Entry level Orchestral VST

[C-note]

East West Composers Cloud - $29.99 a month
http://www.soundsonline.com/composercloud

[DSmolken]

Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 has just been announced and might be worth waiting for. Available starting Feb 1, price 99 British pounds.

[fmr]

Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 has just been announced and might be worth waiting for. Available starting Feb 1, price 99 British pounds.

+1. For the description, it seems to substantially raise the bar of affordable orchestral libraries.

[Vintage73]

Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 has just been announced and might be worth waiting for. Available starting Feb 1, price 99 British pounds.

+1. For the description, it seems to substantially raise the bar of affordable orchestral libraries.

Yet it also doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

[jancivil]

@janvicil

Well, you see... I understand and respect your opinion. I know how painful it is if you want to find "that sound" and... with each second your frustration rises because "that sound" is still far away. But there just starts all madness. You at first buy the next plugin/library but...

Well, that's not me.

I repeat... Get one library that your current computer can handle and live with it. For me this is the only option, no matter what library I would compose with. With proper knowledge and manual you can make each lib to shine.

Don't focus on one instrument/articulation and how good/bad it sounds.

Tell you what: I'll proceed my way and you do yours.

Do you really need to sound like London Orchestra? If you are pro, you will work with real set of musicians. If not It doesn't matter with wich virtual orchestra you will make your next soundtrack.

The key is simplicity and music itself.

How often have you worked with "real set of musicians"? My opportunities
as to whole orchestras were not vast. However, I have some time around an orchestra, my job used to be to schlep and set up my hometown semi-professional symphonic orchestra. I have presented orchestrations in school, albeit not more than proof-of-concept as they say. Conducting course ultimately has one actually conducting an orch (while not at all extensively IME). I was a musician in life for ~40 yrs before I did 'virtual orchestra'. I first played with professional musicians when I was 12, and that isn't even a fast start to me. So, I know from professional musicians; I never knew one with their own orchestra at the ready. Practically no one on the planet does. It kind of looks like you talk out your ass with that remark. But yeah, I do want a really tight sound if I'm even going to fug widdit.

As I indicated already, if I want a chamber-orch type of effect, I do not want "London Orchestra" (if what you actually want to say there is London Symphony Orchestra). So in your kind of ironically grand gestures here, you're not actually responsive to points. Don't worry about me having this problem of yours, as we are apparently not all that much alike in our approach. I can get a lot done in short order, in fact.

[ErikH]

I guess it all depends on what one hopes to achieve. First, there is the kind of music one wants to create - there is a huge difference between,say, contemporary classical and early 20th C. approach - and second, a digital orchestra is never a real one.
We are so used to listen to recorded music, even recorded live performances, that we often forget how the real thing sounds. And when listening to a real live performance, there is first of all the performance itself, which is an interpretation of the conductor played as good as possible by the musicians of the orchestra (who are not always the Berliner or Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by, say, Abbado) , but there is also the typical acoustics of the concert hall etc. Add to this that every musician in a gtood orchestra has mastered their instrument and that the digital composer should not only emulate that mastery but also try to be different individuals at the same time.

A good friend of mine plays the double bass in the orchestra of La Monnaie, Brussels, so I had the pleasure of sometimes being allowed to watch a conductor shape the sound of all those individual professional musicians. I also heard him play his double bass from close-by, alone and together with some friends. And this cannot be achieved by digital orchestra samples. There are so many nuances in the playing style, so many inspirations of the moment, differences in pressure on the strings or attack with the bow that the variables exceed what can be done on a computer. Even if one would add for example UVI's Ircam solo instruments.
Linking together individual notes to a musically sounding line is quite difficult.

I do not write this to minimize the use of digital music created on computers, far from. I find it exciting that it exists and that I may live in this era which is still in full expansion. But I interpret it as a working tool. Something that comes as close as possible to the real thing and that offers us the possibility to at least hear our own music which would, in most cases, never be heard in a real concert hall, played by a real orchestra of the level we can now get for in fact very little money.

Therefore I tend to agree with Jancivil's opinion as a road to follow. Yet I absolutely would start with one orchestra bank and learn to use this inside out. And then, when some specific style of playing is really unsatisfactory or even missing, start adding.
Which bank? That depends on what you want to create. The cheapest ones may have less transitions for example, making it harder for you to create that line. But this can also be an advantage because when this has been mastered, the foundation to build on is wider and stronger.

[Foxedge]

East West Composers Cloud - $29.99 a month
http://www.soundsonline.com/composercloud

I don't understand how anyone can subscribe to this XX$/month ripoff, unless it is used as demo for only one month.

Imagine yourself composing with that library for 2 years, cost you almost 600$ and you don't own the product then. Whenever you stop to pay, you lose the access. For these 600$ you probably could have bought some of the greatest full orchestra suites out there, and if you want to change any day, you probably could again have sold it for a decent price so your overall costs would've been lower.

But after paying 30$/month for 2 years, you're left with nothing to sell, and nothing that you really own.

[kilohertz]

How often have you worked with "real set of musicians"? My opportunities
as to whole orchestras were not vast. However, I have some time around an orchestra, my job used to be to schlep and set up my hometown semi-professional symphonic orchestra. I have presented orchestrations in school, albeit not more than proof-of-concept as they say. Conducting course ultimately has one actually conducting an orch (while not at all extensively IME). I was a musician in life for ~40 yrs before I did 'virtual orchestra'. I first played with professional musicians when I was 12, and that isn't even a fast start to me. So, I know from professional musicians; I never knew one with their own orchestra at the ready. Practically no one on the planet does. It kind of looks like you talk out your ass with that remark. But yeah, I do want a really tight sound if I'm even going to fug widdit.

As I indicated already, if I want a chamber-orch type of effect, I do not want "London Orchestra" (if what you actually want to say there is London Symphony Orchestra). So in your kind of ironically grand gestures here, you're not actually responsive to points. Don't worry about me having this problem of yours, as we are apparently not all that much alike in our approach. I can get a lot done in short order, in fact.

Well… First of all congratulations jancivil!!! 40 years of musical career it’s something big.

I put it simple this time:

1. In my country orchestra = symphony orchestra but you are right. It’s London Symphony Orchestra.
2. Look again at topic… Entry level orchestral VST and not set of different orchestras
3. Chamber music? You mean 6+4+3+2 strings instead of modern 16+14+12+10+8? With GPO or VSL SE it isn’t any problem. With Symphobia, Albion it’s impossible…
4. I have to work very fast and that’s another reason why I like to have in my home studio only one, the most flexible orchestral VST, recorded dry.
5. If I want layering, I just use small trick by transposing all midi notes 1 semitone higher/lower in sequencer and detune it correctly inside sampler. You can do it with any library recorded chromatically (VSL).
6. I have Primary Music School, Secondary Music School and Music Conservatory on my account (piano/orchestration/conducting). For last 20 years I have worked in TV as a composer and main sound engineer recording real/virtual symphonic orchestras. I also participated in 100+ recordings as main or quest keyboardist with many pop/rock artists in my country. That’s why I write so small on this great site/forum. But… it doesn’t matter.

What matters is I just wanted to share my opinion in this topic and not to argue with anyone.

All the best to you “jancivil” and just like you have said… “I'll proceed my way and you do yours”.

[BrokenTrance]

http://www.dskmusic.com/high-quality-instruments Don't know if it has been mentioned. Not only orchestra, but would be interesting if someone has this and know if it is any good.