KVR Audio

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:44 am

Hi there

I started playing with my Halion (1.0, planning to upgrade soon).As you might know it comes with 2 GB of Wizoo samples, covering a bit of basic stuff.

I feel like I need some orchestral stuff, mainly for pop kinda things, so it's mainly strings and more strings, then a few nice pianos and some brasses, especially sax and trumpets. I can see that many of the good libraries are expensive, take the Garritan things or the VSL. I would really appreciate if any of you could point out some great, yet inexpensive libraries, other then the Prosamples serie. It would be nice if these were Halion enabled, cause I'd rather use my scarce time playing and composing.

Thanks in advance!

scuzzphut · Post by **scuzzphut** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:56 am

there are strings, pianos and brass in thesonic station collection over at esoundz.

This ships with UFO which will configure the samples to Halion format for you

On sale at $199, it will cover all your bases for a pretty good price. ( many of the orchestral libraries are just plain out-of-reach for mere mortals - miroslav vitous, gary garritan etc)

Click on the little Sound List/Demos tab and listen to the examples.

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:09 am

I think the string patches on Atmosphere are supperb for pop and dance stuff. Probably the best (and easiest to use) for the money that i know of, plus you get all the other stuff to. To be honest, Atmosphere and Trilogy would see you straight for a good portion of your bread n' butter sounds. Suppliment it with some choice drum and percussion libraries and you're fixed.

Not sure whats good for brass. Dan Dean i hear is decent, but not sure about price on that one.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:34 am

tee boy wrote:Not sure whats good for brass. Dan Dean i hear is decent, but not sure about price on that one.

I have the Dan Dean Solo Brass collection, and I love it. Yes, it is expensive. Project Sam's stuff is suberb as well, and actually a bit cheaper, but it depends on what you're looking for though.

Also, saxes are not part of a 'normal' orchestra, so don't be surprised when you don't find any in orch collections.

Devon

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:54 am

Is there not a specific VST instrument for sax? Im sure i saw one at www.timespace.com , but again i couldnt tell you about price. Im lucky in that i have a fair few friends who play brass and woodwind, so Im dont have much knowledge of the available sample libraries. I got to say it though, if you get chance try out VSL strings... they've changed my whole perspective on shit

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:04 am

tee boy wrote:Is there not a specific VST instrument for sax? Im sure i saw one at www.timespace.com , but again i couldnt tell you about price. Im lucky in that i have a fair few friends who play brass and woodwind, so Im dont have much knowledge of the available sample libraries. I got to say it though, if you get chance try out VSL strings... they've changed my whole perspective on shit

There are two; Sax Lab and Candy. Candy looks like it's STILL not released yet though.

Devon

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:49 am

Candy, thats the one. Is that still not out?! I have a 12 month old catalog with that in!

Yossarian · Post by **Yossarian** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:18 am

tee boy wrote:Candy, thats the one. Is that still not out?! I have a 12 month old catalog with that in!

Yellow Tools announced Candy in November 2002 – must be some kind of record.

For ”bang for the buck” pop strings I would recommend Session Strings:

www.primesounds.com/cd/strings.html

For pop brass, the best I’ve heard is Kick-Ass Brass from AMG but it’s not a cheap library:

http://www.samples4.com/catalog/product ... cts_id=106

For saxes, there’s also the John Rekevics library from www.biggagiggas.com .

/Yoss

Forever Sun · Post by **Forever Sun** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:44 am

leonard wrote:Hi there

I feel like I need some orchestral stuff, mainly for pop kinda things, so it's mainly strings and more strings, then a few nice pianos and some brasses, especially sax and trumpets. .....
Thanks in advance!

Leonard, in addition to all of the above here's some inexpensive options for you.

1.String Textures ( time&space). Old but good and cheap. About £17 !
This has lots of solo plus small and large section strings. Multi samples of much better quality than what's on offer in the ProSamples Orchestral ( this has some very noisy string samples-unusable IMO.)
This collection is available in Audio/Wav only, so you will have to get your hands dirty with looping and editing your own programs ( shouldn't be too difficult with all the latest all-singing-all-dancing softsamplers,

)

2.Pro Samples Vol 20 Orchestral Brass. About £27.
sounds very good. Just not too sure if it's that suitable for pop. But hey !
Akai and Halion programs. no need to edit.

3. Since you want pop stuff, check Acoustic and Synth
Choirs ( Soundscan vol.28 ) About £28. Audio & Akai programs only, unfortunately.
Very cheap and much better that my Hallaluiah Audio (in some respects, especially the children's choirs.)
The synth choirs have some gorgeous vocal pads too.

The above are not as sexy as the latest libraries but they are of high quality and cheap.

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:02 pm

thank you to everyone so far. Those were all interesting suggestions. No need to say that you are welcome to write even more suggestions if you feel like.

jeffn1 · Post by **jeffn1** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 12:12 pm

GPO is another you may want to consider.

jeffn1

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:29 pm

tee boy wrote:I think the string patches on Atmosphere are supperb for pop and dance stuff. Probably the best (and easiest to use) for the money that i know of, plus you get all the other stuff to. To be honest, Atmosphere and Trilogy would see you straight for a good portion of your bread n' butter sounds.

tee boy, thank you very much, you kinda drawed my attention to Atmosphere, a product I will love for sure, as I never can get enough of majestic pads and strings. I have checked the demos on Spectrasonic's website as well as a few of the reviews around the net: I will get Atmosphere and be settled for quite a while.

leonard · Post by **leonard** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:34 pm

Yossarian wrote:

For ”bang for the buck” pop strings I would recommend Session Strings:

www.primesounds.com/cd/strings.html

For saxes, there’s also the John Rekevics library from www.biggagiggas.com .

/Yoss

thank you very much. Those two fit really fit the bill. They both are on my shortlist now.

Bang for the bucks libraries?