I watched the walkthrough out of curiosity- as someone who plays these instruments live and attends many concerts of them, some of it is impressive, but other parts- not so much. I was particularly impressed with the sound of the lutes/guitars, which have excellent dynamics and a very idiomatic tone, and the percussion sounded quite nice, but the reeds (crumhorns, dulcians, etc.) and sackbut sounded awful (bad tone, poor tonguing). The winds sounded ok, but I have heard much better recorder samples. Organs sounded very good but perhaps more on the modern side than "Renaissance" as they market the library, but there are so many great organ libraries out there, it's hardly a selling point. The hurdy-gurdy featured "legato" samples which made me chuckle (it is basically a keyboard instrument).
Listening to the walkthrough video, I couldn't help but feel like it was lacking round robins and non-chromatically sampled (especially since file sizes are roughly analogous to VSCO 2, which is primarily diatonic, wholetone, and every-other diatonic)- listen to the demos with crumhorns when they retrigger the note or play neighbors, it sounds like it's the same sample. I can't prove or disprove this hunch, but if it is true that they didn't do RR sampling, it isn't worth much to me, as this music often has repeated notes and a professional library today without RR is almost unheard of, especially since I didn't see sampled staccato.
While some of this is probably the fault of the demo creator for poor phrasing, I can't help but feel these inconsistencies are enough to dissuade me. Once you start comparing the library to real recordings, you start to see how much is missing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6OFhmpcHB4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvpdLIi8KE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ljkJDLPPM
Some of those recordings are old (80's); since historically informed technique, recording technology, and replica making have all come a very long way since then, one would expect a better sounding library than that.
Not to mention some interesting typos... "Reinassance" "Harpsychord" etc. don't exactly inspire me to think the creator knows what they are talking about enough to do a Renaissance library justice... or as professional as the fancy graphics that accompany it make it out to be.
Honestly, I'm probably going to pass on this. While it is interesting, there are just enough questionable things that I think I'd rather stick to the sample sets I have.
Listening to the walkthrough video, I couldn't help but feel like it was lacking round robins and non-chromatically sampled (especially since file sizes are roughly analogous to VSCO 2, which is primarily diatonic, wholetone, and every-other diatonic)- listen to the demos with crumhorns when they retrigger the note or play neighbors, it sounds like it's the same sample. I can't prove or disprove this hunch, but if it is true that they didn't do RR sampling, it isn't worth much to me, as this music often has repeated notes and a professional library today without RR is almost unheard of, especially since I didn't see sampled staccato.
While some of this is probably the fault of the demo creator for poor phrasing, I can't help but feel these inconsistencies are enough to dissuade me. Once you start comparing the library to real recordings, you start to see how much is missing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6OFhmpcHB4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvpdLIi8KE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ljkJDLPPM
Some of those recordings are old (80's); since historically informed technique, recording technology, and replica making have all come a very long way since then, one would expect a better sounding library than that.
Not to mention some interesting typos... "Reinassance" "Harpsychord" etc. don't exactly inspire me to think the creator knows what they are talking about enough to do a Renaissance library justice... or as professional as the fancy graphics that accompany it make it out to be.
Honestly, I'm probably going to pass on this. While it is interesting, there are just enough questionable things that I think I'd rather stick to the sample sets I have.
Sample library developer, composer, and amateur organologist at Versilian Studios.