchestra CD's and some more just forgetting about at the moment. I also have some custom samples.

Now am I eligible to have an opinion?

Luca

[dougsyo]

Okay, I was kidding. But, on a serious note, these are actually the two most popular orchestral products on the market. But, Philharmonik sold more units in retail stores than GPO. These are documented facts within industry data. What does that mean? Well you could take it mean that a majority of people, at least those that buy from stores, seem to prefer Miroslav Philharmonik these days.

I don't recall ever seeing GPO in retail stores, only on web stores.

Having said that, I bought GPO first, then added Philharmonik. As Squids and others noted, they complement each other nicely.

Doug

[DevonB]

Now am I eligible to have an opinion?

Luca

Of course. My "agressiveness" wasn't intentional. If you took it as such, I appologize. Some of the guys around here I know well enough to know what they have and what they've worked with, like Rene or Squid-meister (even if he is a bit biased ) I was trying to gain your perspective based on what you have and have used. *WAY* too many times I've seen people say GPO is the best and that's all they've ever used kinda thing. I've not run into someone who has had so many libraries actually find amplitude on a single sample be a good solution for instrument dynamics. Now I understand your perspective more.

Devon

[matto]

I hardly think Devon's posts were "aggressive" considering that there are also two bonafide esoundz "sales pitches" in the same thread...

Btw I'm a happy esoundz customer...just sayin'

[lavoll]

i've started sketching some tracks for a feature I am scoring, and I can't choose myself which i want to use the most GPO, Eastwest, or philharmonik. I like them all So i sent three version of the same track to the producers... and they liked.... the sound of philharmonik the best. And now I agree with them. For this film I think the Philharmonik sound is very fitting (but i will probably add some eastwest schmaltz at required spots as well).

But last film I did for that company I did all with GPO (and cameleon and the grand) and they were extremly happy with that.

[Kim Lajoie]

I hardly think Devon's posts were "aggressive" considering that there are also two bonafide esoundz "sales pitches" in the same thread...

Btw I'm a happy esoundz customer...just sayin'

-Kim.

[lavoll]

and a jazz pianist was just in my studio to record a christmas gift.. his choice for the strings after hearing them all: The Roland JV orchestral expansion board, and especially patch 1 Warm violins hehe. (but with a helping of eastwest on a cello solo part).

so for me theres definately no "best". just variations on a theme.