KVR Audio

neverwhere2012 · Post by **neverwhere2012** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:53 pm

So it probably won't be anything I do for a while, but I've been throwing around and debating ideas in my head and wanted to get some opinions. I eventually want to purchase a nice orchestral sample library. The ones I've been considering have been GPO and EWQLSO Silver -- that price range, I doubt I'll ever have much more to put towards that sort of thing in one purchase. Recently, though, I was taking a look at the Sampletank 2 Expansion Tank stuff and have considered perhaps throwing together something out of a few of those. Just curious to what everyone's opinion is of these products, I plan to use them for all sorts of music and just want to be able to get the best sound quality and most variety for my money.

Armadillo · Post by **Armadillo** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 4:07 pm

I think the best way to find out is to listen to loads of the demos.
EWQLSO silver seems to have more of a Hollywood/soundtrack sound to it, GPO more of a classical/ chamber sound. It depends what you are looking for I suppose.

zircon · Post by **zircon** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 6:38 pm

Armadillo is right. Here are a few of the positives and negatives I would point out (I have Gold and GPO, by the way):

GPO
+ Small GUI
+ Low CPU, RAM, HD usage
+ Ensemble building
+ Fairly wide range of instruments
+ Excellent solo instruments, particularly violins
+ Wet and dry samples
+ Garritan Ambience (VST reverb, good stuff)
+ Assorted other useful programs included
- Included Kontakt player, while functional, doesn't have stuff like filtering, LFOs, effects (besides reverb)
- General sound quality not that great: I'd put it a little higher than free soundfonts
- Not that many articulations
- No choir

QLSO Silver
+ Kompakt is a VERY nice sampler
+ A little bit of Voices of the Apocalypse included - pretty useful
+ Not too heavy on CPU/RAM/HD (a little worse than GPO)
+ High quality recordings
+ Wide range of instruments and articulations
+ Natural reverb (both a plus and a minus) for greater realism
+ 'Cinematic' sound quality
- You will probably need Kompakt's DFD to use it, whereas you don't need DFD with GPO necessarily, and Kompakt's DFD has given a lot of people problems
- Natural reverb makes it less flexible
- Solo instruments are not very good
- No other included programs besides the Kompakt sample-player

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 6:44 pm

Start with a small library and see how you like working with writing orchestrations. It's a big job, a lot of work, and the more music theory you know, the better off you are. I was working last night on a 23 channel track to get some 'beef' out of an orchestral arrangement. 23 tracks is still quite low. 30-40+ I'd say would be pretty standard for a full score, sometimes less, sometimes more. If you're prepared to dig in and spend a lot of time tweaking and writing multiple tracks like that, then keep moving forward.

Devon

ztutz · Post by **ztutz** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 6:51 pm

Another plus for GPO is the fabulously supportive user community - they can be seriously helpful.

Agree w/ DevonB that doing orchestration is a bit of a grind and is not for everyone. On the flip side, it is a great skill to have!

gugliel · Post by **gugliel** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:36 am

It's also fun -- within reason -- to try to make your orchestrations/arrangements sound better and better. I'm up to 140 tracks of midi on one orchestra piece that has occupied me for months now.

Armadillo · Post by **Armadillo** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:45 am

gugliel wrote:It's also fun -- within reason -- to try to make your orchestrations/arrangements sound better and better. I'm up to 140 tracks of midi on one orchestra piece that has occupied me for months now.

140 MIDI tracks. What sort of pc do you have??

And when are we gonna hear it?

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 2:18 pm

I could see doing 140 tracks if you had a nice 15-30 minute long piece. With so many articulations, a 1 second section can be one track in your whole arrangement.

Devon

HHaynes · Post by **HHaynes** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 3:04 pm

- Included Kontakt player, while functional, doesn't have stuff like filtering, LFOs, effects (besides reverb)

GPO uses extensive filtering, however, it's integrated into the instrument sound. Also, the latest version allows for LFO mod to be set and controlled for certain instruments for vibrato, and their "X-Control" sound sets allow the user to set a separate dedicated controller for global control over instruments.

But if you're looking for the ability to take a classical sampled instrument and turn it into a synth texture, you'd need to load GPO into the full version of Kontakt and edit from there.

- General sound quality not that great: I'd put it a little higher than free soundfonts

This is another common misperception, and touches on the points above. GPO demands that the user actually impart musical control on the instruments, instead of relying on envelopes, layering, etc. to get the job done for you. If you play these instruments with a General MIDI file, it will sound like a glorified music box. However, with proper musical control, you can get results that far outstrip other libraries. The award winning television, video games, film projects and live productions that GPO has been used on are ample evidence of that.

- Not that many articulations

Again, you've got to use GPO as it's intended. With integrated legato mode, masterful programming of Kontakt's flex envelopes, and proper user control - a wide, wide variety of articulations can be created by the user on the fly without resorting to instrument bloat or scads of MIDI tracks for each sampled articulation. The latest version includes a keyswitched string section instrument that has 12 keys, allowing the user to cover most of the ground with a single instance. That's before you get into the ensemble builder concept and produce realtime trills and such, adding another opportunity to get away from static samples and impart a new level of individual expression to your music.

- No choir

Garritan has mentioned in the Northernsounds forum that they will be adding a choir add-on to GPO, but no official announcement has been made yet.

Also wait to see if the GPO "Lite" or "Advanced" version might be more to your liking. These two tiers on either side of the original GPO (in terms of overall instrument size as well as price) were announced at CES will be on display at NAMM. Garritan also has a big band add-on in the works, so their making the right moves to cover many of the needed bases for ensemble scoring.

oh-al · Post by **oh-al** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:13 am

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Hello everybody. I just purchased Papelmedia's soundfont bank (sf2). Let me tell you I have had more fun with it than any of the so called State-of-the-art sound samples. I have used Sampletank, Halion, Garriton, Edirol, GPO, Synful, Reaktor - you name it. Guess what I paid for it - $39.00! No, that is not a misprint.

You will need to have large sdram as the bank takes up 300MB of space. If you have to spend a hundred bucks to upgrade, it would be money well spent. As far as I can gather, somebody has access to an orchestra and a studio and made a soundfont for themselves. Then they built a small site to sell it.

They have a page that invites you to send a midi and they will make an MP3 of it using your midi and their bank and email it to you. I sent in Beethoven's 7th Symphony Second movement and received the MP3 the following day. I would be happy to email a copy of it to anyone interested, but you can send in whatever midi you want to hear.

I don't work for them or have any financial stake in their success. I simply have been frustrated for years wanting a nice soundbank and not willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for something I don't love. If you are in that same boat, I have thrown you a lifeline. They have several free samples, so check them out.

Heres the link: http://www.papelmedia.de/english/produkte/index.htm (http://www.papelmedia.de/english/produkte/index.htm)

moosethree · Post by **moosethree** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:20 am

You might wait and see what happens at NAMM....Rumor is there are up to 8 new orchestral sets coming out competitive with Silver and GPO...one by the VSL group

FlounderEye · Post by **FlounderEye** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:39 am

When is Namm?

GW · Post by GW » Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:24 am

Starts January 20.

Caleb · Post by **Caleb** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:19 am

Thanks for the papelmedia link.
I might check them out.

Very small price - even if you get one or two really useful instruments out of this it's probably worth the price.

Caleb

saikhuan · Post by **saikhuan** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 4:30 am

check this site out for ESQL silver demo. I was quite amazed with the stuff they can do with that library. I'm plannign to get a copy for myself.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/for ... y.php?f=52

Orchestral Libraries...