Muddiness in DirectWave samples

[OnCloudVII]

First time poster here.

Apologies if this has been asked before. So I've been composing as hobby for about six years now and I decided to spring for FL studio. So far I love it. Admittedly, since most of my experience has been working with staff paper/MIDI, I'm still getting a grasp of mixing audio. I don't expect to make anything amazing yet.

That being said, the orchestral samples I downloaded from the DirectWave website are kind of...eh. Individually they're okay (though not that realistic) but played together they're pretty muddy. I'm not sure how much of it has to do with my inexperience or the quality of the samples.

Is it actually possible (with enough practice) to make a passable sounding orchestral remix with these samples? Or should I just bite the bullet and just get something like GPO? I know that GPO uses MIDI controllers for dynamics and stuff, which I think is awesome.

Thanks in advance.

[Sole Signal]

Is it actually possible (with enough practice) to make a passable sounding orchestral remix with these samples?

I can't speak directly for the Directwave samples as I'm unfamiliar with them, but I know that there are plenty of mixes that have passed here at OCR using free sounds. Basic orchestral samples should not be inherently muddy; perhaps you're using too much reverb (or they were recorded with too much reverb)? You may be interested in what Nutritious put together, an FL orchestral template made up entirely of free soundfonts: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15415

[Zephyr]

The directwave stuff that they give away for free is logically not their best stuff, and I'm personally not a real fan of DW. I'd recommend trying out squidfont and if you're interested in orchestral, maybe some orchestral libraries.

[OnCloudVII]

perhaps you're using too much reverb

This is definitely possible. And thanks for the link. I'll check it out.