REQUEST : List of cheap/inexpensive sample libraries

[Fealow]

Thanks for the response Mattias. I've always personally felt that the woodwinds in Miro 1 are it's saving grace. As for controlling the thing and getting it to do what you want... Yeah it's a pain in the ass. I only purchased the CE version of miro 2 as I was personally a little skeptical, but I thought I would at least try it for that price tag. I have to admit it's a lot easier to use and play with compared to miro 1 and the samples are a lot higher quality. The only thing I think it lacks compared to miro 1 is character, the samples feel as if the players held back a bit so there was more room for people like us to tweak the performance.

[Mattias Westlund]

(07-14-2016, 10:16 PM)Fealow Wrote: Thanks for the response Mattias. I've always personally felt that the woodwinds in Miro 1 are it's saving grace.

Yup, I still use them from time to time. They have a sort of mellow but expressive quality about them.

(07-14-2016, 10:16 PM)Fealow Wrote: As for controlling the thing and getting it to do what you want... Yeah it's a pain in the ass. I only purchased the CE version of miro 2 as I was personally a little skeptical, but I thought I would at least try it for that price tag.

Hah. I started my downward spiral of money-wasting with Miroslav Philharmonik CE and then went to the full version because I thought it would be much better. It wasn't.

(07-14-2016, 10:16 PM)Fealow Wrote: I have to admit it's a lot easier to use and play with compared to miro 1 and the samples are a lot higher quality. The only thing I think it lacks compared to miro 1 is character, the samples feel as if the players held back a bit so there was more room for people like us to tweak the performance.

Listening to the audio demos it certainly sounds a bit too polite and processed. It's not terrible, definitely not, but it just doesn't sound anything special either. That said: use whatever works for you. I feel like I have a bone to pick with IK and the Miroslav libs, but that's just me. If you find it useful then great, it's just a tool like anything else.

[Fealow]

Quote:Hah. I started my downward spiral of money-wasting with Miroslav Philharmonik CE and then went to the full version because I thought it would be much better. It wasn't

And here I am already considering EWQL   

[Mattias Westlund]

(07-14-2016, 10:40 PM)Fealow Wrote:

Quote:Hah. I started my downward spiral of money-wasting with Miroslav Philharmonik CE and then went to the full version because I thought it would be much better. It wasn't

And here I am already considering EWQL   

It would be pointless for me to say I told you so... but I told you so

[Fealow]

(07-14-2016, 11:01 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote:

(07-14-2016, 10:40 PM)Fealow Wrote:

Quote:Hah. I started my downward spiral of money-wasting with Miroslav Philharmonik CE and then went to the full version because I thought it would be much better. It wasn't

And here I am already considering EWQL   

It would be pointless for me to say I told you so... but I told you so

Would you say EWQL would be adequate for someone looking to work on their own personal projects of arranging video game music? existing and original pieces. I'm tempted to just sign up to the composer cloud as their monthly price is very affordable for me.

[bigcat1969]

IMO the play engine and the copy protection must be considered. I did a clean install of Windows 10 and I personally don't want ILok software on there. I believe it significantly impacted my computer and was one of the reasons for the clean install, ie to get rid of what I think of as a rootkit. IMO the play engine is clunky, slow and resource intensive versus Kontakt. My i7, 16 gig of ram computer with standard internal 7200 rpm hard drives felt very sluggish using it. Forgive me if I sound like I'm bashing, just noting a few issues in my mind.

That said they have some great sounding stuff and if it weren't for those issues, I would be very tempted.

While I'm being grumpy I was unhappy that IKM essentially included Miro 1 samples or variants as the orchestral samples for Sampletank 3 while claiming it to be an all new sampleset, then released Miro 2 with the actual new samples.

[StevenT2112]

Has anyone used this before? Is it any good? It's currently half off and I'm thinking about buying it.

http://www.bigfishaudio.com/detail.html?...1615::1198

[Mattias Westlund]

I dunno, are you after the orchestral bits or just a catchall lib for all sorts of purposes? If the former, the woodwinds sound pretty good but aside from that there's nothing in the few demos I listened to that gives me a feeling that this is intended for any serious symphonic adventures. Still, for $49 it doesn't seem like a bad deal at all if you have Kontakt.

[peastman]

I just found this discussion, so I'm a little late to it, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

I bought GPO 5 some months ago.  I now seriously regret that.  I regard it as $150 of completely wasted money.  I never succeeded in getting anything usable out of it.

To start with, the quality is just bad.  They haven't done basic quality control, like normalizing the volume of notes within each instrument.  Just creating a single line where all the notes sound like they're the same loudness can be a struggle.

Then there's the fact that a lot of the instruments don't use velocity to control loudness!  Instead you have to use a midi controller.  So if you want to make one note louder, you can't just adjust one number.  Instead you have to add multiple control points to a controller, carefully aligned with the start and end of the note.  And of course if you then move the note, the volume doesn't move with it.  And if you copy and paste notes, the volume gets lost.  Trying to work with this can drive you insane.

Fortunately, around that time I discovered SSO and have been happy ever since.  It's better in almost every way (except the very limited set of articulations, but I'd rather have a few articulation that sound good than a lot that don't).

One other option that no one has mentioned: Logic Pro.  It's only $200 and comes with a huge collection of instruments.  The quality is variable, but even the worst ones are certainly usable, and some are quite nice.  Plus if you buy it as a sample library, you also get a high end DAW thrown in for free!  The one problem is that it's Mac only.

[Samulis]

(08-06-2016, 08:42 PM)peastman Wrote: I just found this discussion, so I'm a little late to it, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

I bought GPO 5 some months ago.  I now seriously regret that.  I regard it as $150 of completely wasted money.  I never succeeded in getting anything usable out of it.

To start with, the quality is just bad.  They haven't done basic quality control, like normalizing the volume of notes within each instrument.  Just creating a single line where all the notes sound like they're the same loudness can be a struggle.

Then there's the fact that a lot of the instruments don't use velocity to control loudness!  Instead you have to use a midi controller.  So if you want to make one note louder, you can't just adjust one number.  Instead you have to add multiple control points to a controller, carefully aligned with the start and end of the note.  And of course if you then move the note, the volume doesn't move with it.  And if you copy and paste notes, the volume gets lost.  Trying to work with this can drive you insane.

It's important to research not just how much a library costs, but when it was made. GPO for example, has samples dating back to the late 90's (you can use the wayback machine and see the earlier versions of GPO on the original garritan site). When GPO was released, it was pretty fancy stuff. A lot of people were still using stuff like Proteus, which was a 32 MB complete orchestral bank. I can't even imagine what the world must have said when EWQL SO hit the market. EWQL SO itself is from the early 2000's, but I believe some of the elements in it may actually be late 90's. For that time period, it was very impressive, with many instruments having 4 or even 6 round-robins and all sorts of features that many hardware sample libraries didn't come close to (an early 90's library was called "big" if it was over 8 MB).

GPO is predominantly single or two dynamic layers, and sampled in wide intervals like minor thirds. At 5 GB (I think that's what it last was), it's ultra-light in the terms of an orchestral library and in no way suitable for production work anymore (although in 20 years people will be booting up their old 64-bit systems to load that vintage GPO to make classic video game soundtracks).  The woodwinds are decent enough for use in an actual track, and the strings are passable, particularly in less traditional styles, but the brass are poor and the percussion leave much to be desired, even compared to contemporary libraries.

That being said, the under-the-hood elements in the sfz's are not bad. I really enjoy their detune knob for instance. Most sustaining instruments are fairly similar high-end instruments today in the sense that everything is modwheel-dynamic controlled, not key velocity (using key velocity on sustaining instruments kinda went out with the E-MU's; in most cases, it is mapped to some other performance parameter, such as attack). I recommend recording your automations manually, it goes a lot faster than clicking dots.There should also be a way to copy and paste automation data in your DAW too.