Small SSD: Thinking about uninstalling Kontakt Factory Library. Is Miroslav1 good enough?

[waltercruz]

Hi people! some months ago I got a new (used!) computer (i7 Macbook with 256GB SSD). Really better than my old core 2 duo, but with such a little hard drive space, you have to choose your sample libraries with great care.

Kontakt Factory Library is really diverse, but not THAT good. And being honest, I haven't used it anytime in the last year. Yesterday I was reading the list of patches, and maybe I could need some Orchestral sounds for a draft or something. Kontakt Factory Library has an old version of VSL. Never really used, but find it good having it available. But Kontakt Factory Library is 25GB of installation.

Can't really remember the sound of Miroslav 1, cause I moved to 64-bit fast. But now I can import Miroslav 1 on Sampletank 3.

Do you guys think that Miroslav 1 is good enough these days? Nothing fancy, and if I use it, it would be blended on the track, nothing really orchestral or where the Miroslav sounds are upfront.

Good/Bad idea?

[fmr]

Hi people! some months ago I got a new (used!) computer (i7 Macbook with 256GB SSD). Really better than my old core 2 duo, but with such a little hard drive space, you have to choose your sample libraries with great care.

Kontakt Factory Library is really diverse, but not THAT good. And being honest, I haven't used it anytime in the last year. Yesterday I was reading the list of patches, and maybe I could need some Orchestral sounds for a draft or something. Kontakt Factory Library has an old version of VSL. Never really used, but find it good having it available. But Kontakt Factory Library is 25GB of installation.

Can't really remember the sound of Miroslav 1, cause I moved to 64-bit fast. But now I can import Miroslav 1 on Sampletank 3.

Do you guys think that Miroslav 1 is good enough these days? Nothing fancy, and if I use it, it would be blended on the track, nothing really orchestral or where the Miroslav sounds are upfront.

Good/Bad idea?

First: The import to Sample Tank 3 is a job half done, IMO. Either the architecture of the instrument changed much from v2 to v3 or the translation is not well done. I have Sonik Synth, and many patches in it are composed of sub-patches (kind of combis). When I load that patch, it loads "everything in the same slot. When translated to ST3, I only have the "singles", I have to load them ALL, one by one (sometimes I even don't know which ones are composing the combi-patch), and the sound is not the same.

Don't know if the same happens to Miroslav Philharmonik, but maybe it is. Besides, the v1 lacks many features now considered essential, like Key Switching

That said, I find the Kontakt library quite useable, and the orchestra not inferior to IK Philharmonik v1 (the sounds are from the VSL). Maybe you should try to use them, and use some effects (including the ones bult-in in Kontakt) to make the sound more suitable to what you seek.

[pinki]

Love Miroslav 1 but not 2

I still open my Notation program in 32bit mode just to use it!

[bigcat1969]

Miro 1 is fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider it to be better than the Kontakt Factory Library. It was well recorded for its time, but that time was 1993 when memory was at a premium. It was just a different world back then, I'm old enough to remember. The KFL comes from recordings about a decade later when NI bought a stripped down version of VSL's orchestra. While I'm not a huge fan of KFL orchestra instruments it tends to have 3 velocity layers and every other note sampled. Miro 1 has 1 velocity layer and to my ears say every 4th note sampled. So 3 notes per octave rather than 18. You can see it in the patch sizes where KFL is routinely 10 to 20 times the size of Miro 1 patches.

When Sampletank 3 came out which uses variations of the 23 year old Miro 1 samples, I did demos of it versus the free Sonatina and to me and to others, the Sonatina sounded better.

My opinion, and it isn't always agreed with, is that the Kirk Hunter gold orchestra for about a $100 on sale is the closest thing to a 'high' level orchestra you can get for the price. It is also about a decade old, but was pretty high level in its day, while Miro 1 is pushing a quarter century in age and the KFL was never high end. It is somewhat the creation of a mad scientist / virtuoso violinist so it can be a bit odd to use and take more time to find patches and tweak than a more rompler type orchestra. It has tons of section sizes especially for strings.

If you already have Miro 1 by all means use it. I believe it is fairly small on hard drive space. If memory serves the woodwinds have been positively commented on, has a lot of articulations and odder instruments that can be very useful to have and it can be good for layering.

The KFL has more than just orchestra. I think the choir is very good if you don't have a high end dedicated one. The world instruments are lots of fun as it has a ton. Also look at the legacy instruments especially as some legato patches are hidden there. One cool thing about Kontakt stuff is you can get adventurous with it. You can say copy the group over to a blank shell and add the WIPs scripts to add legato, fake round robins and vibrato. Plus Kontakt has all kinds of scripts you can try out for things like micro tuning, harmonizing, lots of stuff.

Sorry that was all kind of random. Good luck in all your endeavors and I hope to hear your work.

[LGK_Dude]

I would buy an external drive and put all your sounds on it. Then if/when you find yourself using a particular sound quite often and if you are tired of its load time and/or performance, move only this instrument to your SSD. You can either manually move it, or in Kontakt you can save it as a new instrument with samples. yes this will result in have the same samples in two places, but whats great about this method is you are only putting on your SSD what you actually use, and only the samples for that particular instrument. So for example if you are using the short strings from Kontakts factory library all the time, instead of putting the whole Kontakt orchestral library on your SSD (which probably has instruments/samples you don't use at all, or at least less often), you are saving just the short string patch with all its samples only, which will save you lots of room on your SSD.

The goal is to put either demanding libraries or libraries you use all the time on your SSD, and keep the stuff you only use occasionally on an external drive. USB3 is plenty fast these days for sample streaming, especially when paired with a 7200rpm drive, so I would reserve the SSD for only instruments that take a frustratingly long time to load and/or instruments in which you use a lot of voices/polyphony and are causing drop outs in your system.

[waltercruz]

My opinion, and it isn't always agreed with, is that the Kirk Hunter gold orchestra for about a $100 on sale is the closest thing to a 'high' level orchestra you can get for the price. It is also about a decade old, but was pretty high level in its day, while Miro 1 is pushing a quarter century in age and the KFL was never high end. It is somewhat the creation of a mad scientist / virtuoso violinist so it can be a bit odd to use and take more time to find patches and tweak than a more rompler type orchestra. It has tons of section sizes especially for strings.

If you already have Miro 1 by all means use it. I believe it is fairly small on hard drive space. If memory serves the woodwinds have been positively commented on, has a lot of articulations and odder instruments that can be very useful to have and it can be good for layering.

Nice bigcat, thanks for your input! For now, I never really needed an Orchestral Library. Most of time, my main work is as a gigging musician - playing with some very diverse repertory, but always stage oriented. I play regurlaly on a Pink Floyd cover band, a Nin cover, and some other. Earlier this year I did a gig with a lot of 80/90s music, and UVI Digital Sensations was of great value then! Besides that, I produce electronic music. There's some rare work with I do with advertising, so maybe I could need some Orchestral sounds in this case. So, I think that the main use that I will need of Orchestral Sounds fits in the 'rompler' category.

I already have Miro1, bought it long time ago in a bundle with T-Racks, Amplitube and CSR. And it's only 7GB.

BTW, I read some of your posts in previous posts about Orchestral Libraries, and certainly will use some of the advice when/if I need some real Orchestra sounds in future

[waltercruz]

I would buy an external drive and put all your sounds on it. Then if/when you find yourself using a particular sound quite often and if you are tired of its load time and/or performance, move only this instrument to your SSD. You can either manually move it, or in Kontakt you can save it as a new instrument with samples. yes this will result in have the same samples in two places, but whats great about this method is you are only putting on your SSD what you actually use, and only the samples for that particular instrument. So for example if you are using the short strings from Kontakts factory library all the time, instead of putting the whole Kontakt orchestral library on your SSD (which probably has instruments/samples you don't use at all, or at least less often), you are saving just the short string patch with all its samples only, which will save you lots of room on your SSD.

The goal is to put either demanding libraries or libraries you use all the time on your SSD, and keep the stuff you only use occasionally on an external drive. USB3 is plenty fast these days for sample streaming, especially when paired with a 7200rpm drive, so I would reserve the SSD for only instruments that take a frustratingly long time to load and/or instruments in which you use a lot of voices/polyphony and are causing drop outs in your system.

Nice LGK_Dude, good to know that a USB 3 plus a 7200rpm drive is enough these days. I'm too broken to buy one right now, but I will consider this on a near future! This seem to be the best solution for my needs. I play a lot on stage with the computer, so I think that it could be a small set, always on disk, ready to go, and a better set, available on USB to use when recording things at home.

[chroma]

i did something like this, but instead of an external drive, I have a 256GB SD card plugged in at all times (actually this one: https://www.amazon.com/PNY-Elite-Perfor ... B00WWBCS1Y - $90, but you can get the 128GB version for $44, or a 512GB for $200 or so. not cheap but I can put things on it that won't fit on the main drive, and I don't have to keep up with an external drive - it's permanently in my laptop (though if you have a macbook like I do, it will stick out some.. I deal with it, you may not like to, up to you). one downside to SD cards (reportedly) is that they can't take too many write cycles - but for this use, you're going to write it once (or maybe a few times), and then read from it a lot, and it's fine for that use.

also, since i need something USB anyways to activate (for waves and plugin alliance), I also have one of these plugged in:
https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-12 ... ewpoints=1
$26 for always-connected 128GB. it's as small as one of those transmitters for mice - really tiny - it does stick out a little but it's very secure and you barely know it's there.

Neither of these are as fast as a true SSD, but the biggest difference is usually small, random-access files - both are generally fast enough to stream whatever you throw at it, and for things it can't keep up with you can move them onto your main SSD. extra bonus: if you have more than one machine (say, a laptop and desktop that share).

if you really need SSD speed, external SSDs are still about 4x the price of spinning rust, but e.g. the sandisk extreme 500 is $140 for a 480GB USB 3.0 SSD. really small, nearly indestructible, and very fast.

[waltercruz]

Neither of these are as fast as a true SSD, but the biggest difference is usually small, random-access files - both are generally fast enough to stream whatever you throw at it, and for things it can't keep up with you can move them onto your main SSD. extra bonus: if you have more than one machine (say, a laptop and desktop that share).

if you really need SSD speed, external SSDs are still about 4x the price of spinning rust, but e.g. the sandisk extreme 500 is $140 for a 480GB USB 3.0 SSD. really small, nearly indestructible, and very fast.

don't need that speed, I think. I liked the idea of the sd card!

[bigcat1969]

I would note that I'm not a musician but a rather quirky indy / freebie developer I suppose. I would definitely weigh the opinions of others who are composers and music creators more strongly than what somewhat like me has to say. Much as I love KVR, VI-Control is a great place for discussion about digital orchestras. They tend toward higher end, but you can still find more beginner advice as well. More than a few of my thoughts are based on what I've read there. I tend to look at things like velocity layers, round robins, tuning, quality of recording and editing more strongly than things like tone and color where a true musician excels.

[DSmolken]

For stage use in a rock band, Miro's a decent choice. Plenty of romplers in 90s rock keyboard sounds, so it might be more appropriate than a lot of modern high-end libraries which are meant to work totally differently.

[FLWrd]

Hi people! some months ago I got a new (used!) computer (i7 Macbook with 256GB SSD). Really better than my old core 2 duo, but with such a little hard drive space, you have to choose your sample libraries with great care.

You can replace the internal SSD quite easily on some models. I did it on mine (Late 2011, which came with a HDD). But before I did that, I took out the DVD-drive and replaced it with a SSD. It's not for "the faint of heart", but it's not a difficult operation.

[waltercruz]

You can replace the internal SSD quite easily on some models. I did it on mine (Late 2011, which came with a HDD). But before I did that, I took out the DVD-drive and replaced it with a SSD. It's not for "the faint of heart", but it's not a difficult operation.

Yes! It's possible with the mine too, but it's a very specific SSD (https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc ... /2012-2013)

I will upgrade when I have money!

BTW, I just deleted the Kontakt Factory Library

[waltercruz]

For stage use in a rock band, Miro's a decent choice. Plenty of romplers in 90s rock keyboard sounds, so it might be more appropriate than a lot of modern high-end libraries which are meant to work totally differently.

Yes! I did a few tests last afternoon with Kontakt Factory VSL and Sampletank Miroslav. For sure Kontakt Factory sounds better, but has a a lot of details force me to execute them very carefully. Having less details, I think that Miro makes it easier to play it live.

[jancivil]

wait, you went ahead and trashed it all? Bias confirmed?

so, NM.