12-30-2016, 05:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-30-2016, 05:39 PM by Mattias Westlund.)
I've finally had some time to experiment more with the Sonivox Orchestral Companion libs that I've gotten my mitts on lately, i.e. Strings, Brass and Woodwinds.
And what can I say. I love the sound of these samples (YMMV of course, as I have a weird fetish for older orchestral libs, and I have some experience with Sonivox's stuff from the M-Audio-branded ProSessions discs from years ago) and it's simply a damn shame that the player frontend is such a clunky, buggy mess. I mean what the hell were they thinking?
This is some really pathetic stuff. The samples sound great but the way they're packaged just makes the whole suite borderline useless for anyone except maybe people looking for a quick "orchestra synth" type of instrument for their pop songs. Which is really too bad, as this could have been a great collection of affordable orchestral VI's.
Up until now I was considering ripping the notes manually from the scrambled plugins (strings & winds) but I honestly don't know if it's worth the trouble even trying. With all the crackling going on it's likely a lost cause. I'm going to cut my losses and just map what I might need from the brass as SFZ and/or TX and then wash my hands of this mess.
And what can I say. I love the sound of these samples (YMMV of course, as I have a weird fetish for older orchestral libs, and I have some experience with Sonivox's stuff from the M-Audio-branded ProSessions discs from years ago) and it's simply a damn shame that the player frontend is such a clunky, buggy mess. I mean what the hell were they thinking?
- It has no disk streaming, which forces me to use up almost half of my 16GB of RAM for just loading all the basic sections. I'm guessing that if I added all solo instruments as well, I'd have no RAM left for loading anything else. But who needs percussion, harp, piano, choirs and stuff anyway, right?
- The plugins are monotimbral, so you'll need a separate instance for every section and instrument.
- There's an awful lot of unsightly clicking and crackling going on, for no apparent reason.
- The velocity response feels off and there's no way to adjust it from within the plugins.
- The Transpose knob doesn't actually transpose -- it pitch shifts the patches!
- The keyswitches are fixed at the -1 octave and can't be edited, which means you'll need an 88 key controller (if even that helps) to be able to switch articulations while playing in the high register.
- The release tails can't be switched off.
- It has synth features like amp, pitch and filter LFO's and a built in delay and chorus -- but no potentially useful synth features like pitch envelope, legato mode and glide.
This is some really pathetic stuff. The samples sound great but the way they're packaged just makes the whole suite borderline useless for anyone except maybe people looking for a quick "orchestra synth" type of instrument for their pop songs. Which is really too bad, as this could have been a great collection of affordable orchestral VI's.
Up until now I was considering ripping the notes manually from the scrambled plugins (strings & winds) but I honestly don't know if it's worth the trouble even trying. With all the crackling going on it's likely a lost cause. I'm going to cut my losses and just map what I might need from the brass as SFZ and/or TX and then wash my hands of this mess.
