Discovering Discover

[Mattias Westlund]

Just playing around with Spitfire BBC Symphonic Orchestra Discover. Still not impressed, but I wouldn't say it's completely useless.

Here's a cool little trick: You can use Melda Productions MBandPass to set up a modwheel-controlled lowpass filter on patches of your choice. Works best on brass, less so on other instruments, but it might be a matter of finding the right filter type and frequencies. You can set the plugin up to respond to velocity instead, but since the filter is monophonic (i.e. it doesn't respond polyphonically to individual notes, like a normal sampler filter would) it can lead to some strange results when playing quick notes in succession. You can sort of hear the filter "opening" and "closing" in a very unnatural manner.

(this is not a finished, polished composition btw, just experimenting)

[Terry93D]

(06-01-2020, 06:51 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Just playing around with Spitfire BBC Symphonic Orchestra Discover. Still not impressed, but I wouldn't say it's completely useless.

Here's a cool little trick: You can use Melda Productions MBandPass to set up a modwheel-controlled lowpass filter on patches of your choice. Works best on brass, less so on other instruments, but it might be a matter of finding the right filter type and frequencies. You can set the plugin up to respond to velocity instead, but since the filter is monophonic (i.e. it doesn't respond polyphonically to individual notes, like a normal sampler filter would) it can lead to some strange results when playing quick notes in succession. You can sort of hear the filter "opening" and "closing" in a very unnatural manner.

(this is not a finished, polished composition btw, just experimenting)

Mattias, you've taken this little bit of software that I'd taken for verging-on-useless and made it sparkle. I'm reminded of dungeon synth music. Perhaps the BBCSO Discover would be ideal for that genre, exactly because of its limitations.

[Samulis]

That bit around 1:00 actually sounds quite convincing! The lack of RR in the more epic bits is noticeable. As a pad, I think the strings work very well though, especially the high strings.

Is it just me or is something really strange going on with the harp, like samples are being stretched way too far? Reminds me of when I tried to make a harp in the original VSCO with only two samples. XD

[peastman]

That's fantastic! As the saying goes, a poor craftsman blames his tools. But a good craftsman takes whatever he has and makes something wonderful out of them.

I do think these are quite nice sounding samples. Ultimately that's much more important than technical details like layers and RR. Much better a slightly unrealistic but nice sounding instrument than a realistically bad sounding one.

It sounds like there's a ton of reverb. Did you do that, or is it just what's baked into the samples?

[bigcat1969]

Per usual skill trumps the tool.

[Nayrb]

(06-02-2020, 12:20 AM)Terry93D Wrote: Mattias, you've taken this little bit of software that I'd taken for verging-on-useless and made it sparkle. I'm reminded of dungeon synth music. Perhaps the BBCSO Discover would be ideal for that genre, exactly because of its limitations.

Speaking as one whose primary audience is the DS community, I still disagree that the genre should be defined by limitations.

---

The music does sound great, Mattias! I didn't get a chance to grab these samples, but I'd like to hear more of what is possible with them. I'm temporarily moving in a few months and I'll be without my main rig and all of my main libraries until I get back home. I'm looking for things I can use on my laptop, which has extremely limited space.

[Chris Spyratos]

Given that I cannot notice anything that diminishes the listening experience of the track, I would say it sounds very nice. How was the experience working with it though? Did you have to tweak a lot of stuff?

[Mattias Westlund]

Thanks guys.

(06-02-2020, 02:26 AM)Samulis Wrote: Is it just me or is something really strange going on with the harp, like samples are being stretched way too far? Reminds me of when I tried to make a harp in the original VSCO with only two samples. XD

The harp sounds weird to me too. It's kind of dead, like the samples have been artificially truncated (maybe for size considerations). Kind of ironic that the one instrument that would benefit from a longer release lacks it, while other instruments have tails galore.

(06-02-2020, 04:44 AM)peastman Wrote: It sounds like there's a ton of reverb.  Did you do that, or is it just what's baked into the samples?

It's the samples. I do have a bit of ValhallaVintageVerb on there to make everything gel a bit more, but it's fairly subtle.

(06-02-2020, 09:32 PM)Nayrb Wrote: I didn't get a chance to grab these samples, but I'd like to hear more of what is possible with them. I'm temporarily moving in a few months and I'll be without my main rig and all of my main libraries until I get back home. I'm looking for things I can use on my laptop, which has extremely limited space.

FWIW, you can still get them for "free" I think. As for limited space, be aware that loading up the entire orchestra will require 2+ GB RAM, despite the small disk footprint.

(06-03-2020, 06:40 AM)Chris Spyratos Wrote: How was the experience working with it though? Did you have to tweak a lot of stuff?

There's hardly anything to tweak! The plugin is super-minimalist with built-in reverb being the only parameter, and I'm not even using that one 'cause I don't like the sound of it. But if you mean, have I used EQ or anything like that -- no, this is just the raw sound, only with a tiny bit of glue reverb. All plugin outputs are set to the same levels so everything's fairly well balanced I think. And as mentioned, I like the visual representation of the orchestra in the UI. Makes it super easy to pick the instruments you need.

[PPH]

Sounds very good to me.