Product Reviews by KVR Members

This was the biggest (and it is huge) disappointment of any orchestral library I've anticipated as much as I did this one. I'll start amassing all the broken bits of these sample sets and maybe someday I'll post a more complete review. For now, suffice it to say that in the days I've had to explore this library, I don't see myself using it as more than a layer with a much better sample set and engine.

This library is huge. Even with fast fibre internet, it took nearly a day to download it all. Theoretically, you can download just the sounds you want to use, but I did not take the time to figure this out.

Opus engine had huge promise, but so far I have not had enough time to see if it delivers anything. Given the lackluster options within the libraries, I may never take the time to know.

Some of the so-called articulations sound like the main samples were just edited with EQ and such. For example, the strings that have flautando (18 violins does, but many of them do not) sound like a variation on the con sordino. I could not make any sense of why some instruments had many articulations and others had only long and staccato. For my arranging, there are so many missing articulations that this could never be my main library even if I liked it more.

Sonuscore did a fine job of sampling the orchestral sounds for this VI. The Kontakt interface is interesting and fairly basic. I was able to set up some sketch-style ensembles for composition. They might even be passable for certain kinds of background recordings.

Unfortunately, the arpeggiator has not impressed me so far. It seems to have very limited features and almost no randomization options -- not as mature as several other orchestral hybrid VIs among my sound libraries.

Is Kontakt the best sampling platform I can imagine? Not even close. Worse yet, the version 6 pitfalls have been among the worst since early version 4 (about 10 years ago). Have they added features? Sure. And gigantic bloat.

Unfortunately, the bloat is not only in the size of the engine. The screen real estate it fills with useless graphics is even worse.

All that negativity aside, Kontakt is the standard of the industry for sampling that sits in your DAW. If you don't license it, you will be missing a significant chunk of available sound libraries and virtual instruments. And that's the cool part: if you want more sounds, get Kontakt for endless possibilities.

I'm so impressed with this library. Every instrument (there are actually 11 rather than 10 as the marketing says) has something good in it. Nearly all have some beautiful -- occasionally quirky -- quality to them that inspires me to compose around each of them. Personally, I recommend this to anyone creating compositions ranging from cinematic to ambient.

Most of the instruments are plucky (harp, lyre, mandola, etc.) or bell/handpan (the "hopi" instruments). The user-friendliness of the interface means that you have the basic controls either under keyswitches or the modwheel. Everything else is a matter of the tastefully recorded samples.

I thought that I found a couple of bugs on my first day of playing these. Once I sent my report to Versilian, I quickly got a thorough and helpful answer back. In each case, I was simply misunderstanding where to find keyswitches I was looking for.

Well done on all counts.

The demos of this sound set are better than what they actually deliver. While the basic samples are okay, there is barely any way to manipulate (keyswitches, modulation, etc.) the sound to be more realistic. Oh well, it was a good price on sale and I may use it to double some other sound.