Zephyr Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Hey there everyone, I have a few questions, firstly I'm wondering what opinion everyone has about each of these different orchestral samplesets; Garritan Personal Orchestral, Prosonus, and East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Silver edition. I've been thinking about getting an orchestral sample library because if you want to use any sort of orchestral sound in a song, you are most likely going to be stuck with a rather crappy sample (and may even take hours of searching just to find that). I've been leaning towards EWQLSO personnally, but I'd like to get some opinions about each library before investing. Also, I'm still relatively new to mixing and I'd like to know if most of you would deem this a worthy investment... thanks everyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 have you tried synful orchestra? I think it works good, but maybe not if it is going to be playing the lead. Maybe you will need something more expressive then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephyr Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 $479...nuff said Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 There are other options than the ones you listed, but I think QLSO Silver is your best bet, easily. It's actually cheaper than GPO, and sounds better, requiring less work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue.nocturne Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 Course I use GPO and Abadoss does too I believe. GPO can be very frustrating. I find that it can feel very wimpy, but it is excellent for smooth sonorous passages. Brass feels very unimpressive, but the solo woodwinds and such are great. It might just be my technique, I have only been using for a year now, so I could be wrong. Garritan's intended use of the synth is daunting too, it's designed for each and every player to be manually controlled. In his example lessons, I could swear that he suggests you manually program every player of the string orchestra. It will sound awesome if you dare take the time to do that, but I don't have the patience for that. Of course there are some full string presets and such, but it can sound meh at times. A lot of the instruments are designed for solo instruments to be stacked on top of full ensemble presets, so for instance solo violin + full strings. Also, mod = expression, velocity = attack, volume = coarse volume. Since mod = expression, Garritan is good to use with a keyboard. I often find that adjusting the attack doesn't give as much dynamic change as I would have hoped. Also GPO seems to be CPU intensive, I have a 5200+ AMD processor and a full orchestra makes my CPU average at 60-80%. Although, GPO has two sets of harps, quite a bit of organs, english horn, some interesting percussion instruments (nothing ethnic), it can be loaded as 32 bit, and other features. To load the full orchestra with all the keyswitches and such, it eats up about 1000-2000 Mb of RAM, and CPU will be hovering around 50% when not playing (FL has a macro to reduce idle time CPU usage). I never tried the other orchestral samples, so I would not know if they would be better or worse. In summary, GPO isn't bad, it has high potential if used correctly, but it takes quite a bit of time to master and can be time consuming to set up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I must add that GPO is very CPU light compared to other orchestras. The sample player technology (Kontakt-based) is also used with QLSO, but the CPU strain comes from the amount of voices that are typically used, amount of articulations, and size of patches. Larger patches and more voices means more strain on the RAM and disk streaming, and disk streaming eats up CPU like nothing else. However, with proper DFD settings and an 8-10ms buffer you should be good to go with either GPO or QLSO, considering both came out years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 hmm for some reason I thought synful was free. Maybe I am thinking of something else. Maybe it was called squidful orchestra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephyr Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 I haven't used any of the NI stuff yet, I've heard about from both positive and negative standpoints though, is Kompakt easy to use? I've also heard of people having compatability issues with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Kompakt is easy to use, but no longer supported. Ideally you need to get Kontakt, which loads any Kompakt or Kontakt based product, allows for greater editing and manipulation, and comes with great sample content of its own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argle Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 EWQL is better for 'epic' stuff, GPO is better for 'intimate' stuff. imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OverCoat Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 hmm for some reason I thought synful was free. Maybe I am thinking of something else. Maybe it was called squidful orchestra LOL Squidfont, you mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunahorum Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 yes that's it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 I purchased EWQLSO Silver a few months ago and really love it so far. I can highly recommend it, especially for the price. Then again, if you want the *free* route, and since you're an FL user, you can check out the link in my sig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Another recommendation for EWQLSO; though if you have a recent mac is will only break your heart. If you are running a PC go for it. ;_; Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jago Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 Having used Silver myself, I can vouch for this library. It's also a good idea IMO to get its expansion, which it and the original library are currently sold as a bundle: http://www.soundsonline.com/EWQLSO-Silver-Bundle-pr-EW-161PROB1.html It's not a perfect library (I've yet to find one that is - even Complete Symphonic has some intriguing samples), but it works extremely well. I still use it to this day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vivi22 Posted June 3, 2008 Share Posted June 3, 2008 I have EWQLSO Silver and Garritan, and I'd say silver sounds better with a lot less work, but it's also quite the CPU hog. If you have an older system (ie: Pentium 4), it can be a bit of a pain by comparison, but there are ways around that. That said, a lot of the sounds in Garritan are great. To start out I'd probably go with silver, but in time you'll probably want to expand and have a few ochestral libraries to choose from since all have their strengths and weaknesses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DZComposer Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 I use both GPO (and most of Garritan's other products) and EWQLSO Gold. Before doing any buying, ask yourself this: What type of music do you plan on writing? These libraries are designed totally differently than eachother. GPO is designed to be musical, so the library is designed for playability instead of sample quality. You can do a lot with each instrument in terms of articulations. You do not need to load separate instruments for staccato, sustain, etc. Out-of-the-box, GPO sounds very weak, but if you take the time to learn it you can create very nice, lyrical, passages that can more than make up for the sample quality. Excellent solo woodwind and string instruments. Especially Violin 3. Beautiful. Note that only the strings are section sampled. GPO uses what Garritan calls "Ensemble Building" to create different sized sections by loading different instruments. The brass, though, is not well suited to aggressive-style playing. GPO is excellent for "softer" music and more traditional classical styles. GPO also has more instruments in it's library than EWQL. Also, Garritan has excellent customer service and a very helpful forum community should you require assistance with something. GPO is not hard to use, it is just different and some of the more advanced controls take a little extra time to use. If you're looking for a film score style sound or plan on using a lot of big brass, look more towards EWQL. EWQL also produces faster results as it is a more traditional-style library and you do not need to monkey with MIDIccs to change the sound. That said, it can't play nearly as musical as GPO can in a softer setting. I often times find myself splitting parts between sustain, marcato, and staccato instruments. I haven't really been overly happy with the solo woodwinds or strings in this library, though. Note that EastWest is implementing a new player for their libraries. Beware: it requires a dongle that you have to purchase seperately. Get the Kompakt version if you can. For this reason I will never patronize EastWest again. Neither library is crap. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know the library well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted June 4, 2008 Share Posted June 4, 2008 QLSO can be quite musical even in a soft setting. bustatunez (Will Roget) does some amazing stuff with it. It takes finesse, granted, but far less finesse than GPO does overall. And this really isn't a knock on you, but I know you use GPO, and I've heard your stuff, and the level of realism is definitely not as high on average as pieces I've heard other ReMixers of comparable experience do with QLSO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jago Posted June 5, 2008 Share Posted June 5, 2008 I remember some demos I grabbed from bustatunez's website that, IIRC, featured EWQLSO Silver. He wrote soundtracks for a game that never materialized, according to a chat I had with him way back. I was blown away at how good he made that library sound! Man. I gotta listen to those demos again when I get back to my room. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DZComposer Posted June 6, 2008 Share Posted June 6, 2008 Don't use my work (at least the stuff I have here) as a make-or-break judgement of GPO. I was using Noteworthy Composer when I did both V to the X Power and Mercenarios de Lobo. Not an easy program to use with GPO, and can't use GPO to it's fullest. I have since graduated to Cubase. Besides, I never claimed that GPO had excellent sample quality. There are definitely areas where it is lacking and performance and post-processing must be used to make up for it. Maybe it's because I used GPO before I used EWQL, but in my experience GPO was better sounding in softer stuff. But I mostly do brass-heavy stuff which is definately a GPO weakness and one of the main reasons I picked up EWQL and have definately had much better results there with that type of music. I'm not trying to say GPO is better at everything, but I don't think it should just be dismissed as an option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephyr Posted June 7, 2008 Author Share Posted June 7, 2008 How's the orchestral sample library in Kontakt (3)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wiesty Posted June 7, 2008 Share Posted June 7, 2008 ewql silver is really nice, though i just prefer gold for its larger sample selection (percussion really expanded.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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