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any good free orchestra or strings VSTs?


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I'm 26, I have no job and have only like 300bucks for the month. I started making music with 14. I bought my first synthesizer (300bucks) with 15 from hard saved pocked money and recently bought an old synthesizer (software) for 80bucks.

I can only buy every half year something new. Mostly used stuff. Samplepackages are easy to get nowadays. Not to mention that they're cheaper than 10 years ago.

I get fed up with people whining about not having money to pay expensive stuff and use "warez" as main excuse. Use the search function, there're tons of threads giving you enough hints to get good stuff for fairly less to no money at all. And the thread I linked is a good starting point (however there is no "free" orchestra VSTi).

Admins/Mods please close this thread.

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Shut up, Compyfox. It's not against the rules to ask for free stuff. The OP was not "whining" about not having enough money. In other words: if you have nothing constructive to say, STFU.

In response to the original poster:

Hammersound.net has a variety of good free string soundfonts. I recommend 5-strings, Cadenza Strings, and Tron Strings for starters.

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Okay that's it, Andrew...

I responded to a question and answered it at the same time. He insulted "me" in the first place - didn't use the search function, nothing!

I feel free to write DJP now. I'm sick of being told to keep quiet as if I`'m a fucking troll of this forum. See this as first official complaint against you, a ever-so-noble judge!

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I don't want to have to pay several hundred dollars to get an orchestra sound. What can I use?

The orchestral sound is different on a person to person basis. For instance, there is no definitive string library. There are many libraries that can fool most by having the most realistic sounding pizzicato, staccato, tremolo, or other articulations, but in the end no library I know of has ever come close to imitating that lovely vibrato-sustained, arco/legato sound. The closest I've heard is the string section used for the Tengai Makyo II OST and I have no idea what library was used for that incredible sound. I know it’s sampled, but it’s the most carefully and well-produced sampled sound I’ve heard in terms of strings, and I think that soundtrack was released in 2003.

What I’m getting at is that you have to choose carefully the sounds you want, and then it takes a while to actually become good at using them. Sometimes it takes years, and you will always find something new about them in time. A big problem these days is that people want results as soon as possible, so they’re easily swayed into buying the newest and most appealing libraries out there that are packed with so many effects and articulations… traditional styles of composition sadly become a second priority. The result? Downloading sample libraries for free is no more a solution than paying thousands for them, because in the end the best results come from years of experience, and one silly little violin patch that is probably no bigger than 10 megs.

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Also check out SJ Orchestral & Squidfont. Squidfont has some really good marcato & pizzicato and SJ Orchestral just has good all-around instrumentation. They are both fairly large, however (approx 75MB) so you might need to download rgc: audio's sfz player if you don't have it (it uses disk streaming that allows you to play larger soundfont files).

Also make sure to pick up the Roland Orchestral Percussion set, which has an amazing orchestral hit sample.

SJ Orchestral - http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=sdet&id=7487

Squidfont & ROP - http://soundfonts.darkesword.com/

SFZ - http://www.rgcaudio.com/downloads/freeware/

If you ever come by some extra $$$, I would check out East West Sympohic Orchestra. You can get the Silver edition for $149 at Musician's Friend right now.

hope this helps!

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I feel free to write DJP now. I'm sick of being told to keep quiet as if I`'m a fucking troll of this forum. See this as first official complaint against you, a ever-so-noble judge!

You are often the troll. Pretty much every conflict in this forum involves you. You are extremely hot-headed and needlessly petulant much of the time. No one is out to get you - most here just want to discuss music stuff without getting into arguments, but it seems whenever someone disagrees with you, you take it as a personal attack and throw a fit. Chill out, grow some thicker skin. Please.

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My advice is to go on a huge soundfont downloading spree. Just go to Hammersound and SF2 Midi, search things like 'strings' 'brass' 'orchestra'. I'd say squidfont is good for what you need. The sounds suck but you needn't worry as much about the sounds at first. Start with good arrangement. I used co compose "orchestral" with the crap FL has. 8O I had no idea what a soundfont was...

If you want good sound, Compy is right. You have to pay. You can't go to the junkyard and find a good car to drive, you pay thousands at a dealer. Granted, there are cheap cars and also cheap libraries too.

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I have a nice violin solo soundfont called ViolinSTR.sf2 (and "VL mf vb 2b" as the patch name). It sounds really convincing with a nice and rich vibrato, especially at the upper-middle/lower-high registers. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of where I've gotten it from, nor what it's sampled from (from the naming convention, it seems like it's part of a larger collection).

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A really, really good, inexpensive (relatively) option is the Edirol HQ Orchestra. I've tried various programs like GPO and EWQLSO, and those definitely have higher quality samples (and wider selection), but Edirol HQ is really quite astouning for what it does...and it's only like $200 or something. You could save up for that if you wanted to.

Alternatively, check out the soundfonts/samples thread, and definitely look into squidfont orchestral soundfont. It's great. It really is.

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A really, really good, inexpensive (relatively) option is the Edirol HQ Orchestra. I've tried various programs like GPO and EWQLSO, and those definitely have higher quality samples (and wider selection), but Edirol HQ is really quite astouning for what it does...and it's only like $200 or something. You could save up for that if you wanted to.

Alternatively, check out the soundfonts/samples thread, and definitely look into squidfont orchestral soundfont. It's great. It really is.

I have to recommend against Edirol HQ. As you said, the samples in HQ are relatively low quality - in fact, it's only a few hundred MB of saamples derived from old Roland keyboard expansions. Considering that it's $200, there is little reason NOT to get GPO which is also $200, or QLSO Silver which is only about $125. Both have more samples and better recorded samples.

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or QLSO Silver which is only about $125. Both have more samples and better recorded samples.

Actually, QLSO silver has far less instruments than HQ Orchestral. The quality is higher, of course, but Silver doesn't even have a full string section sample :). And it's not like one is bad and one isn't, they're both far above the quality of your average free soundfont.

Anyway, I've gotten satisfactory results out of both HQ Orchestral and QLSO Silver, however the sample quality in QLSO is much higher. I have not used GPO, though.

So Edirol gets points for having a boatload more instruments than QLSO Silver, but Silver beats that out with a very high quality. Keep that in mind when shopping around.

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you don't need a full string section sample. in fact for doing realistic orchestral music i'd greatly recommend against using one. same goes with any kind of 'ensemble' sample.

i say GPO or EWQLSOSE is the way to go.

(however in my personal opinion the woodwinds in Edirol Orchestral are much better than those in EWQLSOSE-- not that they're bad or anything)

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or QLSO Silver which is only about $125. Both have more samples and better recorded samples.

Actually, QLSO silver has far less instruments than HQ Orchestral. The quality is higher, of course, but Silver doesn't even have a full string section sample :). And it's not like one is bad and one isn't, they're both far above the quality of your average free soundfont.

Anyway, I've gotten satisfactory results out of both HQ Orchestral and QLSO Silver, however the sample quality in QLSO is much higher. I have not used GPO, though.

So Edirol gets points for having a boatload more instruments than QLSO Silver, but Silver beats that out with a very high quality. Keep that in mind when shopping around.

I never said QLSO had "more instruments", I said it had "more samples" - eg. more samples PER instrument.

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A really, really good, inexpensive (relatively) option is the Edirol HQ Orchestra. I've tried various programs like GPO and EWQLSO, and those definitely have higher quality samples (and wider selection), but Edirol HQ is really quite astouning for what it does...and it's only like $200 or something. You could save up for that if you wanted to.

Yeah, but, for an extra $50, it seems silly not to just save up and get GPO or Silver, which sound FAR better imo than the Edirol dealie. I think Edirol is WAY overpriced considering the quality of the sounds.

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