Spitfire BBC Symphonic Orchestra Discover

[Mattias Westlund]

Brand new super lite version of Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra has been released, only $/€/£49 (or free for filling out a survey, though you have to wait two weeks before you get it). Check out this review, it actually sounds pretty damn good! And yes, it's a complete orchestra with separate instrument sections, only thinned out in terms of mic positions, dynamic layers, RR's etc.

Forty-nine bucks. Did anyone say paradigm shift?

[Paul Battersby]

It sounds interesting.  It's too bad it doesn't have any velocity layers though. It's most apparent in the brass. It's tempting to sample this new library, to blend it with parts of Virtual Playing Orchestra, to get something better although I wouldn't be able to share the resulting blended library. However, I filled in the survey to get a free copy of the library in a few weeks to take a closer look at it.

[Mattias Westlund]

(05-09-2020, 12:31 AM)Paul Battersby Wrote: It's too bad it doesn't have any velocity layers though. It's most apparent in the brass.

It has modwheel dynamics... ? Velocity switching is hardly ever used anymore except in percussion and key instruments. After all, it doesn't really make sense for a string, wind or brass instrument to respond to velocity.

[Paul Battersby]

(05-09-2020, 10:29 AM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: It has modwheel dynamics... ?

Yes, but the instruments were only recorded at a single volume. There is no expression. So you'll get the same tone regardless of the volume.

I said there are no velocity layers but I should have said there are no dynamic layers.

[Mattias Westlund]

(05-09-2020, 11:30 AM)Paul Battersby Wrote: Yes, but the instruments were only recorded at a single volume. There is no expression. So you'll get the same tone regardless of the volume.

I said there are no velocity layers but I should have said there are no dynamic layers.

I was under the impression that it has at least two dynamics, crossfaded using the modwheel, though admittedly I only skimmed through the reveiw. Where does it say that?

[Mattias Westlund]

Paul, you're absolutely right. It says 1 dynamic layer right in the BBCSO comparison chart. Well that certainly made the whole deal a lot less appealing, but anyway. I've taken the survey and will be getting the library in a couple of weeks. I guess it might be useful for layering.

[Paul Battersby]

(05-09-2020, 12:06 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Paul, you're absolutely right. It says 1 dynamic layer right in the BBCSO comparison chart.

Yes, that's where I read it. It's a bit of a deep dive to find that. To me it's also clearly audible when the brass plays loudly, the tone is still soft.

[peastman]

Quote:After all, it doesn't really make sense for a string, wind or brass instrument to respond to velocity.

Maybe when you're playing it live, but for orchestration I find velocities way more convenient.  Especially for short articulations, relying the on the mod wheel is really awkward.  And even for sustained articulations, I'd rather have a single number I can edit to set the overall volume of a note, and then edit controller curves only when I want to add extra shaping.

[Mattias Westlund]

(05-09-2020, 07:57 PM)peastman Wrote: Maybe when you're playing it live, but for orchestration I find velocities way more convenient.  Especially for short articulations, relying the on the mod wheel is really awkward.  And even for sustained articulations, I'd rather have a single number I can edit to set the overall volume of a note, and then edit controller curves only when I want to add extra shaping.

I meant for sustained articulations. For staccatos, I prefer velocity switching too. But if dynamic layers are tied to velocity, you can never do a relistic swell from soft to loud.

[Samulis]

It's also 200 MB according to specs, or 1/12th the size of VSCO 2 CE. With lossless compression it is about 400-500 MB worth, or 1/6th the size. That means each of the 47 articulations has 4-10 MB of sample content, which is about on par with the EMU ESI orchestral CD's from the early 90's in terms of sample density per instrument... in fact, the EMU factory library goes up to 16 MB per patch, with one piano a 'massive' 32 MB! O.o

With lossy compression it might be about equal in size to VSCO 2 CE, but would they really go there?

I just don't even see a point to this existing at that size. Yeah, the samples sound great on their own, obviously much better recording quality than I could have done for VSCO 2 CE, but the lacking sample density and RR is extremely audible in their demos. It barely even counts as a sketching library given the limits... even something like EWQL SO Gold or Silver seem so much more sane as commercial alternatives, despite being over 15 years old. :/

I'm not even going to get into their twisted sense of "free", requiring filling out a survey and waiting two weeks according to the website. Just another company looking for user data and mailing list subs it seems...