Personal Orchestra (GPO)

Starting with the website, as this is the place I first visit to gather information about a product, my impressions were favourable!. It is a brilliantly designed site with a mass of demos and comprehensive information about GPO. I'd always been told the customer support was very good, but thanks to KVR and the NS forums, I've had no need to actually call upon Garritan or his team for help.

There's been plenty of really good info already so I wont go on too much, but GPO is an amazingly comprehensive orchestra for such a small price. Its much more complete than EWQLSO Silver which retails for around the same price. I can't claim to be a big fan of the compact version of Kompakt(!) that it comes with but it does the job ok and I suppose you can't ask fairer, although I'd like more programmability.

The programming and preset choice is excellent, with smooth mod wheel expression control and a nice selection of both dry and wet ensembles and solo instruments. I always felt that the programming was much better than EWQLSO Silver's but the recent Silver update has altered that and the two are fairly evenly matched now.

I think the (various) solo violins and horn are very playable and really sit nicely in mixes with other libraries. The solo woodwind are pretty good although I find the samples lack the character and presence of my old Vitous set or those from VSL - both far more expensive it should be added. The strings are quite good too, once again very playable although the lack of a range of articulations limits them a little. The pizz is a little flaccid and its not too easy to get a real digging in marcato, but the legato patches all seem to flow very effectively. The Brass as a whole is not nearly as impressive as Silver's. It lacks the punch and sonic power obtainable from the latter and sounds rather meak. The percussion is good with plenty of choice in addition to which there's a reasonably ok piano (Silver's Steinway far outclasses it) and a nicely sampled organ with a nicely chosen range of stops.

GPO's big strength for me is as a laptop aid for orchestral arranging. It works better than anything else I've tried in this area and I can run it from Sibelius so parts checking is a doddle. Its probably because the samples are very economically sized but without scrimping on quality.

Final thoughts: Such a great tool and very well designed and maintained. I tend to use Silver and Gold in recording projects a lot more but I've found GPO is my main on-the-go companion. I've read a fair amount of "air" about how it can compete with the more expensive libraries. Well, no - it can't. I don't think its necessarily meant to, although I've heard its sounds on a few hacky tv programmes and ads. You get what you pay for in the sample world and something like GPO can't possibly stand shoulder to shoulder with Sonic Implant strings, or EWQLSO Gold or Platinum, or VSL.....
No, but it is a brilliantly designed little sample orchestra that would be an assett to any composer who needs something for quick mock-ups, parts checking and so on.Read Review